HN Reader

"Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar."

Wow, this is incredibly concerning. So they can pull me over, lie about why and then try to manufacture something ?

This dragnet style data monitoring is illegal when it comes to phones, it probably should be illegal when it comes to cameras too.

License plate scanners are one of the most under-appreciated violations of personal privacy that exist today.

It's not just government use either. There are private companies that scan vast numbers of license plates (sometimes by driving around parking lots with a camera), build a database of what plate was seen where at what time, then sell access to both law enforcement and I believe private investigators.

Want to know if your spouse is having an affair? Those databases may well have the answer.

Here is a Wired story from 2014 about Vigilant Solutions, founded in 2009: https://www.wired.com/2014/05/license-plate-tracking/

I believe Vigilant only provide access to law enforcement, but Digital Recognition Network sell access to others as well: https://drndata.com/about/

Good Vice story about that: https://www.vice.com/en/article/i-tracked-someone-with-licen...

65% of the US population, 200 million Americans, live within the 100-Mile "Constitution-Free Zone".

Supreme Court has established that some established constitutional provisions do not apply at the U.S. border, and protections against governmental privacy incursions are significantly reduced.

The border search exception applies within 100 miles (160 km) of the border of the United States, including borders with Mexico and Canada but also coastlines.

One of the most striking things about this article were the photos of the disguised cameras, especially the ones dressed up as traffic cones and electrical boxes.

Terrifying and unconstitutional

Wouldn’t it be trivial for serious criminals - like cartels etc - to just use different vehicles?

Remember the movie Minority Report? Where a central plot point was the main character being tracked (by their retina in that case), and how to defeat the tracking? Vibes.

Technology is going to change a lot of things...

Imagine a drone swarm that follows you wherever you go. Tracking and photographing every step you take in public. When you go into a building, a ground drone follows you in, notes where you've gone, and when you leave, hands you off to the flying swarm. Creating a trail of all your activities. Legally there may not be anything you can do to stop it.

The expectation that you have no privacy in public is what fuels this.

> often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener

Police shouldn't be able to pull someone over for an air freshener or tinted windows. They can send a fix-it ticket without wasting the time and resources, and without causing the inconvenience or diversions in traffic. And, as a private citizen, I strongly prefer the police have the minimal necessary powers to detain me.

Land of the free.....

What bugs me the most about all this surveillance is that crime clearance rates dont seem to be improving, I guess it just makes law enforcents job easier, they just click click click instead of actual shoe leathering.

Murder clearance rates in the 50s was in the high ninety percent.

It's been fascinating watching the party of "small government" turn into one that supports ever expanding powers of a three letter agency whose job is supposed to be patrolling the border. It's like a new 9/11 Patriot act moment, except it's only one side supporting it this time.

After graduating high school, our daughter became a "member" working for Disney World. We made several driving trips back and forth to visit or bring her stuff she wanted or just for the heck of it. Then after a while we flew out, rented a van and brought all her things and her back home. Was that suspicious?

The same daughter and our son-in-law lived in Huntsville Alabama while he finished his post grad degree. I can't tell you how many trips we made then to visit, tour and eat at restaurants around town. Was that suspicious?

In 2023, we drove a round-about way to Phoenix to purchase a puppy. We visited Carlsbad New Mexico and several national parks after driving through the panhandle of Texas, in some of the remotest highways I've ever been on. (And beautiful too!) On the way home, we took a different route to see more of the states. Was that suspicious?

If I would have been pulled over and asked what I was doing, I would have said it was none of their damn business, I'd broken no laws. (Yes, I would have said we are on a trip to buy a dog and are heading home, but to be grilled, hell no!) How is this legal? I'm a white guy in his late sixties, is it fair they wouldn't suspect me because of that? Does the rule of law crumbling bother anyone anymore?

This is good news. Punish the wrongdoers so we can live in a peaceful safe society.

"Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar."

So, standard driving while black (or brown, or Muslim, or whatever is demonized in $CURRENT_YEAR), but extended to new categories? I guess now that it's impinging on the comfortable it's news.

This is what the world's most perfect democracy looks like. Peak Freedom.

> Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior

Well, that's what happens when you blur the line called the border.

100 Mile Border Zone - https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone

Your rights are limited in interactions with CBP, or to state the inverse: CBP have claimed more powers than traditional law enforcement. This has been true for quite a while; they have at various times been more and less careful about your rights while exercising those powers. They are being less careful now.

It feels like the past 25 years has been a continuous slowly constricting circle just chipping away at privacy and freedom and it almost never goes in the other direction or even just reverts a policy back to baseline. People largely don't seem to care though and I don't think there are any politicians seriously fighting against it and prioritizing as a primary policy.

I drive back-country roads all the time to go hiking and camping. I guess that makes me an outlaw now. Great. /s

Drive a rental car with California plates through Arizona on eastward and you're likely to find this out first hand.

They'll of course pretend that they just saw you commit a minor infraction and that's why you were pulled over.

Modern cars log their GPS coordinates about every 60 seconds and maintain weeks of records at minimum. Police regularly obtain search warrants to view weeks of GPS logs from your infotainment system.

In the last admin I used to think that "abolish ICE" was hysterical.

I now believe we need to not only abolish ICE, but puts the politicians and officers on trial. CBP needs to be purged and rebuilt from the ground up.

It is so tragic to see where the US is going in real time from an outside observer. So much for "freedom".

Suspicious behavior is not a crime, and law enforcement is required to have a reasonable, articulable suspicion of a crime in order to detain people.

> "detaining those with suspicious travel patterns"

Detaining those they _deem_, without oversight to have such.

Does anyone know if ALPRs are being combined with Bluetooth/TPMS scanning to associate devices across vehicles or if TPMS is getting associated to vehicles (like if a stolen plate is put on another vehicle because the TPMS doesn't match)?

Over the past decade we've seen large numbers of Trump and MAGA supporters on HN.

Has their life improved because of ICE and CBP crackdowns? Are they happier now that all those undocumented immigrants have had their lives ruined? Are they proud of the destruction of our democratic norms and the attack on our civil liberties? Do they enjoy watching the rights of American citizens being trampled on a daily basis by a wannabe dictator?

They've been very vocal and aggressive here in the past, where are they now? Will they continue to spout misinformation, disinformation and whataboutism with unprecedented presidential power grabs, the economy faltering and the Constitution being ignored?

I wonder how they feel now that literally every fear that progressives warned about are coming true? Are they willing to accept that they are and always have been completely wrong?

Please feel free to reply and show your full throated support for this administration. I'd like to see how many HNers are so stubborn as to ignore reality.

You can sue the government for violating your 4th amendment rights.

But the criminals and illegals and the worst of the worst and the drugs. Think of the children that are being fed illegal drugs thru tubes put in by the trans-national trans gangs.

/s

Canada has been authoritarian for awhile, while trying to claim to be 'nice'. The protestors during Covid got de-banked, fired, and arrested.

Democracies with Liberal leaders can quite literally get away with murder.

Anyone can be targeted, anyone can be pulled over, anyone can be detained, anyone can be labelled a terrorist, anyone can be deported to a black hole in el salvador. These are dark times.

The border patrol should only be able to do this within the 100 mile no constitution zone that extends from all foreign borders (including internal borders like the great lakes). If they do this in Minneapolis, Minnesota or Denver, Colorado it would be unconstitutional.

License plates aren't compatible with the 4th amendment, and this only becomes more obvious with time.

Intentionally driving suspiciously to get illegally detained sounds like an easy lawsuit.

In Saudi Arabia Uber reports all trips to the kingdom [1].

[1] https://blog.careem.com/posts/local-regulatory-data-sharing-...

It's germane to point out the War on Drugs™ is a war on the people and has never been about "keeping people safe". I know that a lot of people say that cannabis is ok but hard drugs should not be legal to keep people safe. Look at how well that's worked out, as well as how the people involved with those drugs are treated (users are treated like dangerous criminals rather than with substance abuse issues).

This war along with the War on Terror™ give pretense to all of these abuses of power and need to be undone. The problems they profess to address can be addressed in much simpler, cheaper, and humane ways.

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45991257

Remind me, why do we need license plates?

If there's a reason for having them, why don't we require them for people? Let's make everyone walk with their id at the front and back. We're for public safety here, right?

Use AI to keep your driving pattern non suspicious ...

just saw this [1] today where the police chief was using license plate readers to stalk and harass "multiple victims". This is why you don't collect the information in the first place. I am sure the lawyers are one step ahead, but I think Flock should pay these victims directly (in addition to the PD) for failing to stop the misuse of their technology.

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/braselton-police-chief-arre...