"License plate-reading devices fuel privacy debate; Technology helps police respond to crimes, violations, but broad use, lack of regulations raise privacy worries" by Shawn Musgrave | Globe Correspondent, April 09, 2013
CHELSEA — The high-speed cameras mounted on Sergeant Robert Griffin’s cruiser trigger a beeping alarm every time they read another license plate, automatically checking to see if each car is unregistered, uninsured, or stolen. In a single hour of near-constant beeps, Griffin runs 786 plates on parked cars without lifting a finger.
The plate-reading cameras were introduced for police use in Massachusetts in 2008, and quickly proved their worth. The one on Griffin’s Chelsea cruiser repaid its $24,000 price tag in its first 11 days on the road. “We located more uninsured vehicles in our first month . . . using [the camera] in one cruiser than the entire department did the whole year before,” said Griffin.
Now, automated license plate recognition technology’s popularity is exploding — seven Boston-area police departments will add a combined 21 new license readers during the next month alone — and with that expanded use has come debate on whether the privacy of law-abiding citizens is being violated.
Already has been.
These high-tech license readers, now mounted on 87 police cruisers statewide, scan literally millions of license plates in Massachusetts each year, not only checking the car and owner’s legal history, but also creating a precise record of where each vehicle was at a given moment.
The records can be enormously helpful in solving crimes — for example, Fitchburg police used the technology to catch a serial flasher — but they increasingly make privacy advocates uneasy.
Use of the technology is outstripping creation of rules to prevent abuses such as tracking the movements of private citizens, or monitoring who visits sensitive places such as strip clubs, union halls, or abortion clinics....
“The worst-case scenario — vast databases with records of movements of massive numbers of people — is already happening,” warns Kade Crockford of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which is pushing for a state law to regulate use of license plate scanners and limit the time departments can routinely keep the electronic records to 48 hours.
And this was BEFORE BOSTON!
But police fear that zeal to protect privacy could stifle the use of a promising law enforcement tool, especially if they are prevented from preserving and pooling license plate scans for use in detective work....
Yeah, the freedom fighters are the zealots and the tyrants are the heroes.
F*** you! I'm still free enough to say that.
The usefulness of the automated license plate reader as an investigative tool springs from the astounding number of license plates the units can scan and record. With an array of high-speed cameras mounted on police cruisers snapping pictures, these systems are designed to capture up to 1,800 plates per minute, even at high speeds and in difficult driving conditions.
“I’ve had my [license plater reader] correctly scan plates on cars parked bumper-to-bumper when I’m driving full speed,” said Griffin, who caught three scofflaws owing a combined $1,900 in parking tickets from the 786 license plates his reader checked on a recent one-hour patrol.
I'm not saying don't pay the parking tickets, although maybe I am.
This is nothing but a GRAB for LOOT by BANKRUPT MUNICIPALITIES and the STATE!
The devices misidentify plates often enough that scans have to be confirmed by an officer on the scene before writing a ticket. In this case, after confirming the parking tickets, and the money owed, police initiated the collection process. Griffin called headquarters to confirm that the vehicles still had unpaid tickets, and then arranged for them to be towed.
Boston’s four scanner-equipped cars do 3,500 scans a day and more than 1 million per year, according to police data. Even smaller departments such as Fitchburg scan 30,000 plates per month with just one license-reading system, easily 10 times more than an officer could manually check.
Most of the departments that deploy license plate readers use them primarily for traffic enforcement. But the scanners — sometimes called by the acronym ALPR — are also used for missing persons, AMBER alerts, active warrants, and open cases....
While law enforcement officials are enthusiastic, critics can point to alleged abuses:
■ In 2004, police tracked Canadian reporter Kerry Diotte via automated license scans after he wrote articles critical of the local traffic division. A senior officer admitted to inappropriately searching for the reporter’s vehicle in a license scan database in an attempt to catch Diotte driving drunk.
■ Plainclothes NYPD officers used readers to scan license plates of worshipers at a mosque in 2006 and 2007, the Associated Press reported, under a program that was partially funded by a federal drug enforcement grant.
Related: Globe's Quick Stop and Frisk
Haven't seen any more buckshot on it in my Globe. Was there ever a verdict?
■ In December, the Minneapolis Police Department released a USB thumb drive with 2.1 million license plate scans and GPS vehicle location tags in response to a public records request, raising fears that such releases might help stalkers follow their victims....
ACLU attorney Fritz Mulhauser warned last summer that, within a few years, police will be able to use license scan records to determine whether a particular vehicle “has been spotted at a specific church, union hall, bar, political party headquarters, abortion clinic, strip club, or any number of other locations a driver might wish to keep private.”
But many law enforcement officials say they are just starting to tap the potential of license plate scanners.
“If anything, we’re not using ALPR enough,” said Medford’s Chief Leo Sacco, who would like to deploy the scanners 24 hours a day on all of his cruisers.
Massachusetts public safety officials are trying to create a central repository of license scans similar to a system in Maryland where all 262 scanner-equipped cruisers feed data to the state. In 2011, the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security handed out $750,000 in federal grants for 43 police departments to buy scanners with the understanding that all scan results would be shared....
This while your social programs are shredded under austerity, Americans!
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And you know what is coming next, right?
"Lithuania tax officials tap Street View to catch cheats" by Liudas Dapkus | Associated Press, April 11, 2013
VILNIUS, Lithuania — As soon as Google Maps Street View was rolled out in Lithuania earlier this year, tax authorities were ready.
Sitting in the comfort of their own offices, inspectors used the free Internet program for a virtual cruise around the streets of some of the Baltic country’s big cities, uncovering dozens of alleged tax violations involving housing construction and property sales....
Lithuanian officials said they were unaware of any other country where revenue collectors had used Google’s Street View, saying they didn’t draw on anyone else’s experience. Still, tax authorities across the world are turning to high-resolution maps, online databases, and social media in a bid to catch cheats.
Unless they are wealthy elite who can move money around the globe and hide it in several places like Switzerland and the Carribean.
In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service has said it would be cross-referencing information from taxpayers’ Facebook and Twitter accounts if their returns threw up any red flags.
Ah, FREEDOM!
In Britain, tax officials have revealed they are using Web crawling software to trawl auction websites for undeclared sales.
But the BANKS and their frauds are bailed out and left alone!
Authorities in Greece have been using satellite imagery to locate undeclared swimming pools in wealthy neighborhoods.
Among the tax cheats caught in Lithuania were....
Google has had scrapes with European governments over Street View, with the Germans and French in particular concerned that the company’s practice of deploying camera-mounted cars and bicycles to collect images and information for the application intrudes on privacy.
But the Lithuanian revenue agency dismissed any claims that its new approach violated privacy rights....
Now fork over what we say you owe us!
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