License plate scanners are becoming pervasive

[thewayne]

This bothers me because it's cheap to keep this data indefinitely. This article shows the data retention policies of various agencies that use them, and they vary from 'discard immediately after comparing to a stolen or wanted list' to 'keep forever and let anyone in the department browse the information.' I know El Paso, TX has them, but they're not on the list. The thing that I hate is that in many cases this information is being shared with both the Feds and private industry: repo agents are getting ahold of it.

I'm just waiting for the news breach that the cell phone companies have been giving our location data to the Feds. It's one thing for you to be followed by law enforcement if you're a suspect in a case and they have probable cause, it's another thing for this data to be swept up on everybody. As the revelations of PRISM have shown, it's not difficult to build detailed information on people simply with the metadata.

I think it's time to look in to or build a license plate frame surrounded by infrared LED lights.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/license-plate-readers/

Comments

[silveradept]

Ah, for the days when the fourth amendment actually meant something. I'm sure that if taken to court over the matter, they would claim that your license plate is public data and therefore they don't need to get any story of court order to scan your plates for any reason and do whatever they want with the data.