Police Cruiser Top-Mounted Cameras Question

Question

There is an interesting story in the media about police cruisers mounted with cameras that read tags to determine whether a vehicle is stolen, a vehicle has a emission's violation, parking tickets haven't paid, and a host of other violations.

This new techology may indeed find stolen cars faster and add many benefits, but does anyone know what happens to the information regarding the tags that are scanned by the computer without violations? Is this information stored? If so, by whom? Does a third party or the manufacturer who is NOT a law enforocement agency get to hold onto the information (name, address, age, height, weight) of people with innocent tags? Could the third party commit identity theft?

I support new techology such as the tag reader, but who will responsible for putting into place safeguards to protect innocent individuals? What comes to mind is a couple of years ago when I bought a new car. My state's Motor Vehicle Division made a mistake about my insurance for 3 mos, for which they apologized to me about, but what if one of these tag readers had picked up my car when I had insurance all the time?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080103570.html

Answer 1

What happens is every week, all of the information is dumped from the system. The Officer has to specifically go to a designated location and all of the previous weeks info is erased. No 3rd party ever gets a hold of the info that isn't used.

Answer 2

No no one else gets their hands on it only law enforcement sees it and it is only stored for a day or two. So I wouldn't worry about it.  

Answer 3

Its only stored for the day in an internal hard drive that they install on the vehicle.  Unless the officer singles out a specific one for long term storage.  No third party could not read it except it they came and downloaded the hard drive everyday which would not happen.  And remember just because the cameras get a "hit" on the license plate doesn't mean that the info wont be verified before enforcement action is taken.  Big brother isn't that bad yet.

*** I suppose you could look up the individual LPR (license plate reader) company and look through there site.  And just FYI the supreme court has ruled that there is no right to privacy in "identifying" a motor vehicle, which means an officer can run your plates, look at you VIN, and do anything else he needs to do to verify or identify your car without probable cause or a warrant. So running license plates all day long falls under identifying vehicles.

Answer 4

This is the same thing that happens when an officer maually enters your plate into his in-car computer terminal. The automated license plate readers just do it faster than I can do it manually.

I normally check over 100 license plates per shift. These systems can do that many in a minute.

In a legitimate system, no information goes to anyone other than that particular law enforcement agency.

If one of these had picked you out, you would have been stopped for having no insurance. If you had proof of insurance with you, you would have been on your way very quickly.