Linked: Surprise! Audit finds automated license plate reader programs are a privacy nightmare
You can go read the details, non-existent privacy policies, no auditing of users, widely sharing data without any real investigative purpose, etc. But are we really surprised by this?
““What we’ve learned today is that many law enforcement agencies are violating state law, are retaining personal data for lengthy periods of time, and are disseminating this personal data broadly. This state of affairs is totally unacceptable,” said California State Senator Scott Weiner (D-SF), who called for the audit of these programs. The four agencies audited were the LAPD, Fresno PD and the Marin and Sacramento County Sheriffs Departments.”
I’m not going to bash law enforcement, I know plenty of good people in the field, or who have been in the field. But anyone who studies human nature had to know that this would happen. Give any group that much information, and they’ll try to keep it, share it, use it in any number of ways above and beyond what it was designed to do.
It’s what we do, so you better have strong rules in place to prevent it. When those rules don’t exist, like they apparently didn’t in these agencies, then who knows what this information was used for? Clearly they can’t even answer that question. That’s not a great look.
Surprise! Audit finds automated license plate reader programs are a privacy nightmare
