Visiting SF a few years back (pre covid), I was surprised to see how many cars had no license plates at all.
The owners weren’t particular about keeping a low profile or not being noticed. As an outsider, it seemed to me perfectly legal to have no plates.
Turns out, having asked around, it’s all those people going over the golden gate bridge and not wanting to pay the toll and instead rather taking the risk of being caught without plates - obviously cheaper than paying the daily toll.
Is this in anyway related to cracking down on this practice?
I wonder the legality of this. A parallel I think about is DUI checkpoints where the police have to announce their location because otherwise it violates 4th amendment. Would automated license plate readers not violate 4th amendment similarly if not disclosed?
There is no expectation of privacy on a public street and certainly not for the license plate which you are required to display by law.
I’m not a lawyer and never a surveillance apologist, but I’m pretty sure that courts will find license plate readers legal.
If there’s a legal challenge
the question will probably come down to the word “search”. Will law enforcement use this data to investigate crimes (yes). Will that use constitute search? Identifying who passed on a public street by way of their license plate is probably not search. But I could be wrong.
Fine, then throw out the requirement to display my plate which is an unlawful self-imposed search of my registration papers without probable cause nor reasonable suspicion. You can't just force people to affix their ID to their method of transportation to get around the fact you can't stop and ask them for it without RAS, it's a cheap sleight of hand around the 4th amendment.
DUI checkpoints are a flagrant violation of the Constitution, and one of the most braindead rulings of SCOTUS ever (Michigan v. Sitz). Later cases would uphold that checkpoints for general crime control were violations of the 4th, but 'public safety' was apparently threatened more by drunk driving than by not catching individuals committing crimes that didn't involve intoxicated driving.
Our rights have been eroding for decades, and now it can be done at massive scale.
“…privacy advocates worry that that data could be used as a Trump administration tactic to track people getting abortions or gender-affirming medical care, or as a tool for mass deportations”
San Francisco is a crooked city, as in "barbary coast" .. towing a car on Saturday night in the nightclub district, giving a speeding ticket with a 90 day wait to contest it only in-person, crazy rents for a tiny apartment somewhere downtown.. this is the tip of a history of back room, underground or flatly deceptive practices in that famous port city.
Next item - ascribing obviously negative behavior in a news story to your political rivals.. Does this need to be described? of course it takes the attention away from the three hundred Other dirty tricks being played, by both sides..
Now, the topic at hand.. tracking a vehicle over time to make a dossier... that is a contested privilege among the predatory and/or LEO crowds. Private detectives, insurance detectives, alimony cases, or say "blackmail" .. this behavior comes from before the automobile. It is genuinely impressive that modern toll bridges and parking areas can automate this. Are there motivated parties that want to do this at scale? Whatever the alignment or public posture? many, many science fiction detective novels start with this premise... fiction no longer fiction
That’s such a vague question as to feel either rhetorical or obvious. Can it be used for the stated purposes? Duh? Blatantly and obviously yes.
WILL it be used for such purposes? How could anyone here answer that? The fact it could be, and has very little useful other purposes should be enough to encourage everyone to ask for their removal.
“But amber alerts” - ok so we violate the privacy of every American for an event that rarely occurs and won’t be prevented by this technology?
License plate readers are about the only tool law enforcement has in my area to combat armed carjackings which happen with regular frequency in my neighborhood since the pandemic.
Those combined with police helicopters are the only way anyone is getting caught for this as chases are effectively banned. Before the deployment of this tech on major arteries there was effectively zero enforcement activity since nothing could really be done until it was far too late to matter.
It’s a weekly occurrence now just in my small neighborhood I pay attention to. The social tenor with police is such that very few support more aggressive proactive policing so this is what we are left with.
I don’t know what the correct balance here is, but saying they are only used for rare events is simply not true.
Credibility that the paranoia exists or credibility of the readers being used for those purposes by the Trump administration?
Yes to the first, LOL WTF? to the second. Trump admin doesn't care one tiny bit about abortions. Although some of his supporters might, they aren't really going to be in power.
Re point two. The Trump admin is stacked with Heritage Foundation apparatchiks and Trump himself will sign anything put in front of him and presented nicely.
Readit News
The owners weren’t particular about keeping a low profile or not being noticed. As an outsider, it seemed to me perfectly legal to have no plates.
Turns out, having asked around, it’s all those people going over the golden gate bridge and not wanting to pay the toll and instead rather taking the risk of being caught without plates - obviously cheaper than paying the daily toll.
Is this in anyway related to cracking down on this practice?
I’m not a lawyer and never a surveillance apologist, but I’m pretty sure that courts will find license plate readers legal.
If there’s a legal challenge the question will probably come down to the word “search”. Will law enforcement use this data to investigate crimes (yes). Will that use constitute search? Identifying who passed on a public street by way of their license plate is probably not search. But I could be wrong.
The issue with DUI stops is you have to be stopped before they can test you and the test itself is a “search.”
An ALPR detects your crime before it even takes a photo.
Our rights have been eroding for decades, and now it can be done at massive scale.
What's not to love? Thanks, SFPD and Flock!
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Is there any credibility to this?
Next item - ascribing obviously negative behavior in a news story to your political rivals.. Does this need to be described? of course it takes the attention away from the three hundred Other dirty tricks being played, by both sides..
Now, the topic at hand.. tracking a vehicle over time to make a dossier... that is a contested privilege among the predatory and/or LEO crowds. Private detectives, insurance detectives, alimony cases, or say "blackmail" .. this behavior comes from before the automobile. It is genuinely impressive that modern toll bridges and parking areas can automate this. Are there motivated parties that want to do this at scale? Whatever the alignment or public posture? many, many science fiction detective novels start with this premise... fiction no longer fiction
WILL it be used for such purposes? How could anyone here answer that? The fact it could be, and has very little useful other purposes should be enough to encourage everyone to ask for their removal.
“But amber alerts” - ok so we violate the privacy of every American for an event that rarely occurs and won’t be prevented by this technology?
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Those combined with police helicopters are the only way anyone is getting caught for this as chases are effectively banned. Before the deployment of this tech on major arteries there was effectively zero enforcement activity since nothing could really be done until it was far too late to matter.
It’s a weekly occurrence now just in my small neighborhood I pay attention to. The social tenor with police is such that very few support more aggressive proactive policing so this is what we are left with.
I don’t know what the correct balance here is, but saying they are only used for rare events is simply not true.
Yes to the first, LOL WTF? to the second. Trump admin doesn't care one tiny bit about abortions. Although some of his supporters might, they aren't really going to be in power.
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