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Comment by ty6853 | Hacker News Reader

I noticed that in Abrego Garcia's recent indictment they were able to figure out he was in 2022 based on ALPR pulls that showed he was actually putzing around Texas. My understanding was most ALPRs were being stored for no more than 30 days but apparently that isn't the case, since it appears they did not start to build the trafficking case until this year.

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There's networks of these things, so you can't trust what is said. The host agency may keep for 30 days, but exchange data with third parties, through organizations like NLETS, private collaborations and informal exchange. I'd assume with NLETS searches that the Feds have an overwatch capability and spy on the spies so to speak.

This stuff started with "drug corridors". Police and Feds can and do track vehicles on the I-95 corridor from Maine (and Plattsburgh to NYC) down to Miami as early as 12 years ago. NYT covered it a few years back -- basically they get multiple LPR hits and are usually able to do facial recognition on front seat passengers. If you driving Florida->NYC and stop for a cheesesteak in Philly, you may get some attention up the road.

There's also a growing network of commercial LPR services. Most tow trucks, many parking garages and some delivery vehicles scan and correlate license plates -- repo guys can find wanted cars in hours these days. Also, most traffic cams are saving 24x7 video with LPR.

Every semi truck these days can be factory equipped with cameras which are all stored in the cloud and analyzed as the service provider sees fit. And if they're not factory equipped they probably have a 3rd party solution in the cab and the same thing is being done.

Why don’t they just use facial and gait and heartbeat recognition everywhere? London and other cities already have CCTV cameras, and an AI can quickly figure out wherr you are. In China it has been deployed at scale!

It probably has, but I have not seen public sources that have reported it.

I’m sure as part of one of our many states of emergency in the United States deployments will be accelerated. NYPD has an extensive camera network in Manhattan that probably does this.

The images and video clips are stored for 30 days. The metadata (OCRed plate, and timestamp) are stored forever. Sorry I mean “may be stored indefinitely”.

Source: the privacy policy of the shopping mall near me, who installed these things even before the city did.

In some of the Fani Willis court proceedings they dredged up ~10yo cell phone location data like it was nothing about people who weren't relevant enough to warrant special attention 10yr ago.

Is that accurate? The Willis proceedings were about events around 2021, so that's only 4 years at best

They introduced stuff from a really long time ago as evidince of people knowing each other or dealing with each other. Like "you were at X's house then so clearly you knew them" type thing. I don't recall exactly what the context was because the big takeaway was the retention of records.

In a security interview I was questioned about an interaction on a public payphone 15 years prior, back in 2006 (transcript from 1991). They apparently had transcribed logs of all conversations (on that phone? All public pay phones?) that were part of a searchable database. My involvement at the time in a (tiny, unknown , knowable only in retrospect later from the time of the transcript ) political student organization was apparently enough to get flagged.

Back in 2006 that was an eye opener for me.

Government run ones had limited time due to civil liberties concerns. However, since it’s a private company…

https://www.404media.co/a-texas-cop-searched-license-plate-c...

https://docs.flocksafety.com/developer-hub/docs/introduction

https://www.flocksafety.com/devices/flock-nova

UPDATE plate_scan SET soft_deleted = 1 WHERE now() - scan_date > 30

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