Quies Custodiet Ipsos Custards?
March 24, 2015 7:40 PM   Subscribe

Via a freedom of information act request, Ars Technica acquired 4.6 million license plate scans from the Oakland Police Department. The scans cover 1.1 million unique license plates, and only 0.2% of them were associated with any criminal activity.
For instance, during a meeting with an Oakland city council member, Ars was able to accurately guess the block where the council member lives after less than a minute of research using his license plate data. Similarly, while "working" at an Oakland bar mere blocks from Oakland police headquarters, we ran a plate from a car parked in the bar's driveway through our tool. The plate had been read 48 times over two years in two small clusters: one near the bar and a much larger cluster 24 blocks north in a residential area—likely the driver's home.
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posted by jenkinsEar (50 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
Glad to know about it but not surprised. Thanks for the post.
posted by harrietthespy at 7:45 PM on March 24, 2015


This neither surprises nor pleases me.
posted by aubilenon at 7:47 PM on March 24, 2015 [6 favorites]


I'm a transportation planner and geek, and this data actually sounds interesting, if it were not collected to specifically track individuals. At a large, anonymized dataset, it would be valuable to to traffic modeling and planning of the sort. Otherwise, we traffic and land use planners pay for data collected from cell phones, which is processed by a third party to strip any personal information out. I wonder if Oakland PD has thought about getting into the data collection business, it could be more lucrative than whatever the hell they think they're doing now with this information.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:59 PM on March 24, 2015 [13 favorites]


*smugness about bike commute intensifies*
posted by agentofselection at 8:07 PM on March 24, 2015 [22 favorites]


That the data is being collected and stored for long periods is shocking, but I knew that had been happening for years. What really surprised me about this article is that apparently anyone can request the info, including plate numbers! From the comments on the article, this is their California Public Records Act request: http://records.oaklandnet.com/request/5136. I assume anyone else who wants the data can submit the same request.
posted by jjwiseman at 8:09 PM on March 24, 2015


I hope those scans don't include the plates of, e.g., someone hiding from an ex-boyfriend.
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:13 PM on March 24, 2015 [11 favorites]


From the Hacker News discussion: A vast hidden surveillance network runs across America, powered by the repo industry:
Few notice the “spotter car” from Manny Sousa’s repo company as it scours Massachusetts parking lots, looking for vehicles whose owners have defaulted on their loans. Sousa’s unmarked car is part of a technological revolution that goes well beyond the repossession business, transforming any ­industry that wants to check on the whereabouts of ordinary people.

An automated reader attached to the spotter car takes a picture of every ­license plate it passes and sends it to a company in Texas that already has more than 1.8 billion plate scans from vehicles across the country.

These scans mean big money for Sousa — typically $200 to $400 every time the spotter finds a vehicle that’s stolen or in default — so he runs his spotter around the clock, typically adding 8,000 plate scans to the database in Texas each day.

“Honestly, we’ve found random apartment complexes and shopping ­plazas that are sweet spots” where the company can impound multiple vehicles, explains Sousa, the president of New England Associates Inc. in Bridgewater.
posted by jjwiseman at 8:15 PM on March 24, 2015 [12 favorites]


I hope those scans don't include the plates of, e.g., someone hiding from an ex-boyfriend.

I don't see how it's possible that they couldn't include that.
posted by aubilenon at 8:15 PM on March 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


A nice advertisement for public transportation.
posted by Slothrup at 8:16 PM on March 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


Joe: Or an underage daughter of conservative parents seeking out reproductive health care. Or data showing political gatherings. Or plate scans of people seeking HIV tests at the local clinic. Or plate scans showing narcotics-anonymous meetings, or, or, or....

Yeah, privacy is a thing that even non-criminals would love to enjoy.
posted by el io at 8:17 PM on March 24, 2015 [39 favorites]


A nice advertisement for public transportation.

Yeah, unless of course the TSA decides that public transportation falls under it's purview.
posted by el io at 8:18 PM on March 24, 2015


I figure that the government tracks me by my cell phone anyway.
posted by cccorlew at 8:22 PM on March 24, 2015


Custard sounds good right now.
posted by idiopath at 8:24 PM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


A nice advertisement for public transportation.

Unless you live somewhere with smartcard tickets.
posted by pompomtom at 8:30 PM on March 24, 2015 [7 favorites]


Somewhere like Oakland, you mean?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:31 PM on March 24, 2015


I was thinking about this while driving down the freeway the other day -- I would be shocked if Homeland Security or a related agency wasn't operating license cameras on major roads, bridges, etc -- the cameras are cheap and it would provide an easy way to analyze patterns across time and space, especially if paired with cell phone tracking.

I hadn't realized that local police departments were doing the same thing, but I guess I am the fool for being surprised.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:36 PM on March 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


I read this article about repo companies using this data in Minneapolis, in 2012. Even though they keep the data for shorter amounts of time, it is still useful to third parties. (Of course, when my car was stolen less than a month after that article was published, two different cops told me that there was no such thing, so it's not useful to everybody...)

But yeah, the article jjwiseman posted above shows that this data is being collected all over, not just Oakland.
posted by MsDaniB at 8:44 PM on March 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Out of curiosity, is there a national license plate database that police departments share?
posted by discopolo at 8:53 PM on March 24, 2015


Now I want one of those James Bond-style license plate changers, just to piss everyone off.

...as I make my nefarious way to the grocery store and back each week...
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:05 PM on March 24, 2015 [5 favorites]


Out of curiosity, is there a national license plate database that police departments share?

It is worse than you might imagine.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:06 PM on March 24, 2015 [6 favorites]


(Of course, when my car was stolen less than a month after that article was published, two different cops told me that there was no such thing, so it's not useful to everybody...).

Sigh. So the only possible 'legitimate' use for this data - to help solve everyday crimes that affects the citizenry is the ONE thing we can be assured it won't be used for.

Which reminds me of the time I had a backpack stolen from me on the floor of a casino. After much prodding they admitted that the only way in which they'd look at the crime being committed on camera in their establishment was if a court order forced them to. Fuck Vegas.
posted by el io at 9:13 PM on March 24, 2015 [13 favorites]


It is worse than you might imagine.

Yes — the image suggests the network extends as far as New South Wales!
posted by Wolof at 9:15 PM on March 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


I don't mind officers running plates when they're in the filed, and of course most of them are not converted to enforcement, but storing the data seems problematic. I could see how it might be useful in an investigation if you could place a vehicle somewhere historically.
posted by Brocktoon at 9:18 PM on March 24, 2015


Out of curiosity, is there a national license plate database that police departments share?

A company called Vigilant sells their services (including access to a shared database) to many LE agencies and is the de facto standard, despite there being no national mandate or regulations behind its use.

Just like the Stingray cell phone tracker, the company makes LE agencies sign a NDA with the explicit purpose of avoiding media and public scrutiny. How's that for demoracy, assholes?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:19 PM on March 24, 2015 [5 favorites]


"Yes — the image suggests the network extends as far as New South Wales!"

The land bridge would be good for commerce, they said. Just think about all the jobs building it they said. Now waddaya got?
posted by klangklangston at 10:32 PM on March 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


My personal experience is with the CHP recovering stolen vehicles with plate readers. I don't know what the retention policy is, but a patrol vehicle in Oakland equipped with a reader will likely find 2-5 stolen vehicles in an 8-12 hour shift.
posted by ericales at 10:32 PM on March 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Any privacy you might currently enjoy as relates to your movement in a personal vehicle is purely the result of essentially a laziness to get these things in the field.

In my tiny town in interior BC, every traffic light has a camera. These things are "in the field."
posted by five fresh fish at 10:42 PM on March 24, 2015


Piedmont (a small rich city surrounded by Oakland) has cameras at all access points to the city. The really stupid thing is that as far as I can tell, they don't have enough cops (or decent enough cops) in Oakland to investigate "minor" crimes like armed muggings, burglaries, and car thefts, so good luck having somebody look through the database retroactively unless someone's been killed. I would bet the primary use is allowing a cop to detect and pull over a stolen car while patrolling.
posted by benzenedream at 11:03 PM on March 24, 2015


A nice advertisement for public transportation.

Not all transit cards are associated with user information — you can get ORCA cards in Seattle, for instance, that can be loaded with relatively anonymous cash. However, if you have an ORCA card that is connected to an employer or a credit or debit card, then interested authorities could easily associate not only your movements but the likelihood of you being some place specific along the route within n minutes with very high probability, thanks to real-time tracking systems like OneBusAway. Overlap that with data from the Seattle Police Department's city-wide surveillance cameras and some facial recognition software, and you have a pretty tight little Orwellian party going on. Integration of this stuff is what companies like Palantir sell to governments and corps.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:02 AM on March 25, 2015 [9 favorites]


Which reminds me of the time I had a backpack stolen from me on the floor of a casino. After much prodding they admitted that the only way in which they'd look at the crime being committed on camera in their establishment was if a court order forced them to. Fuck Vegas.

This is actually an interesting thing about universal surveillance, both public and private. I've had and heard of places, even like relatively small stores, flat out refusing to look through their surveillance footage unless forced.

The end result of this is only businesses(and those who own the "means of production" so to speak), the government and those with connections therein, and people who can either afford, or have an upper middle class job that gives them X amount of attorney time as a benefit/perk(or through networking through the social connections that come with those positions, know someone who can just help them out) can actually access this info.

Tons of limp-cocked excuses can be made for why they don't want to turn over that footage(one of the most crap of which is "then you/people would know where the cameras are!" yea, they cover everything, we know), but the fact of the matter is it's not there to protect or help you in any way even when it's employed by the government and law enforcement.

I've had to explain this a bunch of times to many people. The amount of pushback you get on "but that must have just been one place/well they have a good reason to not just hand it over!" is super depressing.

We need something like the FOIA for private businesses cameras customer facing public spaces, and ESPECIALLY ones that cover parking lots or public streets.

This might all sound like an exaggeration of how shit it is, but you'll quickly realize it's not when you need it and get instantaneously stonewalled by some manager who acts like you're asking if you can have sex on the checkout stand.
posted by emptythought at 12:12 AM on March 25, 2015 [10 favorites]


Is there a clever play on words in the title that I'm missing, or is it just bad Latin?
posted by sbutler at 12:46 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Many of those quoted in the article seem to underestimate the power of a data set like this; it's completely irresponsible to release it to the public, and I don't trust the police with it, either. Using it to publish the approximate home addresses of people who work at a police station has a certain poetic charm to it, but it's less charming when one imagines it used to target cars parking near a mosque, synagogue, LGBT shelter, school, planned parenthood...
posted by kprincehouse at 12:58 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Why oh why do bars have car parks in the US
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:20 AM on March 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


Americans are that contemptuous and fearful of public transit.
posted by at by at 2:33 AM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]




emptythought: This might all sound like an exaggeration of how shit it is, but you'll quickly realize it's not when you need it and get instantaneously stonewalled by some manager who acts like you're asking if you can have sex on the checkout stand.

That same manager won't be a manager much longer when corporate finds out that they wittingly took time out of their day to hand over "plaintiff exhibit A" to the shiny new lawsuit they just got served with.
posted by dr_dank at 4:34 AM on March 25, 2015


We need something like the FOIA for private businesses cameras customer facing public spaces, and ESPECIALLY ones that cover parking lots or public streets.

That's kind of stupid. I mean, I hate big business as much as the next guy, but forcing private entities to turn over surveillance footage they shoot just based on a persons' request is just dumb. FOIA exists to enforce government transparency, and there is no similar interest in transparency for records held by a private person or business. And surveillance video can be acquired from private parties when it's really needed, through the use of a subpoena.
posted by jayder at 5:37 AM on March 25, 2015


By the way, Oakland has 33 ANPR (LPR) cameras. London, at last count, has 1,144. And that’s just the static ones.

Google reckons the population of Oakland is 406,253 and London 8,308,000. So more meaningfully that's one camera per 7,262 people in London, one per 12,311 in Oakland.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:58 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


I know this keeps coming up, but in the UK the 1988 Data Protection Act makes it illegal for a business to do video surveillance without putting up a warning sign, and registering the camera with the Information Commissioner's Office.

In most of the US it's perfectly legal to do video surveillance without consent.

So when people from the US visit the UK, they say "OMG look at all these warning signs! The UK sure is a surveillance state!"

But a lot of the apparent different is because in the US, you just don't know the cameras are there...
posted by TheophileEscargot at 6:27 AM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


Why oh why do bars have car parks in the US

Americans are that contemptuous and fearful of public transit.

Or it could also be that public transportation is not available unless you live in a major city, and that if you do not live in a major city, its most likely not possible to walk to the bar without walking 5+ miles.
posted by LizBoBiz at 7:34 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Americans are that contemptuous and fearful of public transit.

Where I've been living buses stop at about 10 pm, but bars close at 2 am and won't let you stay until buses start again at 6am. (Personally I walk instead of driving, but that's because I live near the center so I have that option; most people do not.) The only other option is taxis, which can be slow to arrive and are not cheap (though much cheaper than a DUI).
posted by Dip Flash at 7:53 AM on March 25, 2015


Why oh why do bars have car parks in the US

On the optimistic side, maybe they're all used by Designated Drivers? (or people who don't drink alcohol).
posted by megafauna at 7:55 AM on March 25, 2015


rum-soaked space hobo: "Why oh why do bars have car parks in the US"

People often drink after work which is a goodly distance from home. Car parks allow you to avoid a trip home while having a relatively safe space to leave your car overnight until you can retrieve it in the morning.
posted by Mitheral at 8:04 AM on March 25, 2015


"Why oh why do bars have car parks in the US"

Occam's Razor would say that it's so that people can drive themselves home after drinking, and the statistics don't refute that...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 8:28 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Quies Custodiet Ipsos P3NN15?
posted by Smedleyman at 8:37 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


People often drink after work which is a goodly distance from home. Car parks allow you to avoid a trip home while having a relatively safe space to leave your car overnight until you can retrieve it in the morning.

I used to go past a popular bar (open until 2 am seven days a week) on my way to work. Every morning there would be two to five cars left in the parking lot -- people who made the smart decision to not drive (or who were so trashed that the staff took away their keys). But that was a handful of cars out of at least a hundred each night -- most people drive themselves home.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:44 AM on March 25, 2015


"This is actually an interesting thing about universal surveillance, both public and private. I've had and heard of places, even like relatively small stores, flat out refusing to look through their surveillance footage unless forced."

Years ago, I was returning a moped helmet to a Meijer's when I got one of those undeniable internal calls to take a shit. So I asked the greeter if he could watch it for me (since including box and bag, it's pretty bulky) took my shit and when I got out the greeter was gone but the helmet was there, still in the bag I bought it in. I get up to the returns and they take the helmet into a back room and I'm waiting a long time, until they finally come back and say that they have me on tape stealing the helmet because they saw me pick it up near the door then come to returns. I explain what happened, and they refuse to watch any more tape to confirm it. I argue with them for like half an hour, they say they've called the police and tell me that I have to wait there for 45 minutes to an hour for the cops to arrive, and I tell them again to rewind the fucking tape and watch it. Meanwhile, I'm searching all over for the receipt, which should be in the bag anyway. I can't find it, I get sick of their bullshit and storm out. Luckily, I find the receipt in the parking lot, right outside my car door. So I go back in, have to wait another hour for the goddamned manager to finally have time to deal with this shit, and after that they refuse to fucking apologize, instead telling me that I shouldn't trust their employees to watch things if they agree to do it, and that it was my fault for not having the receipt with me. They grudgingly take the helmet back and credit my card.

When I got home, I called the corporate number and get told that the employees shouldn't have been watching the tape in the first place, but they're sorry and they send me a $10 gift card. I have absolutely no faith in the ability of private business to ethically or intelligently analyze or process surveillance data and one of my frequent regrets is that I didn't ever build the camera dazzler out of Mondo 2000.
posted by klangklangston at 2:37 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Americans are that contemptuous and fearful of public transit.

Oh jesus, give it a rest. I live in a major city and transit recently got cut back to the point that you can't get home at all to most neighborhoods after midnight. Some even 10pm. Even when i lived right next to the in city state college, and wanted to bus home from the tons-of-bars part of town that used to basically have non stop buses all night they started ending BEFORE, or pretty much immediately at 2.

Can you plan for this? Yea. Is it responsible planning on the part of the city? no. So since you can't even get home if you stay until the bars close with transit, car parks. It's also generally a safe place to leave your car overnight if you would get ticketed in on-street parking, at least in some places.

And that's not even getting in to the vast majority land area wise of america, even the suburbs directly adjacent to major cities, where transit is a complete joke and you often can't even take it home from work reliably if you don't work a standard 9-5 shift.

This circlejerk is pretty tiresome. It's not the root cause, and i'd argue it's at best a secondary factor even.
posted by emptythought at 5:56 PM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


I actually liked the public transit comment, but I liked it as a user of public transit who is permanently frustrated and angry at how poorly funded and undersupported my city's transit system is, particularly given the number of people who use it. I think a lot of Americans are contempuous of public transit, and that manifests in how they vote in city elections for initiatives that would expand or better fund public transit. Which results in shitty public transit that people avoid unless they have no better options, thereby exacerbating American disdain for transit...
posted by sciatrix at 6:11 PM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


emptythought: "Americans are that contemptuous and fearful of public transit.

Oh jesus, give it a rest. I live in a major city and transit recently got cut back to the point that you can't get home at all to most neighborhoods after midnight. Some even 10pm. Even when i lived right next to the in city state college, and wanted to bus home from the tons-of-bars part of town that used to basically have non stop buses all night they started ending BEFORE, or pretty much immediately at 2.

Can you plan for this? Yea. Is it responsible planning on the part of the city? no. So since you can't even get home if you stay until the bars close with transit, car parks. It's also generally a safe place to leave your car overnight if you would get ticketed in on-street parking, at least in some places.

And that's not even getting in to the vast majority land area wise of america, even the suburbs directly adjacent to major cities, where transit is a complete joke and you often can't even take it home from work reliably if you don't work a standard 9-5 shift.

This circlejerk is pretty tiresome. It's not the root cause, and i'd argue it's at best a secondary factor even.
"

Same in my town. They shut down really early, and the route that goes by where I live (NOT AT ALL A NICE NEIGHBORHOOD TO WALK THROUGH) only runs once an hour, instead of twice an hour like all the rest. I don't mind buses, but I thought the point of buses was to carry people around as an alternative to cars, not make the riders protrate themselves for the mercy of the great bus gods.
posted by Samizdata at 8:45 PM on March 25, 2015


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