There is nothing more ignorant than to automatically jump to the "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear" defense.

While these technologies are developed for 'good', it's very easy to use them for 'evil' - in fact, I challenge you to find me an example where a technology has not been subverted.

One information is collected from you, you can't get it back. You have to trust whoever is collecting it - good luck with that.

While the license plate scanner is allegedly only used for finding stolen vehicles, there's nothing that prevents them from storing the time & location of hits of all or just selected plates. I can't think of an evil use for the information, but I'm not trying very hard.

The price and size of the technology will come down, so that everything from cop cars to garbage trucks will have this capability.

OnStar has lots of capabilities, many of which can be used without the user's knowledge. The company says it will only exercise these capabilities with a court order, but there's no "teeth" in that - there's nothing that prevents them from doing anything they want with it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnStar

Now add RFID driver's licenses and passports to the picture. As that technology matures, you'll be able to put more information on a tag and read it from farther away.

These are all just small pieces of a larger puzzle - one you put all the pieces together, it quickly gets very interesting. It is conceivable that someone (not just a cop) could simultaneously scan your plate and read the RFID tags of everyone in the car, creating a record of exactly who was at a given location at a given time. Here's where someone will chime in with "if you're not doing anything wrong..." mantra. How about someone tracking your 17 year-old daughter? Or a business competitor tracking your sales reps? Or listening in on them?

Thom,

Thats a Big Amen brother.

That is what is so dangerous about these technologies. It is not about the fact that I am doing notning wrong but the that fact it is no else's business to be able to FIND OUT I am doing nothing wrong. Presumption of innocence starts with you being left along unless your public actions give reason to clearly show otherwise.

Add to this civil liberty debate the "fact" that, in many cases, the "bad guys" are willing to quickly adopt new technology to further there pursuits. If you do not think so, ask your self who is making momney ont he web, why do we have any spam, what are chat rooms so dangerous for our children etc. These are all examples of how our liberites can be easily subverted.

-Hello [insert blank]. You do not know me, but I want be you your personal advisor.
My name is Kashan. I work for Bobono company in east Europe, which is part of Stalker Inc. from Caymen Islands, which is small private part of KBR.
-You have to excuse my english not so good.
-We look at bad guys and take care of them for you. Government gives us information and we help.
-I watch you, you are good [insert blank] party member and I want help you.

-I notice on your today email that co-worker Bob "pisses you off". I watch his email and find he has bad rash and order medicine on-line.
For only $100, I change medicine order to something that hurt good.
For only $20, I make his Microsoft Word program make trouble when he press "enter" key.

-Bob's car has Onstar, and I notice he go to library. I look at library records and it say he like books on flower arraingement and furniture style. I think he not real man. Also, I listen his cell phone and he talk with friend Mike much about problem with wife spending money.
For only $1,000 I buy gay pornography and send it to house when he go on fishing trip next wednesday. I double-check home security record and see that Bob alway brings in mail from mailbox. Make his wife crazy, yes? Ha ha.

-I see his cell phone GPS near friend Mike at bar, that is normal. But sometimes bluetooth radio frequency tag in clothing of woman prostitute who buy clothing from Wallmart is next to Bob. I check more on that for you. Mabye I send her phone text message to meet Bob when wife come to bar. That is funny, yes?
Or I use voice synthesiser and call her using his voice. I know how he talks by now.

-If you really, really not like Bob, For only $5,000 I make him run off the road. Stabil-track on his truck and I know he like to drive fast on some dirt roads.
No problem. I push button and wheels lock up.

-If you like program, you respond to email and [insert blank] party member will get back to talk to you. This message will self destruct.
This is only beginning of benefits for good party members like yourself.

-We at the US Federal Government want make "good" party members happy, and start new program to care about individual. The new Federal Government care very much about everything the individual do.

simply put a switch in between the Onstar brain and the GPS Antenna...

and turn it off when y'all are visiting the Tittybar...

personally i'de just yank out the brain completely , just like i used to do with ABS and any other electronic gizmo on my cars , that is untill recently , now i just buy old Porsches , that don't have any of these gizmo's to start with... now i resort to yanking other things from it, for reqsons of weight reduction or "simplifying things for easier troubleshooting"

:D

You try wearing a seatbelt on top of a gun belt. Sure with a seatbelt extender you can manage to buckle up. However, and more importantly, you can't get to your gun easily or bail out of the car immediately. Most guys will buckle up if pursuing somebody or racing someplace. Not saying I agree with not wearing one, but the vehicle and traffic law in most states exempts police and cab drivers from wearing belts. All that being said, the #1 cause of death/injury to police is... you guessed it

Easy enough to subvert the technology. "Load" the license plates of people with anti current-party/person-in-power leanings and try to chase down who they are meeting with or find some dirt for the upcoming elections.

Question is, how much gas/wasted time/wasted expense on technology, when the officer might have done some good investigative work and found out a locale/person for a crime? Just monitor everyone, you're sure to find someone who's a criminal (or at least can be accused) sometime. That justifies it, yeah...

When did it become a waste of time to easily detect stolen and unregistered/uninsured vehicles?

Your election/campaign scenario brings new meaning to paranoia. The ability to run a plates history/status like this has been in place for years. All this technology does is check all vehicles that are in view of the police vehicle. There is no constitutional issue. It's simply much more efficient now

So let's take a guy off patroling a neighborhood (or answering calls) so he/she can cruise the shopping mall parking lot looking for possible stolen cars. Or off the homicide squad, or off the grand theft task force....take your pick.

It's one possibility. If you believe that people won't use everything they can/have access to to gain an advantage, you haven't been living in the gen US population. Let's all say Nixooon taaaapes.

Wow, that was a reach; I hope you did some warmup stretches first!

When, in the history of police departments, has a dept taken someone off of [homicide|patrol|etc] to randomly look for stolen cars?

You still haven't addressed the concerns about the technology, but then again the whole point of your post was to distract from that...

Thom,
First, your prior posts and my prior posts appear to be in agreement on the concerns about the technology and how it could be subverted. Once again, can you say Nixon tapes?

Second, as to a stretch, you have a limited number of $$ for police officers. Assigning one to cruise parking lots looking for stolen cars is tantamount to taking one from the homicide squad or grand theft squad etc. Limited resources mean choices about assignments.

Gotcha. I thought you were trying to say "Either use this technology, or take a cop off the homicide squad to undertake the very important task of grazing for stolen cars"

Here in Sacramento County, they have meter maids running through all the mall parking lots, looking for the occasional handicapped spot violator; I think one score covers their expenses for the day. This would be a good place to install the ALPR package. The downtown meter main carts already use an automated system of reading plates on non-metered spaces; they just drive around and the computer reads all the plates and puts them in a db. They drive by again in n minutes and it tells them which ones get tickets.

As an aside, the parking ticket revenue folks are so aggressive that they often cruise residential streets. A friend of mine got a ticket for being parked facing the wrong way while unloading his race car.

You know, here's a way to rebel (just a little bit).

Several states I've lived the newsfolks would get the locations of the speedtraps/photoradar and announce them on the morning news (freedom of info act).

We need to start a service that let's us interface that info w/the GPS in a car to help avoid the traps:D :D

.Would you like a nice Bearnaise with your red herring?

I believe on page one somebody brought up the right to privacy, that's why I mentioned constitutionality. They brought it up, not me.

I can appreciate both of your views and can't say that I don't agree to some extent. There is the potential for an abuse of this technology. However, I was only addressing use by patrol cops. This equipment runs in the 14-17 k range, so they're not cheap and are only placed in about 1 in 20 cars (depending on the size of dept.) Detectives and specialized officers are not going to have this camera. And those patrol guys who do have it are not driving around all day looking for a "hit." They still have to patrol and respond to 911 calls. It's merely a tool that is always on which can detect a vehicle that should not be on the road.
Many cops have LoJack detectors in their car. They're not watching it all day looking for stolen cars. This technology is not unlike LoJack in that respect, only difference is that it hits for unregistered vehicles as well

There's a shock. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

The only thing more terrifying than the gadget is your interpretation of the constitution, and the blatant overreaches of the courts. The constitution expressly states that we should be secure in our persons and possessions- and yes, that includes in public. Without reasonable cause there is no legitimate reason to run a tag to begin with. Just running every tag on every street you drive down is an obvious search for possibly incriminating evidence, just like tossing a guy against the wall and rifling in his pockets just because he was 'in public'.

Until very recently it has ALWAYS been the legal standard, that the police required probable cause to search a car or person. Mainly it was DUI checkpoints that broke down these personal freedoms we once all enjoyed. Seems it took a while for the judiciary and legislature to get around to chiseling away that right.

Given enough time, they will eventually legislate away everything. They're law makers- what else are they supposed to do? And then there are the judges...

BTW Guys, they do sell stuff that blurs license plates out to cameras. Another Pelican was kind enough to bring it to my attention in another thread some time ago. :)