Police risking Californians' privacy in license plate tracking, audit finds

submitted by dcjogger from sfchronicle.com

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[–]ManWithABanana 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I'm still waiting for the first privacy issue to surface that non-technical folks are concerned about. Until then, the great unwashed masses have spoken that privacy means very little to them.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Hopefully facebook keep failing big, I think that's alarmed a bunch of people into paying attention.

[–]jamesK_3rd 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Yeh but Facebook is actually the least worrisome of the tech companies.

In the privacy realm, you can simply delete your Facebook, and cover your face anytime someone takes a picture of you, and give everyone an alternate address and phone number, and...lol.

You don't have any choice to opt out of this. And with coming real ID requirements, creating biometric databases that they have access to, it's bad news.

States like Maryland were already harassing drivers from states like Virginia and Florida whose registered owners had conceal carry permits. All because the license plate readers ran the plates, just through automaton, even before being pulled over. Of choose they probably look at it as a feature, they get to check anyone coming into the state for contraband.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

States like Maryland were already harassing drivers from states like Virginia and Florida whose registered owners had conceal carry permits.

Whoa that's nuts. Agreed, whatever facebook is doing pales in comparison to these state actions. They're trampling all over the 4th amendment. Some sneaky inversion from the OP:

Gerchow said the Marin County Sheriff’s Office’s policy of retaining images for two years was “based on the statute of limitations for most crimes in the state of California.” It would be impossible to develop a more detailed policy, Gerchow said, because investigators could not know when an image might prove useful to a case.