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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: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 17 2018, @02:32PM (3 children)
This sounds like a violation of the 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable search.
> Welfare fraud includes activities like failing to report income
"Failing to report income" doesn't sound like sufficient reason to spy upon and track people. Could they get a search warrant for "failing to report income"? Maybe "failing to report income" isn't a heinous crime? And, there are other ways to determine income, like, oh, I dunno, your income taxes. They could even scrap the whole idea of reporting income and go with a universal basic income.
> and claiming care for a child who does not actually live with the benefits recipient, the DHA said.
Again, doesn't sound like a good reason to spy upon people. And more hoops to jump through. Can't they conceive ways to do without these burdensome requirements?
There's all kinds of problems with all this propaganda about takers, moochers, welfare queens and so on. I don't doubt that there are shiftless layabouts leeching off the public purse-- some of whom are multimillionaires, you know-- but which is the more serious problem, welfare fraud or welfare shaming? How many people should have gotten help but did not? Maybe they still have some pride? But the system seems designed to destroy pride while at the same time castigating people for being shameless and lacking pride. One of the principles of our legal system is that it's better to let a hundred guilty people go free than convict and imprison one innocent. However, policymakers seem to be okay with a hundred children going hungry if that stops one case of welfare fraud.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @02:36PM (2 children)
i wrote the tech for the original welfare to work program in CA and if you had .. you too might have read up a bit on the rules of that "your subjugation to the state in turn for enough crap to kinda live on" thing people have to agree to in order to get anything. .. and you would ask the same question i have of you: are you completely insane?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @07:21PM (1 child)
> i wrote the tech for the original welfare to work program in CA.....
??
Slow down and make your points one at a time. What you have written is not comprehensible.
Specifically, you started out OK:
> I wrote the tech for the original welfare to work program in CA.
...but didn't know when to stop (use a period).
+ Next sentence should explain why this gives you a unique perspective on the problem.
+ Then continue from that intro.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 18 2018, @07:29AM
He also doesn't seem to understand that around these parts, our legal system may find parts of contracts invalid or unenforceable.
That's unusual to him, because in Ancapistan, contracts are magical and the people are incapable of deviating from them. The word geas might be more appropriate for describing how it works.