#LicensePlateRecognition
Transunion Deploys Great New Tool for Stalking and Killing Ex-Wives
The phrase “disruptive technology” has long since been co-opted to mean “a new iPhone app for people to share photos of their meals” but it has an original and genuine meaning as well: any technology that matures faster than society’s ability to use it constructively. The list of disruptive technologies includes entries as diverse as mustard gas and the automobile itself, but the advent of the connected world has unleashed a diverse cornucopia of unintended consequences ranging from Amazon’s destruction of brick-and-mortar retailers to the corrosive effect that the various “reunion” and “classmates” websites have on American marriages.
TTAC has covered the world of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) several times, most recently discussing a company that assists police with collecting outstanding court costs and fines against motorists in traffic. We’ve also discussed the fact that governmental use of ALPRs amounts to a sort of camel’s nose under the tent.
Here’s the rest of the camel.
![Jack Baruth](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/20/38752_1.jpg?size=50x50)
Oakland PD Turns Over 4.6M License Plate Dataset Via Public Records Request
Via a public records request, the Oakland Police Department has turned over 4.6 million reads of 1.1 million unique plates recorded between 2010 and 2014.
![Cameron Aubernon](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/resources/imgs-responsive/avatar-letters/avatar-C-FF9646.png?size=50x50)
Postal Inspectors Reported to Be Collecting License Plate Info, Agents Deny Broad Surveillance
The Truth About Cars has followed the use of license plate recognition and storage technology by local law enforcement agencies, a practice that has raised alarms from civil liberties activists because of constitutional concerns over broad surveillance and the ability to reconstruct one’s movements from license plate data. Now it appears that United States Postal Inspection Service, the USPS’ own law enforcement agency has also, at least at one post office in Colorado, been collecting similar data from drivers. Though the device had apparently been operating for at least a few months, within an hour of Chris Halsne, of Denver’s KDVR television station, inquiring from the postal inspectors about a Golden, Colorado post office that had a camera positioned to record drivers’ faces and license plates, triggered as they left the post office property, the in-ground camera was removed.
![Ronnie Schreiber](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/20/34651_1.jpg?size=50x50)
Privacy Advocates Take Law Enforcement To Task Over Handling Of License Plate Data
The panopticon grows taller every day, as motorists who try to learn what information is gathered by the automatic license plate readers face roadblock after roadblock, with three cases set to determine once and for all what can be seen.
![Cameron Aubernon](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/resources/imgs-responsive/avatar-letters/avatar-C-FF9646.png?size=50x50)
Metaxas: License Plate Recognition Can Improve Originations
Aside from GPS-equipped starter interrupt systems, lenders have another tool to repossess a vehicle, with the added benefit of using the data obtained to acquire better contracts: license plate recognition.
![Cameron Aubernon](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/resources/imgs-responsive/avatar-letters/avatar-C-FF9646.png?size=50x50)
Homeland Security License Plate Data Collection Plan Cancelled
A plan to create a database from collected license plate data by the Department of Homeland Security was cancelled after said plans were made known without knowledge from top officials.
![Cameron Aubernon](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/resources/imgs-responsive/avatar-letters/avatar-C-FF9646.png?size=50x50)
ACLU Says License Plate Scanning Widespread, With Few Controls On Collected Data
TTAC has recently addressed the issue of police using scanning technology to read license plates and then store their street locations. When the story broke, it centered on a few counties in Northern California, but the American Civil Liberties Union has just released documents that show that the practice is widespread across the United States and that few of the police agencies or private companies that are scanning license plates and storing that data, making it possible to retroactively track drivers, have any meaningful rules in place to protect drivers’ privacy. There are few controls on how the collected data is accessed and used. The documents reveal that many police departments keep the information on millions of people’s locations for years, or even indefinitely, whether or not they are suspected of a crime. Data on tens of millions of drivers is being logged and stored.
![TTAC Staff](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/resources/imgs-responsive/avatar-letters/avatar-T-605BE8.png?size=50x50)
Would License Plate Reader Jammers Work And Be Legal?
![Ronnie Schreiber](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/20/34651_1.jpg?size=50x50)
Texas Appeals Court Upholds License Scanners for Traffic Stops
Police in Texas have the right to stop motorists if a license plate recognition camera system suspects the vehicle’s owner lacks automobile insurance. In an unpublished ruling last Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the Texas Court of Appeals refused the attempt by Kenneth Ray Short to have a March 2010 traffic stop declared illegal.
![The Newspaper](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/resources/imgs-responsive/avatar-letters/avatar-T-1ABB71.png?size=50x50)
License Plate Scanner Obsoletes Meter Maid
License plate recognition, a technology that helps police track down stolen cars, that assists shopping malls in guiding customers to their cars, and that raises privacy concerns when doing so, will be used in Manly County, in Australia’s New South Wales, to combat illegal parking in local streets.
![Bertel Schmitt](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/20/32231_1.jpg?size=50x50)
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