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It's not just governments and law enforcement agencies that are advocating the use of license plate readers, as The Intercept's Lee Fang reports:
As privacy advocates battle to rein in the use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), they're going up against another industry that benefits from this mass surveillance: lenders and debt collectors. [...] In Rhode Island, for instance, state Rep. Larry Valencia and state Sen. Gayle Goldin proposed bills in 2014 to prohibit the sale or trade of data collected by ALPRs, and to mandate that the state destroy records after one year.
I filed a records request and found two letters in opposition. One letter came from the[sic] Steven G. O'Donnell, on behalf of the Rhode Island State Police, arguing that law enforcement should be able to come up with its own internal procedures to govern the use of ALPRs. The other letter came from Danielle Fagre Arlow, senior vice president to the American Financial Services Association (AFSA), a trade group for consumer lending companies, some of which target the subprime market.
"Our particular interest in the bill," Arlow wrote, "is the negative impact it would have on ALPR’s valuable role in our industry – the ability to identify and recover vehicles associated with owners who have defaulted on their loans and are not responding to good-faith efforts to contact them." Arlow opposed the bill's restrictions on "how long data can be kept because access to historical data is important in determining where hard-to-find vehicles are likely located."
AFSA lobbied against several similar bills as they were proposed around the country. In Massachussetts, the group lobbied against a bill designed to destroy ALPR records after 90 days. AFSA argued that such a regime is unfair because "ALPR systems work best when they are used to string together the historical locations of vehicles."
[...] According to the ACLU of Rhode Island, the ALPR privacy bill died last session — notably, the bill failed after the consumer lending lobbyists voiced their opposition.
Unofficial Secrets is a newly launched and more frequently updated blog from First Look Media/The Intercept.
Related stories:
DHS Wants a National License Plate Tracking System
Ars Technica Obtains Large Dataset of Oakland Police Department License Plate Scans
Watch Out for "Automated Vehicle Occupancy Detection"
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday May 10 2015, @03:53PM
I have purchased several car covers to protect against bird droppings and other outdoor annoyances. Every cover had a hole to expose the license plate. On inquiry I was told it is not legal to hide the plate even when the car is parked.
Anyway, if it were allowed to cover it, there would be a law requiring you to cover it when parked. Right? Anything not required is forbidden?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 10 2015, @04:47PM
That is something you should look up. I have found with road rules there is what is 'common knowledge' and the real rules.
For example in my state (have not checked to see if they fixed it) you only had to have 1 tail light working. But it was common knowledge you had to have both working. Yet the law stated 1 working lamp.
For another example is right on red. That varies wildly from state to state and city to city. With some states treating it as a yield, to must stop then turn if clear, all the way to can not do it at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 10 2015, @08:21PM
Having just one light working carries the risk of it going out and being in violation of the law. If both work and one goes out that gives you time to notice the problem and fix it before the other goes out.