Is my tinfoil hat on straight?
This Slashdot article raises the issue of these exciting new cameras being used by police in a few metropolitan areas (including Washington, DC) which read license plates, and check them against DMV records to see if the car is properly insured, inspected, et cetera.
Eek.
While I think it’s fairly important to maintain car insurance and keep your car in reasonable condition, this is such an egregious over-stepping of bounds, and an invitation to such a vast array of civil liberties violations that I don’t even know where to begin. Here’s an old post of mine that sort of scratches the surface.
Privacy is essential to liberty. Part of privacy is anonymity. Another part of privacy is securing that which is identifying. It’s bad enough all cars (should) have an identifying plaque that ties the car to its owner (ideally), but it’s horrifying to have a computer collecting those identies (and, no doubt, time and location information), doing who knows what with the information when it’s done.
Part of what’s horrifying to me about this is that it is an implied blanket assumption of guilt cast over anyone with a car. A large class of people, no doubt. I wonder if all neighborhoods will be patrolled evenly. My guess would be no. As a result, I’d imigine that the bulk of arrests and prosecutions arising from this new “tool” will be in areas that already have higher-than-average “crime rates”, “making life safer for the business criminals” [..apologies to the late George Carlin --ed.] In this country we used to joke about how in Eastern Europe and/or the USSR, everyone was asked if they had their “papers”. It’s much more convenient now that that don’t have to stop you to check your “papers”.
Can/do they retain records for all plates scanned? If so, how are they secured? Are these records, if retained, available for subsequent mining for time and place information, like what video stores you frequent, where you meet your extramarital lover, or whether or not you visit the local “cabaret”… will these records be available to potential employers? What about potential landlords? Are there any laws in place to protect individuals from discrimination or persecution based on their driving habits or the places they visit frequently? Funny, I don’t recall hearing anything about that.
Some of the comments attached to this article are particularly insightful.
Ben Franklin is reported to have said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” I guess history curricula in this country just kinda skip over that little gem… just like those who profess the rectitude and inerrancy of The Bible skip over the parts that say genocide, slavery and stoning children to death are OK.
I guess we’re supposed to just trust that the police and the government have our best interests at heart all the time. Have fun at Gitmo!
Seriously, it’s already been demonstrated that our government… YOUR government… is perfectly willing to disappear people to off-shore military bases or foreign countries known to be not-so-sqeamish about beating people with fire-hoses and pulling out fingernails to extract “information”. We know that YOUR government is perfectly willing to dispense with Habeas Corpus and the Fourth Amendment to detain “terrorists”. What IS a “terrorist”, anyway?! Anybody got a logically defensible definition of “terrorist” that includes, say, Osama bin Laden, but excludes ,say, George W. Bush? If so, please feel free to post it in a comment.