Is Your Car Being Tracked by a License-Plate Scanner?
The government can now track your movements when you drive and, over time, put together a profile of how you lead your life
http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/13/is-your-car-being-tracked-by-a-license-plate-scanner/?hpt=hp_t2
To a certain extent this is much ado about nothing. The roads are public and following people on public roads is not an issue. However, relatively recently the Supreme Court ruled that putting a GPS tracker on a suspect’s car required a warrant (see here for some info) because while there is no expectation of privacy if you are being followed, there is an expectation of privacy if no one is following you. This use of cameras for tracking license plates is a bit of a gray zone, though, unless the cameras are clearly visible, easy to see and remain mostly static (meaning they aren’t constantly being shifted around) and, of course, aren’t ubiquitous. The bigger issue, though, is likely the creation of the long-term database on people’s movements. Given the unanimity of the SC ruling I would have to imagine that they will look critically on collecting all this detailed information on citizen’s movements for no reason. Add to that the fact that much of this data is being shared I would expect that once the cases finally wind their way through the courts (first someone has to be ‘injured’ by the policy in order to have ‘standing’) they will put the breaks on it. However, if the government is clever (sometimes they don’t bother being clever, they just ignore the laws; that is one of the prime definitions of a police state, donachano) they will see to it that there are few to zero cases where anyone is actually ‘harmed’ by the policy, thus staving off any sort of judicial resolution for years, possibly decades.
