Little Rock cops track license plates

1984 is here!!! It just took a few extra years to get here.

  1984 is here!!! It just took a few extra years to get here.

For those of you who were born after 1984, or who don't know about the book 1984, it is a fictional story about how the world turned into a police state in the year 1984 and the government spied on everybody 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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More police tracking license plates

Associated Press Sun Mar 3, 2013 1:07 AM

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Little Rock may not be a likely terrorism target or a gang crime hotspot, but the Arkansas capital has decided to follow the example of high-security cities by expanding electronic surveillance of its streets.

A police car with a device that photographs license plates moves through the city and scans the traffic on the streets, relaying the data it collects to a computer for sifting. Police say the surveillance helps identify stolen cars and drivers with outstanding arrest warrants.

It also allows authorities to monitor where average citizens might be at any particular time. That bothers some residents, as well as groups that oppose public intrusions into individual privacy. The groups are becoming more alarmed about license plate tracking as a growing number of police departments acquire the technology.

Though authorities in Washington, D.C., London and Chicago conduct extensive electronic surveillance of public areas to detect security threats or deter gang crime, “Today, increasingly, even towns without stoplights have license plate readers,” said Catherine Crump, a New York-based staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. Collecting data

In Little Rock, even some city officials wonder about keeping data on drivers’ movements.

“It bothered me particularly if someone wasn’t guilty of a crime or didn’t have any active warrants or hadn’t committed a crime,” city director Ken Richardson said.

However, Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas said the law enforcement benefits outweigh any concerns about possible abuse of the information, which, as a public record, is legally available for anyone to see. He said the department may get more of the devices.

“Should that potential of misuse therefore eliminate the capacity of law enforcement to collect data which has a legitimate purpose for the safety of our officers or the appropriateness of enforcement actions? I don’t think so,” he said.

Privacy issues?

Many Little Rock residents still haven’t heard about the surveillance. Angel Weston, 45, said she’s glad to hear that police are looking for stolen cars and people with warrants but wondered about keeping logs of citizens’ movements.

“I don’t feel like they should keep the data for six or 12 months,” Weston said.

Lawmakers in several states, including Minnesota and Utah, have suggested setting a time limit for their departments, but Little Rock has no policy yet. The department now has a growing archive of license plate photos, along with time stamps and the locations, showing where motorists were at certain times.

Privacy advocates worry about the potential uses for such outside law enforcement, from snooping by stalkers and private investigators to businesses that sell personal data. How it works

Little Rock’s license plate reader is mounted in Officer Grant Humphries’ patrol car. He said it’s led to dozens of arrests and the recovery of a number of stolen vehicles and vehicles and license plates, although the exact number isn’t known.

As Humphries drives around town, a laptop processes the license plate numbers being photographed and emits a sound and flashes red when it finds a match.

 

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