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Since 2016, Sacramento County officials have been accessing license plate reader data to track welfare recipients suspected of fraud, the Sacramento Bee reported over the weekend.
Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance Director Ann Edwards confirmed to the paper that welfare fraud investigators working under the DHA have used the data for two years on a "case-by-case" basis. Edwards said the DHA pays about $5,000 annually for access to the database.
Abbreviated LPR, license plate readers are essentially cameras that upload photographs to a searchable database of images of license plates. Each image captured by these cameras is annotated with information on the registered owner, the make and model of the car, and time-stamped GPS data on where it was last spotted. Those with access, usually police, can search the database using a full or partial license plate number, a date or time, year and model of a car, and so on.
Source: Gizmodo
From the SacBee article,
County welfare fraud investigators with the Department of Human Assistance use ALPR [automated license plate recognition] data to find suspects and collect evidence to prove cases of fraud, said DHA Director Ann Edwards. Investigators determine whether to use the data on a "case-by-case" basis "depending on the investigative needs of the case," she said.
"It's really used to help us locate folks that are being investigated for welfare fraud," she said. "Sometimes they're not at their stated address."
Through agreements, law enforcement agencies across California and the U.S. upload the images they obtain to a database owned by Livermore-based corporation Vigilant Solutions, which says the data help police solve crimes, track down kidnappers and recover stolen vehicles. Users can search the database by license plate, partial license plate, date or time, year or model of car, or by address where a crime occurred, which can show police which vehicles were in the area, the company's website says.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @02:30PM (7 children)
the data-collection is done by for profit private entities my man. the state does not pay for their infrastructure and only taxes the (probably delaware) corps doing the tracking. there may be lots of stories in that -- but in the end, they just pay for the use of the database.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 17 2018, @02:49PM (6 children)
So what's the difference between this and a private eye following you around everywhere you go, and then selling that information to a client or the cops or whoever? I mean, this is a lot of "Do what we could and did do before, but now with a computer."
And more to the point, any judge examining this would accept full well the argument that nobody has a reasonable expectation of privacy when they park their car on the street or a publicly accessible parking lot. Anybody can see it there. And if anybody walking by can see that you visited the local sleazy sex motel, the cops or any private investigator can see it too. And if they can see it, they can put it into a computer too.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @02:56PM
that my friend is 'another set of stories'. my point is/was that ca has the legal right to check up the use of the funds they provide .. and the seem to be doing it for a grand total of 5k/yr. less than a penny per person.. e.g. an excellent investment of our money. (not dissing the orwellian dynamics or the dangers of a legal panopticon; but that is a completely seperate thing, yes?)
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday August 17 2018, @03:44PM (1 child)
That may be so. BUT, "any judge" may still not agree with the argument that the GOVERNMENT is allowed to track you this way.
In fact, SCOTUS has ruled explicitly that the government can't put trackers on your vehicle without a warrant. First there was United States v. Jones [wikipedia.org] (2012), which unanimously held that police must obtain a warrant to install a GPS tracker on your car. Some lower courts subsequently attempted to limit that decision, but SCOTUS again slapped that down unanimously [scotusblog.com] in Grady. v. North Carolina (2015).
The idea that the police could follow and observe your car in public places as an analogy was explicitly considered by several justices in U.S. v. Jones and rejected as a legal argument to get around the requirement for a warrant. Four of the justices in a concurring opinion (authored by Alito) said that long-term surveillance using a permanent tracker that could reveal personal details of your travel required a warrant, even absent the "intrusion" required to install said tracker on your property (the detail the other five justices focused on). Sotomayor, also in concurring opinion, expressed similar concerns even for short-term government monitoring.
So, no, "any judge" examining this wouldn't necessarily buy into the argument that just because police could observe the movements of your car on public streets that ANY type of similar tracking/surveillance is legal without a warrant. In fact, a significant number of SCOTUS justices in 2012 explicitly REJECTED that argument.
With the increased prevalence of license-plate scanning, a license plate by itself has become a de facto government tracker on your vehicle. To my knowledge, SCOTUS has not taken up that subject directly yet.
And note that in 2012, U.S. v. Jones was considered a shocking ruling that was rather unexpected to be unanimous from SCOTUS. They really disliked the idea of police tracking your car everywhere, even if police could theoretically do that kind of surveillance previously. I'm not saying SCOTUS would rule similarly on this issue, but I don't think widespread tracking of license plate data has come before them. Recall that just this summer SCOTUS slapped down government tracking of cell phones without a warrant. And the reasoning in that ruling (Carpenter v. U.S. [supremecourt.gov]) seems to go even further than Jones, emphasizing an explicit right of individuals not to be continuously tracked by the government in their everyday movements in life, absent some sort of warrant or investigative reason. While Carpenter was explicitly identified as a "narrow" ruling (and was 5-4), the reasoning might be applicable in some circumstances to a license-plate tracking case if the extent of tracking it offers could be shown to be comparable.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday August 17 2018, @10:49PM
I'm not disagreeing with what you wrote. It's entirely possible that this would be regarded as not legal without a warrant.
But the parallel I'd try for is the difference between phone metadata and content. Metadata is searchable because it passes through public networks without expectation of privacy. Content is not. One of the underpinnings in US v. Jones was Katz v. US where eavesdropping on a public payphone required a warrant.... yet pen registers do not. (A specific target requires a warrant. Collecting all records in a system from public facts and sifting them later does not.)
In this case your car's travel occurs in plain view in public. The records being consulted aren't necessarily focused upon your car - the record gathering part isn't concerned with your identity specifically. Instead it's consultation of records that were automatically generated by your travel being consulted after the fact. And so sayeth Wikipedia Jones did not consider whether taking GPS data *absent* a physical intrusion required a warrant. So while you've definitely got leanings on the court, this (plate scanning) is a separate and fresh issue in the eyes of the law is my guess.
But that's just my guess. IANAL.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by edIII on Friday August 17 2018, @11:50PM
Game Theory. GAME THEORY. FUCKING GAME THEORY.
That's the difference. A huge fucking gaping chasm exists between a homeless person on the street (MDC excluded), a regular blue-collar worker with a family, a mid-level FBI agent, and J. Edgar "Burn-in-Hell" Hoover. If you collected all the information in the world, and handed it to an ascetic in India with no assets, no ambition (as we would define it), a suppressed ego, he would not be a threat to anyone. He would take no actions, as the data is meaningless to him, and as he has no assets, no computers, even if he wanted to take action against John Doe in Kansas, how does he do it? Now take a complete and utter shithead like Donald Trump, or even better, Adolf Hitler, and hand them all the information in the world. Are you worried yet? Information collection of this magnitude is what every Stasi-like police force has dreamed of.
I wholly and completely disagree with your assertion that I don't reasonably expect privacy in many public settings. I absolutely do expect privacy. I expect it because the average person around me isn't trying to record everything down, identify everybody and everything in every scene and image, and then store those notes forever. I do not EXPECT, CONDONE, nor APPROVE of the government and major corporations performing mass surveillance. In those settings, I don't consider it public property anymore where I can find peace. It's in infected area that might as well have signs up saying "No Privacy Beyond Sign". In that Dystopia, I might find an area of public land 75 miles from the nearest road and power hookup, and then finally find a place to have a picnic with my God-given right to privacy.
If a government agent is going to record information about me, then they need to document a REASON. Said reason, should be vetted by the Judicial branch of government as being so important, that it overrides my civil rights and right to privacy because the public good is threatened. As for corporations? They should be completely disallowed by law to make ANY mass recordings of public areas with the SOLE EXCEPTION of providing services authorized by the Judicial with a warrant. Which intrinsically excludes mass surveillance anyways.
No, it doesn't work that way. If the officer wants to remember that he saw my car in front of the sex motel, fine. If he wants to document it for any reason, it needs to be part of an official investigation. Not some database that can be perused later, asking it specifically for all identified individuals in front of the sex motel between two dates and times.
I'm all for a new Constitutional Amendment that strongly describes that my privacy is inviolable, and that I have rights to it even in public settings. Any data on any storage device regarding me is illegal, unless part of a government investigation with oversight plus checks and balances, or a signed opted-in service provided by a company, or my own personal storage device. Meaning, that if Facebook or the police has information on me in a database somewhere, it needs to be deleted lest I sue their fucking tits off in court.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 18 2018, @01:39AM
Don't forget the drop in cost by orders of magnitude. A few database queries from an existing database are a whole lot cheaper than hiring several people to track you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 18 2018, @02:39AM
In this case, that makes all the difference. The sheer accuracy, efficiency, and cheapness of spying on everyone using technology is what makes it so dangerous to freedom and democracy. This is why it must not be allowed, and why you cannot compare it to physically following people around using human spies.
I would add, however, that there are laws in various places against stalking, even when the stalking is done in public places. So even that is not clear-cut. There are different kinds of privacy, and some of them exist in public places.