SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
In a rare move against the advance of license plate readers, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) has vetoed a plan to acquire the scanners in the Bayou State. It had previously passed both houses of the Louisiana legislature overwhelmingly.
Many law enforcement agencies nationwide use these specialized cameras to scan cars and compare them at incredible speeds to a "hot list" of stolen or wanted vehicles. In some cases, that data is kept for weeks, months, or even years.
[Related]: Governor's Statement
Original Submission
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Louisiana Governor Vetoes License Plate Reader Bill, Citing Privacy Concerns.
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 32 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Croll's Query:
If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday June 22 2015, @06:31PM
Have you, or have you not, been the victim of vehicle theft?
Your question is completely irrelevant to the validity of my arguments.
But now that you've asked for a contribution: I'd also say that since long before I was born police have used hot sheets of stolen cars, and I do not see why applying it to all cars driving past a certain point is wrong by itself.
Because you should have privacy from mass surveillance; it's that simple.
Here are the differences between humans doing the monitoring and machines doing it instead:
1) Cost. It's far more expensive to have humans conduct mass surveillance, which makes it nearly impossible to do.
2) Reliability. Humans are far more fallible and have bad memories. This means your data is likely safe, because it's stored in a fallible human brain and can't be easily shared. Only the most memorable and important information is usually remembered.
3) License plate readers can be nearly everywhere and yet still report their data to a single source (the government), and quite efficiently. Humans can't do that nearly as easily.
The differences are so fundamental that we need to recognize a right to privacy from mass surveillance. If most people just keep assuming that humans doing X and technology automatically doing X are the same thing, we are well and truly doomed.
Aside from that, we do sacrifice privacy and freedom for security.
Yes, we do. Examples of this are the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, DUI checkpoints, License Plate Readers, stop-and-frisk, Stringrays, and warrantless wiretapping of all sorts. And all of which is, without exception, an egregious violation of our fundamental liberties and must be eliminated. You're not in good company when you advocate for the security state.
Also, the US is supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave'. Try to act like it.
Society does restrict you, even if you haven't run up against it yet, and absolute freedom and privacy is a complete myth if you intend to live in any community of human beings.
I merely want the government to follow the constitution, which means that mass surveillance devices are necessarily prohibited.
Just because I want it to go away doesn't mean I'm naive enough to think it will or that I can demand that it will.
Then you have given up and are part of the problem. It's naive to think that if we let them have the mass surveillance infrastructure, they'll follow all the rules and make sure no communications from US citizens get spied on. I don't expect that it will be easy to defeat the NSA, but even if the odds are nearly nonexistent, it's worth trying.
Foreigners deserve privacy from mass surveillance, as well. Any foreign surveillance should be as targeted as possible, and it should be done on enemy countries.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 22 2015, @10:09PM
The Stasi were defeated. I take heart from that.
We must remember that we're all carrying around devices for the NSA to spy on us, but they can also be used to spy on them. The people at the NSA are humans who physically exist. They have homes and drive cars. They buy things. They marry and have friends. They can be seen walking down the road or filling up their tank at gas stations. As long as those things are true, they remain quite vulnerable to an angry and determined citizenry.
Naturally they can then choose to only hire single, unattached orphans whom they house in underground bunkers and who never see the light of day, but that's not going to be a very fun career option for those people and it will breed a thousand Edward Snowdens in their ranks. It is no fun at all to be the jailor when you're the one who can't leave the jail.
Washington DC delenda est.