Abuse by police officers and other individuals with access to these systems is the answer to the stupid but common question "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide".
(To be clear: I think the current generation of ALPRs is a policy failure and that major changes need to happen inside state law enforcement systems before they can be deployed successfully. But I also think people on HN have a real problem in convincing themselves about the obvious righteousness of their anti-surveillance arguments.)
[†] I heard arguments like these because I was deeply involved in getting the cameras disabled in the inner-ring Chicago suburb in which I live, getting the first ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed there, and helping draft what are probably the most detailed ALPR police General Orders in any municipality, or at least were at the time. Which is a long and pretentious way of saying I spent a lot of time talking to people who are not Very Online.
The reason the current generation of ALPR cameras doesn't work is the one you gave. Illinois LEADS was never intended for realtime enforcement and isn't updated reliably, so we ended up pulling over almost as many innocent motorists as we did stolen cars. To that, add: a plurality of all our camera-driven enforcement actions ended up being failure-to-appeal warrant enforcement, which effectively had our police force doing municipal debt collection for other suburbs, at enormous expense.
Maybe it makes sense to track specific vehicles, with safeguards such as warrants and also checking make/model/color, but it makes less sense to just give the government a 30-day rolling database of the public's movements in total, especially when 30% of those data points are inaccurate and thus not useful as evidence.
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/06/california-town-says-flo...
I’m starting to think that you’re having a conversation with yourself and your perception of people online, not actual people and the things that they’re saying.
The "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?" question is just a more specific variant of GP's "nothing to hide" question. i.e., the only people asking it are those who aren't stealing cars, thus have "nothing to hide".
The answer is the same.
> I never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?"
These are the same Constitutional question.
In order to determine what cars are stolen, all cars must be inspected. If all cars are inspected, there is a reasonable case that the 4th amendment is being violated:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall
issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[0]
See above.
0 - https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/
I get that this sounds like standard-issue message board rhetoric where I'm Mary Sue'ing normies to make my points for me, but I don't agree with my neighbors about this stuff, and you'll probably have to take my word for it that I'm not making any of this up.
>>> I never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?"
>> These are the same Constitutional question.
> They're not remotely the same Constitutional question.
They absolutely are the same Constitutional question; surveillance by the State without a warrant supported by probable cause, verified by the judiciary and issued thusly, does not have "an upside" of coincidentally identifying criminality. Remember this portion of the 4th amendment:
... and particularly describing the place to be searched,
and the persons or things to be seized.
And how could the question "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?" be answered without "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide" being aligned?
They are the same Constitutional question - to accept one is to accept the other.
By this logic, there is no need for "day-to-day policing" to have warrants for:
- phone taps
- SMS messages
- GPS history
- email
- banking information
- justified arrests
- court approved searches
I wish you well in your path in life.
Just because I feel bad for taking advantage of the above statement, here is a snippet from "Warrants in U.S. Law: The Ultimate Guide":
Imagine your home is your castle, and the U.S. Constitution
has built a protective wall around it called the Fourth
Amendment. This wall protects your right to privacy and
security from government intrusion. Now, imagine a police
officer wants to enter your castle. They can't just knock
down the gate; they need a special key. A warrant is that
key. It's not just any key, though. It's a special
permission slip, signed by a neutral judge (a magistrate),
that says the government has a very good, specific
reason—called Probable Cause—to believe that evidence of a
crime is inside your home, or that you have committed a
crime. This document acts as a crucial check on government
power, ensuring that law enforcement can't search your
property or arrest you on a whim. It's a fundamental
safeguard that forces the government to justify its actions
before it invades your privacy, protecting every citizen
from unreasonable searches and seizures.[0]
Policing enforces U.S. criminal law.
Thank you for this gift. This combo has entered my lexicon.
Are you sure about that?
How about if your license plate were stolen without your knowledge, placed on another vehicle of the same make and model, then photographed leaving the scene of a crime?
First, I never implied disallowing analysis at a crime scene. What I described is a realistic activity criminals do in order to disguise their identity.
Second, "stealing your hair" is a very different thing than stealing license plates off of your vehicle. This should be obvious.
> Someone framing me in this manner is incredibly unlikely, would be disproven by the other broad investigative powers afforded to law enforcement, and, at least in my opinion, is ridiculously less likely than the cameras photographing real criminals.
The point is that it would be you having to defend yourself for something you did not do. Could you successfully do so? Maybe. It depends on what the crime was and if you could afford a skilled enough lawyer.
And therein lies the rub.
You would have to drop tens-of-thousands of dollars in defense of your not being one of the "real criminals." Because the police are not going to sit there and say, "gee wiz, veec_cas_tant could not possibly be a 'real criminal' because they said they are being framed!"
They are going to say, "we can place you at the scene of the crime."
You weren't implying that video evidence of a car should be off-limits to the police?
If stealing hair is too hardcore for a criminal, just use your example and imagine that, instead of having the plate captured on camera, they find it at the scene of a vehicular homicide. Should that license plate be investigated, or should it be off-limits? In this example, as the victim of a stolen license plate, I think I should be quite happy with numerous high-definition cameras that can help prove my case.
> You weren't implying that video evidence of a car should be off-limits to the police?
No, I did not.
A car is not a crime scene. Neither is "video evidence of a car" a crime scene.
> If stealing hair is too hardcore for a criminal ...
What I wrote was:
Second, "stealing your hair" is a very different thing than
stealing license plates off of your vehicle. This should be
obvious.
> ... just use your example and imagine that, instead of having the plate captured on camera, they find it at the scene of a vehicular homicide.
Then that would be entirely different than your original assertion, which was:
The misuse of license plate data wouldn't make my top ten
list of potential powers that law enforcement might abuse.
> Should that license plate be investigated, or should it be off-limits?
What are you even talking about? You said license plate data "wouldn't make my top ten".
When did I raise the question about license plates being investigated or off-limits?
> How about if your license plate were stolen without your knowledge, placed on another vehicle of the same make and model, then photographed leaving the scene of a crime?
> You would have to drop tens-of-thousands of dollars in defense of your not being one of the "real criminals." Because the police are not going to sit there and say, "gee wiz, veec_cas_tant could not possibly be a 'real criminal' because they said they are being framed!"
But are claiming:
> A car is not a crime scene. Neither is "video evidence of a car" a crime scene... When did I raise the question about license plates being investigated or off-limits?
It might be easier if you just stated your actual view instead of playing twenty questions, because I have tried to read your posts from multiple angles and can't find any way to reconcile them. If you aren't arguing against the use of camera footage of cars in police investigations, why bring up the stolen plate scenario, along with the legal costs of defending against it, in the first place?
Just to be clear: I would be absolutely fine with law enforcement investigating the appearance of my stolen plates at a crime scene using video footage obtained from private or public cameras. Police using camera footage to investigate a crime scene is not at all a misuse, and I think everybody would be happy that there was footage of the crime.
No worries, textual communications do not convey the nuances verbal conversation can provide, so misunderstandings are inevitable.
> It might be easier if you just stated your actual view instead of playing twenty questions ...
What I am saying is that criminals do their best to "throw off the scent" of who they are. The purpose of their stealing license plates is to infuse confusion and/or delay in discovering their identity.
> Just to be clear: I would be absolutely fine with law enforcement investigating the appearance of my stolen plates at a crime scene ...
Perhaps you would, depending on the circumstance and timing of said investigation. And perhaps others may not be as confident, including your future self.
Either way, a person otherwise completely uninvolved would now be a subject in a criminal investigation. The second-order effects of this only exist due to intentional identity misdirection, which is, of course, the whole purpose of license plates being stolen in the first place.
I have expressed what I believe. The question you now pose is a strawman argument[0] unrelated to the subject of stolen license plates and how the act thereof implicates innocent people.
I've never read about this happening.
> I've never read about this happening.
A simple web search[0] can elucidate the matter.
0 - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=what+is+the+most+common+reason+car...