At first glance, not a bad idea. LEOs can track those who need to be tracked for whatever reason...cartels perhaps, may me terrorist movements, human trafficking... But on the other hand we are giving up just a bit more privacy, and bit more freedom, and for what? Can this 'network' , this idea, deliver what it sets out to do? What are your thoughts about this? Red more here http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...CANNERS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
What great and timely thread..thank you for it. Yesterday I received a 'bill' in the mail for $31. It was from FasTrak. Seems I was photographed going through a toll gate on the Golden Gate bridge on 08/14 at 08:29:34. Here's the problem. I live about 200 miles NE of the Golden Gate Bridge. ( on the 14th at 8:30am, I was driving my truck through the Feather River Canyon ). The license plate photographed was and is on my car, which was and is in my garage. (200 miles away mind you) Fun stuff this.I called FasTrak. As we went over the 'bill'/citation' we discovered that on the photo on the doc of the license plate number was not the same as my plate number. The 4th letter being a 'B' whereas mine is a 'V'. Problem solved. They'll get a letter to me within 5-10 working days releasing me from any liability. Why is it that I have little to no faith that that letter will never show up in my mailbox and in the future when I have to register my car, I'm going to run into problems..not of my doing. Once we turn our lives over to technology...we're screwed. It's flawed, it makes mistakes and it will become virtually irreversible.
they are more used for post crime resolution then per-crime prevention... I am ok with that use child kidnapped from McD's at 3pm, look at all the cars that were on the road at time in question, one must be the kidnaper terrorist blows up McD's at 3pm, look at all the cars that were on the road at time in question, one must be the terrorist obviously wont work from crimes by foot, but helps in a great many cases .
I'm an independent with a decidedly libertarian attitude, but I am surprisingly in support of the license-scanning technologies. Provided it is used for law enforcement purposes. For example: A child goes missing, and a blue Chevy Caprice is spotted racing away from the scene of the abduction. The computer database matches only three blue Chevrolet Caprices registered in the area, and the computer alerts the local police that one of those cars is currently racing toward the State line at high speed. The car is registered to a man twice previously convicted of sex crimes. A road block is radioed into position, and the kidnapper is apprehended. The young girl is rescued from the trunk of the car, and the wheels of justice roll forward for the perpetrator. If, on the other hand, a big-brother government wants to use it to limit my civil liberties and/or monitor my comings and goings in order to tax me more heavily, then I am very much against it. For example: I receive a notice in the mail that my Subaru has been spotted far too many times pulling into the fast food drive-thrus and into the parking lots of a variety of beer stores. Hard liquor and cigarettes are known to be sold at these beer stores, and the government is concerned. The government determines that I am engaging in unhealthy practices, and in accordance with various new provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act, I am being fined an additional $13,000 for the current tax year, as a punishment for living an unhealthy lifestyle, er, uh, an incentive for me to live a healthier life. Fair enough?
Fair enough. But lets look a bit more at ronmatt's case. One letter on the license plate. Sometimes it is the reversal of house numbers. While that doesn't happen often, and the outcome is no more than a nuisances most of the time, I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end if someone rams down my front door, giving my family a good scare. Of course if a child is missing, or someone robbed a bank and they have a good idea who and what car are involved, by all means. Another question comes to mind. Who has access to all the information, and can we make sure that the information will not fall into the wrong hands?
The problem is, they will sell the idea to you with scenario one, and then once they've got the system in place, it will be used for scenario two.
And this is the concern. Once the system is in place every other agency will want the use of it for their own purposes. Auto Insurance companies already base a portion of your premium on credit rating, what if they find out that you frequent the previously mentioned places that sell hard liquor? Or your overly religious boss finds out you don't attend church regularly? There are any number of possible abuses with a system like that. That being said, there are a number of good uses for the system as well. The poll needs a "conditionally yes" button.
I'm not sure what it's useful for. I doesn't track anyone. It tracks their car. I suppose capturing all the license plate numbers for cars circling past the open-air crack market might have some minimal value. Car registration information does not carry the color of the car. I see cars sitting in front of me in traffic and I'm not sure what I'd call the color anyway. If the system existed it wouldn't be a real-time tracking system for a single car. No, I don't get it. Between the IRS tracking your bank and credit card information, and the NSA getting your email and listening to your phone calls, and the DOJ eavesdropping on your phone calls whenever they want, and the government tracking what snail mail you receive, the utility service reporting your electicity consumption, your neighbors responding to pleas to notify the White House if you don't support President Obama, and video cameras watching you almost everywhere, I'm not sure what the license plate scanner will add. Oh, I forgot. That cross-eyed geek with the odd looking glasses--Google Glass--is recording for posterity the fact that your fly is open.
Police cars have been using this stuff for awhile to catch people with warrants or expired plates etc. While I don't mind having the network set up for VERY SPECIFIC situations like Amber Alerts or they know the specific vehicle of a potential terrorist threat. When has the government ever not abused this kind of power. Frankly I would rather just not have it altogether than hear about unlawful use and misuse like the NSA lately.
You can't get this genii back into the bottle. Here in the Northeast we have EZPass, you put a transponder on your windshield and tolls are collected automatically, you even get a discount. You also add an entry to a database of the date and time and exact location of your car every time you pass through a toll facility. In a contested divorce, lawyers will subpoena the ezpass records, looking for a pattern that might uncover a mistress... Yet despite that database of my travels, I have that ezpass transponder because it is so much easier just driving through the ezpass lanes, than it is waiting in line to pay a toll. On a summer weekend day on a highway that leads to beaches, you can avoid lines that may take a half hour to get through. It's just so convenient, and I'm not doing anything I'm trying to keep from law enforcement. License plate readers enhance law enforcement, you won't see this go away, because you don't have a right to keep your license plate hidden on a public road.
I didn't even consider car insurance. Good one. Calling in sick on Monday? Better not go fishing. Perhaps it best not to get too paranoid, although I could spin this in quite a few directions....lol.
I wouldn't even call it a "concern" or even a "fear". It's what they are GOING to do. It's what they ALWAYS do. And they will just lie about it until they can no longer lie about it anymore. Then they (the same people who were just lying about the existence of other uses) will defend it as somehow being necessary.
