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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?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:17PM (3 children)
A lot of the population in the U.S. doesn't live on the coasts.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:20PM (2 children)
A third of the population in the U.S. doesn't live on the coasts.
There. FTFY.
Which means two thirds [theusaonline.com] do live on the coasts, with a plurality (38%) on the East coast.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:16PM (1 child)
You don't consider a third of 320 million people to be "a lot"?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:29PM
You don't consider a third of 320 million people to be "a lot"?
I certainly do. That is a lot of people. I was merely being specific.
Given that GP mentioned the ubiquity of cameras/tracking on the east coast, I was just pointing out that more people live on the coasts (and more on the East coast than not on the coasts) than not. Which has implications WRT privacy and surveillance for a plurality of the US.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr