License plate cameras track millions of Americans

[garbon]

I think we'd have to establish that abuses are happening before I think it'd make sense to revise. Besides, I think it would have been totally practical if a small town had had a police office sit on main street and write down license plates parked and as cars passed.

[Razgovory]

This is again one of those issues where technology erodes the spirit of the law without necessarily breaking the letter of the law.  What if police develop cameras that can record absolutely everything that happens on the streets?  Is it ok, because you don't have expectation of privacy outside of your home?

Could you tell me the spirit that is being eroded here?  I wasn't aware a license plate was ever intended to be private.

The point of a license plate is to have ways of identifying a driver if there is a specific need to identify him.  The point of it is not to be able to track every driver's whereabouts at all times.  Back when license plates where first invented, that wasn't a consideration, since it was impossible to track the cars in such an automated fashion.

I think you are wrong.  A license plate was put on a car for identification, period.  Not just a specific identification request. After all, the goverment kept the plates on file for, whatever contingency.  They didn't burn the files after wrighting them down.   Simply because technology has allowed for easy photographs of licenses plates does not change the nature of the license plate.

[Razgovory]

The idea that there is no expectation of privacy in public was fine when it was not feasible to track every action of every person all the time. Now that it has become feasible that idea needs to be revisited.

The idea that police should be given investigative power, but only if they suck at using them is absurd.  The legal powers of police shouldn't wax and wane based on their capabilities.

[DGuller]

I think you are wrong.  A license plate was put on a car for identification, period.  Not just a specific identification request.

The practical reality back then was that license plate would only be looked up if there was a need to look it up.  Back then it couldn't be fathomed that a license plate could double as a GPS tracker, partly because the concept of GPS trackers or GPS itself couldn't be fathomed either.  That's the thing about technology, it can't really be fathomed ahead of time.

That's why relying on laws as the last word on what should and should not be done is not only stupid, but aggressively stupid.  What we want the laws to accomplish doesn't change quickly, but what the laws allow to be accomplished can change very quickly due to technological developments.  That's why the letter of the law has to be periodically tweaked to keep up with the spirit of the law.

[DGuller]

The idea that there is no expectation of privacy in public was fine when it was not feasible to track every action of every person all the time. Now that it has become feasible that idea needs to be revisited.

The idea that police should be given investigative power, but only if they suck at using them is absurd.  The legal powers of police shouldn't wax and wane based on their capabilities.

What's absurd is ignoring the existence of a trade-off between privacy and the ability of police to investigate effectively.

[garbon]

Who knew EZPASS was so evil?

MAH FREEDOMS

[Razgovory]

I think you are wrong.  A license plate was put on a car for identification, period.  Not just a specific identification request.

The practical reality back then was that license plate would only be looked up if there was a need to look it up.  Back then it couldn't be fathomed that a license plate could double as a GPS tracker, partly because the concept of GPS trackers or GPS itself couldn't be fathomed either.  That's the thing about technology, it can't really be fathomed ahead of time.

That's why relying on laws as the last word on what should and should not be done is not only stupid, but aggressively stupid.  What we want the laws to accomplish doesn't change quickly, but what the laws allow to be accomplished can change very quickly due to technological developments.  That's why the letter of the law has to be periodically tweaked to keep up with the spirit of the law.

Are the License plates doubling as GPS trackers?  It was my understanding that the license plate is unchanged, and only the act of observation has changed.

[Admiral Yi]

Guller, would you be OK with a system that only checked for infractions of vehicle regs, such as expired registration, stolen car, etc., unpaid tickets, and which did not maintain a database of your visits to Madame Chow's House of Magic Lotus Table Shampoo?

[OttoVonBismarck]

You make a decent general point about laws not existing in a vacuum, but it's an obvious one and not directly relevant. The original wording of the constitution and early jurisprudence on the Fourth Amendment is that we would be secure in our "papers." So does that mean the government can tap our phone lines whenever it wants? Our voice going over copper wire is not the same thing as our papers. What about computer files on their home computer? Those are not papers under any common 18th century understanding of the word.

But our courts are not stupid, very early on they correctly interpreted where the Fourth Amendment protections start and end with new technology. So you have always needed a warrant to actually listen in on phone conversations. When it comes to requiring warrants to read emails and such, the law has been slow to evolve but signs are it is getting there.

However, what we're talking about here is like saying, in early American terms, that the color of your horse and wagon is privileged information that the constabulary cannot record for their purposes. That isn't just unsupported by the plain text of the Fourth Amendment it is plainly unsupported by any logical extension involving technology that I can think of that derives from the Fourth. There is no expectation of privacy in terms of the movements of your licensed car, and generally speaking police have always been able to tail suspicious persons and that's something that they have done since as early as cars existed. You do not need a warrant to follow someone, you only need a warrant if you breach areas in which they have an expectation of privacy.

There was a recent case on attaching GPS devices to a vehicle violating the Fourth Amendment. I felt the decision was not well written, but I agreed with the thrust--placing a surreptitious GPS tracking device on someone's car should be considered a search for Fourth Amendment purposes. However, that is materially different than passively recording what happens in the public square. No device is being put on the cars, and nothing is being done any different than ordinary police ability to monitor and record things that happen in public.

This is materially different from changing technology like telephones and emails which obviously were an expansion of where we should expect privacy--because this just involves the police getting better at tracking things for which there has never been any legal expectation of privacy.

[Razgovory]

Guller, would you be OK with a system that only checked for infractions of vehicle regs, such as expired registration, stolen car, etc., unpaid tickets, and which did not maintain a database of your visits to Madame Chow's House of Magic Lotus Table Shampoo?

Do they have a buffet there?

[OttoVonBismarck]

It's also no different than what private business owners have long been able to do--record what happens inside and outside their businesses. People recorded on those devices are not shielded by privacy law, the owner of the building can demand a warrant to get his video tapes or video files, but the people on the file have no such protection because they do not have an expectation of privacy from being video taped inside say, the checkout line at a convenience store.

Likewise any private citizen can point a camera out their front window and record goings on in the public square 24/7, and can make those videotapes freely available to the police. The citizens being videotaped have no privacy assertion they could make to stop the private citizen from giving those tapes to the police or the government using those tapes in prosecutions. In general there is no understood prohibition on the government doing the exact same thing any private business or citizen could do. The government is using public property to erect its cameras, but that is in fact because the government has the right to do things like that in public that dates back to the foundation of government and the concept of public structures and places.

[11B4V]

(Story: License plate readers: A useful tool for police comes with privacy concerns)

No, actually it doesn't.  There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in displayed license plates, which are the property of the state anyway.

[DGuller]

Are the License plates doubling as GPS trackers?  It was my understanding that the license plate is unchanged, and only the act of observation has changed.

It's a distinction without a practical difference.  Sounds waves also always existed as well, it's just that an act of recording them has changed over time.

[DontSayBanana]

Ah, Jersey.  Of course, our local yokels took it above and beyond- they've actually got a couple of "traffic enforcement" vehicles with plate readers mounted front and back.

[Razgovory]

Are the License plates doubling as GPS trackers?  It was my understanding that the license plate is unchanged, and only the act of observation has changed.

It's a distinction without a practical difference.  Sounds waves also always existed as well, it's just that an act of recording them has changed over time.

Someone observing a license plate and someone putting tracking equipment seem like a major distinction.  As for your sound waves analogy, it is illegal for the police to put listening device in your house, but it's not for listen to thing you say to them and remember those things even if they are in your house.  It's also not illegal for the police to record an interrogation at the police station.

You complain about the laws not changing, but it seems what you are really complaining about is the principles and ideas behind those laws not changing.  The ability for police to photograph license plates runs fairly naturally from the principles of expectations of privacy.