I chuckle when I read about the stinkola being caused by the TSA airport pornotron machines and the johnny-come-lately protestations of a "police state". When NBC Evening News ran the pornotron dustup as their lead story last night, it was clear that the TSA personal privacy intrusions have struck a raw nerve with the American public. You never hear anything about ALPR technology, though. And you're subjected to it every time you drive down the road.
Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) scanning system technology has been in wide use for at least five years, and is gaining law enforcement adherents every day. It's not just your state troopers anymore who have access to this technology. Local cops do, too.
I have a friend who drove to a neighboring town recently to jump start his wife's car that had died at a shopping center. Allow me to share his interesting story, below the jump...
As he approached the shopping center, the dreaded flashing light bar appeared in his rear view mirror. He pulled into the shopping center, and was given a ticket because he had forgotten to renew his car registration the month previously. How did the officer catch him? The officer proudly pointed to the ALPR scanner on the top of his cruiser, and said, "I can scan every license plate that comes down the road, even at rush hour. Your tag came up as expired."
...as did probably everything that law enforcement had in its database about my friend.
"So?" the law-and-order crowd says, indifferently. "If your car is registered, shouldn't be a problem, right? If you have nothing to hide..." yada yada yada...
Here's another story of ALPR surprise. As we were swapping stories one night, another of my friends shared this: his ex-wife, from a neighboring state, was continually getting pulled over because he had a bench warrant for an unpaid traffic fine. Turns out that her car was still registered in both of their names. On three different occasions, ALPR scanned the plate, and because he was still showing up as a registered owner of the vehicle, and had an outstanding bench warrant, she was being pulled over not for a motor vehicle violation, but because there was a chance that he was in the vehicle.
From an article on the Experienced Criminal Lawyers website:
Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) scanning systems are one of the newest technologies in the hands of law enforcement. The system consists of several cameras mounted on a police cruiser, hooked up to a computer inside the vehicle. The image on license plates are scanned and matched with an on-board, real-time database. This database can be set with flags for vehicles that have been identified as
* Stolen Vehicles
* Wanted for an Amber Alerts
* Expired Registration
* Expired Insurance
* Wanted as "Persons of Interest" for any investigation
The system is also matched with the owner of the vehicle via a DMV database. So if you are the owner of a car, and have a
* Suspended Driver’s License
* Outstanding Criminal Warrant
* Outstanding Municipal Taxes or other Fines and Fees
* Are Wanted for any other police or government purpose
you can find yourself stopped by the police in a heartbeat, just for driving down the street, and not committing any traffic violation.
I want you to think about how breathtaking this technology has become.
A recent article on policemag.com lists other interesting applications of the technology - including selling access to the information available in law enforcement databases via partnerships with neighborhood watch groups and, for example, access to gated communities. Paying for an $8/hr,, 24X7, 70 year old security guy? Yay!! Developers and homeowner associations don't need that unnecessary expense anymore! Let Hal and RoboCop handle it!
Some agencies are even assigning volunteer units to perform regular grid-based sweeps of their towns with ALPRs and then they just sit on the information. At least they sit on it until a detective needs to blow some jerk's alibi.
Papers? You don't need no stinkin' papers. Because the homeland security apparatus already knows everything about you, every move you make, and every breath you take. And there ain't a frackin' thing you can do about it. Might as well let 'em see how much junk you got in the trunk via an airport screening pornotron, because they probably know already anyway, down to the 1/4 inch.