Pretty much everybody has heard, or knows, about license plate scanners, right? If you drive down the road and a cop is behind you, you get scanned... better be clean or they'll be pulling you over. That's pretty much everywhere. Not every single cop car has them in every single police department in the country. Depends where you are. Some have more than others. I'm pretty sure that all of the cops that patrol the Route 2|4 by my house have them.
But did you know that the use of those scanners is growing exponentially in the private sector and stationary deployment?
What does that mean? That means that now, shopping centers, malls, parking garages (private sector), are now installing scanners. This is already happening throughout California. One "likely story" is that they have parking lot kiosks that help you find your car. They actually do that... and that is helpful... but that is NOT the reason why they're being deployed.
The other stationary deployments come in a couple different varieties. One is kind of obvious but somewhat unexpected. The parked police cars. Now, that isn't just a cop going to get donuts. That is a vehicle that is brought there and left as a stationary deployment. No officers are necessarily actively assigned to the vehicle while it is deployed. It continually scans, records and reports.
The other variety of stationary deployments are what you'd expect. Roads, freeways, stop lights, bridges, city buildings (i.e., other than shopping/consumer use) and so on.
So why should anyone care about it?
Well these scanners are doing more than they are telling people about, or at least, is not common knowledge. It is no longer just for stolen cars, expired tags, suspended licenses and warrants. Now it is for tracking purposes.
You might think, "So what? I'm not breaking any laws so they are not tracking me!"
Wrong.
Initially, they deployed these stationary scanners around suspected drug houses. And they started collecting data on *anyone* that parked nearby or even drove down the fucking street!
That gave them a good idea. Why not just record it all? Everywhere. That way, if any person becomes under any sort of suspicion or investigation
any time in the future, their driving habits and the whereabouts of their vehicles can be back tracked! *Have* been tracked!
Another problem with the civilian deployments is that there is no standard or controls of the access to the data. In other words, any fucking body can access these systems legally and obtain any relevant information. Who you are, where you live, how many times you've been to that mall, on what days and for how long, etc, etc, etc.
And this information is not from some group of internet conspiracy theorists. Most of this information I read about yesterday from a "California Criminal Defense Lawyers" website.
http://www.mycaliforniadefenselawyer.co ... e-scanner/Good thing we all are living clean lives and only associate with others that do the same. The government is tightening its grip and making our country a surveillance state (as well as a police state).
Just thought you'd want to know.
TTYL,
Frank
