Posted to our listserv courtesy of one of my colleagues

The next time you drive past one of those road signs with a digital readout showing how fast you’re going, don’t simply assume it’s there to remind you not to speed. It may actually be capturing your license plate data.

According to recently released US federal contracting data, the Drug Enforcement Administration will be expanding the footprint of its nationwide surveillance network with the purchase of “multiple” trailer-mounted speed displays “to be retrofitted as mobile LPR [License Plate Reader] platforms.” The DEA is buying them from RU2 Systems Inc., a private Mesa, Arizona company. How much it’s spending on the signs has been redacted.

Two other, apparently related contracts, show that the DEA has hired a small machine shop in California, and another in Virginia, to conceal the readers within the signs. An RU2 representative said the company providing the LPR devices themselves is a Canadian firm called Genetec.

The DEA launched its National License Plate Reader Program in 2008; it was publicly revealed for the first time during a congressional hearing four years after that. The DEA’s most recent budget describes the program as “a federation of independent federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement license plate readers linked into a cooperative system, designed to enhance the ability of law enforcement agencies to interdict drug traffickers, money launderers or other criminal activities on high drug and money trafficking corridors and other public roadways throughout the U.S.,” primarily along the southwest border region, and the country’s northeast and southeast corridors.

“There used to be an old police saying, ‘If you robbed a bank, please drive carefully,’” former NYPD Detective Sergeant and Bronx Cold Case Squad commander Joseph Giacalone told Quartz, explaining that if a getaway driver didn’t do anything to attract the attention of police and get pulled over, they usually had a half-decent chance of fleeing. “But that’s no longer in effect because you can drive slow, you can stop at every red light, but these license plate readers and surveillance cameras track your every movement.”

And therein lies the real issue: What is a game-changing crime-fighting tool to some, is a privacy overreach of near-existential proportion to others. License plate readers, which can capture somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 plates a minute, cast an astonishingly wide net that has made it far easier for cops to catch serious criminals. On the other hand, the indiscriminate nature of the real-time collection, along with the fact that it is then stored by authorities for later data mining is highly alarming to privacy advocates.

“License plate readers are inherently a form of mass surveillance,” investigative researcher Dave Maass of the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation told Quartz. “You look at something like a wiretap and most of the time it’s looking for a specific person and capturing specific conversations with that person. But here they are collecting information on everybody, not all of whom have been accused of a crime, in case they may one day commit a crime. This is un-American.”

Continued
Most Criminals I know never use the tag that belongs on the car. They know most Cops don't check tag numbers that often unless the vehicle attracts attention. I don't see how this is going to help unless they are wanting to start a data base as to what tags show up along the road on a regular bases. Other wise just a waste of time. Most people get caught by a moving unit looking around.
 
My career is in IT so I know exactly what clowns like him can and cannot do even if they were really LEOs in a past life. Its always interesting to me to see people talking about things when they obviously have no clue what they are talking about. It gets down right amusing when I call their bluff and they realized they really put their foot in their mouth. :laugh:
My primary career has been in database application development so all the data that populates those reports that Billy_Bob was pulling is what I've always had my hands on including mortgage, medical, cell phone, etc. In fact one of the companies I worked with now provides services to me. They had extension information on every single individual in the U.S. way back in the late 90s that is similar to the compilations that the credit reporting bureaus maintain on all of us. Their clients included government agencies which ironically could be the source of the data that Billy_Bob was citing. Then about 20 years ago I went into the judgment recovery industry which gave me the ability to pull credit reports so I am intimately familiar with the permissible use laws governing access and disclosure of the data contained within these systems and it is beyond stupid to make the claims that he was here on a public message board.
Much of the data is screwed up. I checked on me and I found that I am about 35 to 80 years old, white/black and have served in the Army, Airforce and Navy. I live in Fla, Tenn, Alabama, Ill, Mi. I have 2 to 5 kids. Died in 1962 in Nam, 1977, and other dates. Go figure.
 
My career is in IT so I know exactly what clowns like him can and cannot do even if they were really LEOs in a past life. Its always interesting to me to see people talking about things when they obviously have no clue what they are talking about. It gets down right amusing when I call their bluff and they realized they really put their foot in their mouth. :laugh:
My primary career has been in database application development so all the data that populates those reports that Billy_Bob was pulling is what I've always had my hands on including mortgage, medical, cell phone, etc. In fact one of the companies I worked with now provides services to me. They had extension information on every single individual in the U.S. way back in the late 90s that is similar to the compilations that the credit reporting bureaus maintain on all of us. Their clients included government agencies which ironically could be the source of the data that Billy_Bob was citing. Then about 20 years ago I went into the judgment recovery industry which gave me the ability to pull credit reports so I am intimately familiar with the permissible use laws governing access and disclosure of the data contained within these systems and it is beyond stupid to make the claims that he was here on a public message board.
Much of the data is screwed up. I checked on me and I found that I am about 35 to 80 years old, white/black and have served in the Army, Airforce and Navy. I live in Fla, Tenn, Alabama, Ill, Mi. I have 2 to 5 kids. Died in 1962 in Nam, 1977, and other dates. Go figure.
That's in the "other" database :)
 

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