license plate scanners

[Hawk87]

Saw this on the news, wondered what you guys thought about it

http://www.kutv.com/news/features/local ... _597.shtml

(KUTV) Drivers traveling through Washington and Beaver Counties on I-15 may soon have their license plates scanned by the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the DEA says the primary purpose of the scanners would be to catch or build cases against drug traffickers - but they say the scanners could also be used to catch kidnappers and violent criminals.

One scanner would capture the license plates of vehicles traveling northbound in Washington County and another scanner would catch license plates heading south on I-15 in Beaver County.

Both the Beaver and Washington County Sheriffs say they're in favor of the scanners.

The DEA says the scanners would only catch the license plate, GPS coordinates, and direction the car is traveling.

Then, if law enforcement has inputted a license plate number for a car to be stopped, local police will be immediately notified via e-mail or text message of when the car crossed the scanner.

That data would be routed through the police dispatch centers, according to the DEA, in Beaver and Washington Counties to a DEA facility in Virginia where it would be stored for 2 years.

Some legislators are skeptical and say they are concerned about the DEA storing the data for two years and who would be able to access it.

Committee members have asked for more information on the scanners and data storage and will be discussing the topic again in June.

[leonidas]

Aaah, yes....catching those evil drug traffickers, kidnappers, and murders (Oh my).

I would appreciate it more if they just said what they really need it for. Maybe "hey we're broke and we need to catch evil people not paying their speeding/parking/ticket taxation". Or "you know, we think all you Utahn's are gonna give us trouble down the road when we really put on the screws, so we need to know who everyone on the road is". Or "they're considering cutbacks in our budgets and we need to prove we're a useful ABC agency".

Notice when the powers that be want more regulation or movement towards a police state (did I just say that ) they begin with 1. We need more to catch the really nasty people that are prevelent; then move to 2. The local authority thinks it is a great idea.

The overall Meme is "this will keep you safe".

No thanks, I'll live the DTs, Kidnappers, and murders between Washington and Beaver Counties.

Now if this was a request in Juarez Mexico, then I might be convinced.

[gravedancer]

If I actually believed the data would only be used for the purpose they claim (kidnappers, etc), and nothing else, then I could see the use.

Unfortunately, I dont believe thats all it will be used for, and I dont like the idea of the DEA storing data containing my travel habits in a database for 2 years, where who knows who can access it.

[Zacharia]

I don't understand how knowing how many times a day, week, month, or year a car drives past a certain checkpoint is any indication of drug traffic. Maybe its time for me to put on my tin foil hat, because this seems very police statey to me.

[Cinhil]

This IS another method to gain control and perhaps even to deny (eventually) our first amendment right which allows us to travel without restriction amongst the several states as we pursue our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Collecting a list of license plates at a federal location/data bank violates this. This is similar to the violation presented when photo cop came out. Whenever the government does something which gathers info as they are stating, it is time to be worried as we know that our rights will be violated and we will have a further degrading of our constitutionally protected rights.

I see this issue as something which we should fight. Any freedom loving officer out there should be speaking against such a vehicle especially since they have sworn an oath of office to uphold the constitution and to protect the rights of the citizen. Those who do not decry such a blatant disregard for our rights ought not to be an officer, they cannot be trusted. Indeed, they should not be trusted as their loyalties defy their oath and our rights.

[dimeclub]

How about covering up your license plate for the 1/4 of a mile near the scanner, then pulling over after the scanner and uncover your plates again?

[Hawk87]

How about covering up your license plate for the 1/4 of a mile near the scanner, then pulling over after the scanner and uncover your plates again?

I doubt we will know exactly where it is. And I think that it is against the law to cover your plate

[DaKnife]

If they sit a cruiser near the camera and he sees your plate covered you'll get cited for it. A plate must be readable from 100 feet.

I also found the Beaver Sheriff's statement that it would not be legal for a civil action to subpoena the records due to state law questionable. How applicable is state law when the records are going to be held in Virginia?

Oh and the right to travel is not enumerated in or considered a part of the 1st amendment. Rather the Supreme court has found in multiple rulings dating back to the late 1823's that the right to travel freely within, between and out of the states is a non-enumerated freedom so base to the very concepts of freedom that the founding fathers didn't think they needed to put in writing. Only the right to enter the country is not guaranteed.

Sadly the TSA has proven the decision to not write that guarantee into place to be faulty.

[Snaggle]

Oh and the right to travel is not enumerated in or considered a part of the 1st amendment. Rather the Supreme court has found in multiple rulings dating back to the late 1823's that the right to travel freely within, between and out of the states is a non-enumerated freedom so base to the very concepts of freedom that the founding fathers didn't think they needed to put in writing. Only the right to enter the country is not guaranteed.

Sadly the TSA has proven the decision to not write that guarantee into place to be faulty.

You might be thinking of article four of the United States Constitution aka Privileges and Immunities Clause and reaffirmed in the Equal Protection Clause of fourteenth amendment. These have been referred to in many cases affirming the government can not restrict our free (not monetarily speaking) travel upon roads or movement from state to state.

When it comes to the proposed scanner system, I went looking for some case law and it seems overwhelmingly, the courts agree that their is no expectation of privacy regarding a license plate and affirmed that a LEO is able to run this plate without PC/RAS when on the public streets. HOWEVER, what I think what sets this automated system apart from these cases and IMHO makes this a violation of the 4th amendment, is that ALL plates are being recorded, archived and checked against a database. I suspect this will be the subtle difference between this and case law and we will likely see some backlash from the ACLU.


Edit: Typo

[deserth3]

All this will do is force the hard core drug trafficers off the main highway and through smaller towns, back roads and offroading areas. Making these areas more dangerous to live and play in.

[bltdonahue]

This will do nothing to stop drug trafficking. It's simple, they'll destroy the cameras.

[Luv10mm]

Does anyone know, or have an idea, how these scanners will work? I.e., take a snapshot of the backend of a vehicle and then analyze to find the plate? How will they record multiple vehicles in both lanes spaced fairly close together?

Also, if your plate has to be visible from 100 ft, does that visibility include what state/country the plate is from?

I agree that this blanket surveillance seems like a poor method to catch bad guys in addition to questionable constitutionality.

[Car Knocker]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_ ... ecognition

[bagpiper]

How do I feel?

Just like I do about a lot of technology in the hands of government: Some good may come of it. But it is likely to change the nature of our relationship with the government.

There is no right to violate the law. There is no right to go unnoticed violating the law in public. And I support obeying the law. In fact, while hard on those who are prosecuted, I believe one way to get bad laws repealed is to demand 100% enforcement. When the powers-that-be are prosecuted under the laws, or enough voters are, the laws will be changed.

That all said, I don't care to live in a police state where every little infraction can be 100%, immediately ticketed. There is something to be said for there being some finite cost of enforcement.

I recently read an interesting article on privacy that asserted our privacy laws are (and always have) lagging technology. In the 18th century, physical security (being secure in your person, papers, effects, and homes) guaranteed privacy. Today, physical access to your home or person is not needed to invade your privacy. So much personal information is, of necessity or convenience, gathered and stored electronically that the question is no longer about getting access to our personal data, but rather about the purposes for which it can be used.

Now, that said, I think the notion of some golden era of privacy is a myth. In small towns everyone knows when you sneeze and I suspect that was quite true in the ante-bellum period as well. It was common and accepted that most any citizen in a town could stop a stranger and demand he make an accounting for himself. Probably most often done in a polite manner at least for those who were dressed and comported such as to be entitled to politeness.

But certainly the nature of privacy changes. A man on 1,000 acres enjoys great physical privacy and seems to have close relations with his neighbors a mile down the road. A man living in a Condo hears way too much through the walls and so avoids even knowing the names of his neighbors on the other side of the wall.

None of us want to get a ticket for being three days expired on our registration or driving with the flow of traffic faster than a speed limited posted too low for the total conditions. So electronic toll collections don't get used to enforce those laws so far as I know. But most of us don't like the idea of serious criminals getting off, so I wonder if electronic toll collection system actually get used in murder or other serious cases as we sometimes see on TV.

When my car is stolen, I'd love to have the police be able to track it down and recover it for me. When the car isn't stolen, I'd just as soon it not be trackable.

I think the key is not to oppose technology, but to properly legislate its use by the government. And part of that is proper penalties for both agencies and their employees who violate the limits. For that matter, much as I generally dislike government intrusion into the market, There may well be some areas where government limits on what personal data can be gathered, used, and shared, are needed.

Charles

[Luv10mm]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition

Thanks for the link Car Knocker. An interesting read. And as I had surmised, there are a lot of potential problems with identifying every car and getting the correct plate number/state off it. I'm particularly curious about night driving. I could foresee drug smugglers having a toggle for their license plate light when they travel through these zones, plus a spray of some sort that makes it hard to get a clear picture of the plate on film.

Anyway, it still feels like a nanny state/big brother thing to me. Tracking all drivers through an area in an attempt to tag criminals seems a bit sketchy and open to other unrelated uses.