* Like the GPS trackers, license plates are devices designed to aid in identifying and locating a vehicle from a distance by technological means.
* Like the chalk marks, the government is using these devices indiscriminately, without probable cause.
* For bonus points, license plates are compelled speech, like requiring you to introduce yourself with your real name to everyone you meet.
It’S certainly not a guaranteed win, but it’s not so far fetched that I’d be surprised to see a competent lawyer try it.
Being required to wear a real-name badge in a public place is much more unsettling.
If your unregistered car is not in disrepair and you aren't storing multiple cars in your front yard, you're very unlikely to be cited.
I just looked up my town ordinance and it only applies to "junk motor vehicles."
And just exactly who determines this "junk" status?
Snark aside, law isn't code and the "reasonable person" test works well in most cases.
The way most places I'm aware of structure it is vehicles that don't have current registration or that can't move under their own power. That's potentially more broad than "junk" but also a more objective standard.
This sort of law can have a severe impact on poor people. Imagine you're barely getting by, then your car breaks down. This is not unlikely because as you're barely getting by, you have an older car and you're not having it maintained professionally on a rigorous schedule. It's going to be a while before you can afford the parts - let's say a "new" transmission from a junkyard. It sure would help if you didn't have to pay $100/month to keep insurance on it though. Of course, that means you have to turn in the license plate, or they'll suspend your driver's license (in certain jurisdictions).
A lot of people have to sell their car for scrap in this situation, which does not give them anywhere near enough to replace it with something reliable.
Given it's impact on day to day life, perhaps it is time to change that.
That's why I won't get a amateur radio plate any more. Anybody can look up my callsign and figure out who I am. And I'm legally required to show it.
At least a license plate has some obfuscation between plate# and human who registered it.
License plates originated in the early 1900s, long before color film cameras were a thing, and more than a century before inexpensive, at-scale license plate readers were a thing.
License plates were devices designed to aid police officers in identifying a vehicle from up close by requesting a license plate check.
It was remarkable in 2002's Bourne Identity when the highly-trained agent remarked that he knew the license plate numbers of every vehicle in the lot, and the implication that he'd recall them if they happened across the same cars again was scary.
The fact that it costs almost nothing to outfit every meter reader with a license plate scanner and log the motion of people and cars in a central database is an accident caused by the progress of technology, not a design goal of the license plate.
Preventing abuse of technologies as they become possible is a hard problem.
It certainly wasn’t a design goal for 1910-era license plates, but it probably is for 2010-era license plates. The only way to really know would be to subpoena the records relating to the most recent redesign process.
There are companies that want to turn your cell phone into that transponder so that you can just use your phone as a universal transponder.
This seems likely to happen. Once it does, will having a smart phone with this feature enabled be required to drive on a road? If so, it is seems likely that this requirement will be challenged in court, but what's the difference between being required to have a plate on your car or an app on your phone?
Without the physical intrusion, I don't think this ruling would apply at all.
The typical method along those lines is paying at a machine, getting a receipt, and posting the receipt visibly inside the windshield or the street side window, but, yes. This was about physical trespass for information without sufficient cause, not a right not to have parking time tracked.
My experience though is this particular style of parking pass is usually on private property where the people checking are not part of a branch of police though, and thus I think are not bound against unreasonable search in the same way?
For example, I saw an article a few years ago where a cop was literally walking a drug dog around a house. The dog detected drugs so they busted the door down. The courts threw the case out, there was no reason for a drug dog to be searching around his house.
I’d expect if you had a drugs or a dead body in plain view of a window then your expectation of privacy is gone.
No, by the plain view doctrine information gathered at least by normal human senses without a physical trespass is not a search.
> Like, a police officer dragging a street by looking in every window for pot or guns would presumably be indiscriminately searching without probably cause
No, they wouldn't, just like a police officer indiscriminately looking through your car window for violations of cellphone use while driving laws without any particular cause isn't.
In another sense, no, because what the chalk does is establish that this car has not moved since the last time the officer went by. If you chalk the tire yourself, the officer cannot know when you did so.