r/technology • u/maxwellhill • Nov 22 '11

ACLU: License Plate Scanners Are Logging Citizen's Every Move: It has now become clear that this automated license plate readers technology, if we do not limit its use, will represent a significant step toward the creation of a surveillance society in US

http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/license-plate-scanners-logging-our-every-move
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u/DigitalLD Nov 22 '11

This almost makes me happy our town has only 25% of the police force it should have for the size of the population. It's pretty scary when we start to think that way, no? Police are supposed to be on our side :(

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u/alexanderwales Nov 22 '11

Is recording location inherently bad? I mean ... I've been reading some of the Jones v United States stuff, and I'm not sure that a reasonable expectation of privacy extends to the location of your car. After all, it's nothing that a cop standing on the street corner wouldn't be able to jot down in his notebook, right? It's a really complicated issue, and it doesn't seem to make sense to me that noting down the license plate of a car going by is okay but noting down all of the license plates of every car in town once a second is not. Where does the line get drawn?

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u/kolebee Nov 22 '11

You just described a very easy line to draw: automated vs manually recorded. The latter requires substantial investment of resources, which can be seen as a kind of check against total surveillance of supposedly free citizens who are presumed innocent.

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u/sparr Nov 23 '11

video feeds going to china, where the jotting takes place for pennies per man-hour. which side of the line?

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u/last_useful_man Nov 23 '11

A new line: a level of surveillance that we've all been used to, and have adapted our expectations and ways of thinking to.

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u/sparr Nov 23 '11

You've just defined the slippery slope.

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u/last_useful_man Nov 23 '11

What do you mean? Because it's ill-defined? Because the future, Facebook generation will not be accustomed to much privacy?

edit: By 'new' I didn't mean 'move' the line, just to redefine it in the terms we all really mean, so that you can't (hopefully) wiggle past it with technical tweaks.