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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the big-brother's-private-sector-sibling? dept.

If the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a San Diego-based Republican state senator have their way, it will soon become legal for Californians to cover their license plates while parked as a way to thwart automated license plate readers.

Those devices, now commonly in use by law enforcement nationwide, can capture license plate numbers at a very high rate of speed, as well as record the GPS location, date, and time that a particular plate is seen. Those plates are then run against a "hot list" of stolen or wanted cars, and a cop is then alerted to the presence of any vehicle with a match on that list.

As written, the new senate bill would allow for law enforcement to manually lift a cover, or flap, as a way to manually inspect a plate number. The idea is not only to prevent dragnet license plate data collection by law enforcement, but also by private companies. A California company, Vigilant Solutions, is believed to have the largest private ALPR database in America, with billions of records.

Do we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public?


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  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:56AM (4 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:56AM (#506815) Journal

    There are no exceptions for parked/driving/being towed - you're not allowed to cover it up, in public (dirty weekend off road? The Law expects you to clean your windows, mirrors and plates before driving (or parking) on public roads)

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:23PM (3 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:23PM (#507096)

    So what if someone parks behind you on the street (parallel parking)? You can't read someone's plate from 20m away if there's another car parked immediately behind them.