Police in Gwinnett, GA are deploying their newest technology surveillance tool: the Automatic License Plate Reader.
These systems include multiple cameras mounted on police vehicles which can tag, scan and identify nearly 2000 license plates per minute. The data is instantly matched against law enforcement databases for wanted vehicles, and if a hit registers, the officer in the vehicle is notified instantly.
Instant hits may include cars on the Hot List for reason that include stolen vehicles, cars wanted for questioning in police investigations, Amber Alerts, unregistered vehicles, or drivers with outstanding criminal warrants or suspended driver’s licenses.
These ALPR systems were purchased by the department with drug forfeiture money.
Another capability of these systems is their massive ability to collect data. Those thousands of license plates per hour are tagged by GPS location, date, and time, and stored in a massive federal database somewhere, combined with data collected from similar scanners nationwide. The government is explicit about the “Terrorist Interdiction and Pattern recognition” abilities that can be gleaned from data mining.
So even if you haven’t done anything wrong, your location data has been logged, and can be pulled up at any time. This means that if a police cruiser drove by a home a month ago, and it is later determine that a crime took place at that time and location, and your car happened to be parked outside, you are instantly a suspect.
It is also easy to see how this data can be sorted and associations can be drawn. Where has your car been spotted at what times? What other cars were around it? We are truly on the verge of a surveillance state.
And the privacy concerns about excessive government power are being virtually ignored.
hey I sell leads to call centers so I’m familiar with the ability and power of data and how you use it. I remember about 10 years or so ago. they came up with this grand idea to use license as way to determine if your insured.
Well my brother is police and know it all and stuff like “naw we would never want to know about the person. BS the insurance is tagged to the person. So then the police has two two cars sitting at red light. One guy has beat up car, insured, and a record of few dui’s and drug charges. Now this guy has served his time and should be behind him, but no because the other car is nicer and insured and only has traffic tickets. you know who is getting pulled over and on another trip to prison for another non violent crime.
See in prison the younger guys and weaker get to suck off another man because he borrowed pack of smokes from guy with 3 life terms. How fair is that? 20 year old young man caught camping with acid and pot gets 10 years in prison. non violent crime and our society thinks 10 years is fair. Well I not part of the united states any more. I don’t like these idiots thinking on things. why would a violent man(life sentence) be housed with young buck first timer who was selling some pot? it’s not right? these folks from the judges, to prosecutors to attorney’s need to serve one full year in jail to prison time. He goes in like all the others do. then let’s see how they pass out that time on folks while the defense attorneys take dudes last bit of money to keep his freedom the prosecutor is wanting another conviction(to win is the reason) these people were not at scene, they don’t know the intentions, and they don’t know nothing about what they are doing to people.
I say we flip things around all the criminals make the rules and the law makers accept these rules given. violate and face sever punishment for eating chocolate. See criminals can’t stand chocolate and want it eradicated from their towns so give’m 20 years for 1/4 of chocolate cake.
peace to all and love and just do the right thing. if you don’t know then say you don’t know but something has to change.
like # 6 or 7 question read out loud during sentencing is have you been threatened or coerced in making this decision. Well let me tell you when given option of 30 years if you fight case and if you accept plea well do 25 do 5. Well that crazy how that system works. It sucks;. some need to be put away for long time but most need to be left on street and forced to work. if not send them on the trail of tears….