Re: [privacy] License Plate Tracking for All

[Blanchard_Michael () emc com]

 not that I have anything to be worried about, 

but anyone have a can of IR absorbent clear spray-paint for my tag?


Michael P. Blanchard 
Antivirus / Security Engineer, CISSP, GCIH, CCSA-NGX, MCSE
Office of Information Security & Risk Management 
EMC ² Corporation 
4400 Computer Dr. 
Westboro, MA 01580 


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard M. Smith [mailto:rms () computerbytesman com] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 2:05 PM
To: privacy () whitestar linuxbox org
Subject: [privacy] License Plate Tracking for All

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,71436-0.html

WASHINGTON -- Jealous lovers may soon have an alternative to sniffing for
perfume to catch a cheating mate: Just follow their license plate.

In recent years, police around the country have started to use powerful
infrared cameras to read plates and catch carjackers and ticket scofflaws.
But the technology will soon migrate into the private sector, and morph into
a tool for tracking individual motorists' movements, says former policeman
Andy Bucholz, who's on the board of Virginia-based G2 Tactics, a
manufacturer of the technology.

Bucholz, who designed some of the first mobile license plate reading, or
LPR, equipment, gave a presentation at the 2006 National Institute of
Justice conference here last week laying out a vision of the future in which
LPR does everything from helping insurance companies find missing cars to
letting retail chains chart customer migrations. It could also let a nosy
citizen with enough cash find out if the mayor is having an affair, he says.

Giant data-tracking firms such as ChoicePoint, Accurint and Acxiom already
collect detailed personal and financial information on millions of
Americans. Once they discover how lucrative it is to know where a person
goes between the supermarket, for example, and the strip club, the LPR
industry could explode, says Bucholz.

Private detectives would want the information. So would repo men or bail
bondsmen. And the government, which often contracts out personal data
collection -- in part, so it doesn't have to deal with Freedom of
Information Act requests -- might encourage it.

"I know it sounds really Big Brother," Bucholz says. "But it's going to
happen. It's going to get cheaper and cheaper until they slap them up on
every taxicab and delivery truck and track where people live." And work. And
sleep. And move.

Privacy advocates worry that Bucholz, who wants to sell LPR data to consumer
data brokers like ChoicePoint, knows what he's talking about.

"We have pretty much a Wild West society when it comes to privacy rights,"
says Jay Stanley, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union. "The
overall lesson here is that we really need to put in place some broad-based
privacy laws. We need to establish basic ground rules for how these new
capabilities are constrained."

Current laws don't constrain much. Just as it's legal for the paparazzi to
take pictures of celebrities in public, it's legal for anyone to photograph
your license plate on the street. Still, there aren't enough LPR units in
service yet to follow your car everywhere.

The systems, which cost around $25,000 and are made by G2 Tactics, Civica,
AutoVu and Remington Elsag Law Enforcement Systems, among others, have been
sold mostly to major police departments around the country.

Police in cities such as Los Angeles use them to hunt down stolen cars and
felony vehicles like getaway cars. And parking-enforcement officers use LPR
to collect money -- lots of it. In the first 12 hours after New Haven,
Connecticut, deployed a G2 Tactics LPR to crack down on parking violations,
the city towed or booted 119 cars, resulting in a $40,000 windfall,
according to Bucholz.

LPR cameras, which are usually around the size of a can of tomato sauce, can
be mounted on police cruisers and powered by cigarette lighters. As the car
moves, the camera bounces infrared light off other vehicles' license plates.
The camera reads the plates and feeds them to a laptop in real time, where
information from an FBI or local database can tell an officer if the car is
hot. Some systems can read up to 60 plates per second, and they work at
highway speeds and acute angles.

The next step is connecting the technology to databases that will tell cops
whether a sexual offender has failed to register in the state or is
loitering too close to a school, or whether a driver has an outstanding
warrant. It could also snag you if you're uninsured, if your license expired
last week or even if your library books are overdue.

The subway has never looked more appealing.



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