City of Medina has license plate cameras that INSTANTLY alert police

I was browsing around and there was a thread where someone was concerned about a city in Kansas or something named Medina. There's one in WA too. It's where Bill Gates calls home, and it's a few minutes from my place. Decided to look it up, and found something I think is disturbing. I think you all might think it disturbing too.

The city of Medina has a camera system in place that scans license plates, sends the data through every registry it has access too, and if there is a "hit" automatically alerts the police. But don't worry, it's only for felonies.

Under the "automatic license plate recognition" project, once a car enters Medina, a camera captures its license-plate number. Within seconds, the number is run through a database.

If a hit comes up for a felony — say, the vehicle was reported stolen or is being driven by a homicide suspect — the information is transmitted instantaneously to police, who can "leap into action," said Police Chief Jeffrey Chen.

I really dislike this. Technology seems to keep creeping toward Orwellian until someone calls shenanigans, but people generally don't even know what's going on to call shenanigans. There is so much room for abuse here, and I'm really very skeptical that only felony hits are run.

The city's population was 2,969 at the 2010 census. The city is mostly residential and includes Bill Gates' house.
Medina has the second highest per-capita income in the state of Washington and the 49th highest in the United States.

There aren't exactly a ton of people living in Medina. This system is being justified because there were 11 burglaries in 2008. 11. That is justification enough to log all plates for 60 days, and instantly dispatch police if there is a felony hit. Again, I'm really doubting this is only for felonies.

"Some people think [that number of burglaries] is tolerable," he said. "But even one crime is intolerable."

All captured information is stored for 60 days — even if nothing negative turns up, he said. That allows police to mine data if a crime occurs later, Chen said.

Fantastic. I recently did another thread about the DEA collecting DATA from an untold number of police departments and Federal agencies. You can find that here.

So Medina says they store that info for 60 days, but I guarantee they are kicking that information up the ladder.

Again, I live REALLY close. Here's a snippet about where I live and the crime we see.

According to a 2012 estimate, the median income for a household in the city was $88,073, and the median income for a family was $104,839. The per capita income for the city was $48,719. In 2006, Bellevue was rated one of the 25 safest cities in America, based on the per-capita incidence of violent crime.

Apparently that doesn't matter, at the behest of certain people my nice safe city may soon have this same system. A system that shares it's data with anyone who wants to data mine. A system with no real oversight.

Doug Honig, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, said such a system smacks of privacy violations.

"Government shouldn't be keeping records of people's comings and goings when they haven't done anything wrong," he said. "By actions like this, we're moving closer and closer to a surveillance society."

Seriously, leave me the f# alone.

Medina City Councilmember Lucius Biglow said crime prevention "outweighs concern over privacy."

"Privacy is considerably less nowadays than it was, say, 50 years ago," he said. "I think most of us are pretty well-documented by the federal government ... simply because of the Internet and credit cards."

Well now it's worse because jackasses like you think losing privacy means it's OK to lose more.

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a reply to: Domo1

honestly i am not surprised, lets categorize this one under "police state " . Maybe when we are ready to address these issue we can pull it back out and dust it off .


It's to the point now where i have just excepted this "freedom noose " :/


i figure all i have to do is not break the rules right ? that's my security?

(delete)

a reply to: Domo1

Here in Aussieland there has been a similar system in place for some time now....i am not sure if there are stand alone camera's tapped into the system but certainly all highway patrol cars have the scan ability....the number plate scanners scan all vehicles that go past it and alert if there is no registration,no license etc and any convictions a person has had...and a whole lot else no doubt we are not being told about

www.couriermail.com.au...

interestingly enough there is very little public talk of this new technology....either way i am positive these scanners flow alot more info than just registration information

I think this really is a case of if you've done nothing wrong, then don't worry.

I agree there is far too much police surveillance in the world, intruding into ordinary peoples lives.....but this number plate scanning could be a good thing for catching the real bad guys.

Your license plate would be registered with the DVLA (or American equivalent) anyway, so no real harm done.

a reply to: woogleuk

I think this really is a case of if you've done nothing wrong, then don't worry.

If I haven't done anything wrong then leave me the f# alone.

a reply to: woogleuk

The "if you haven't done anything wrong then don't worry" argument is exactly what they want.

Give them an inch and they will take a mile.

No thank you.

a reply to: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

Here in south Australia there are also stand alone fixed cameras doing the same things . You can avoid them if you dont mind the extra journey .

originally posted by: hutch622
a reply to: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

Here in south Australia there are also stand alone fixed cameras doing the same things . You can avoid them if you dont mind the extra journey .

yeah right...well if you have them there it is likely that they are being set up further afield ....like all over the country

a reply to: Domo1

They are scanning your license plate, something which is already known to the authorities, something that is already visible to anybody looking at your car, visible to the current multitude of surveillance devices.

The whole idea of number plates is vehicle recognition.

Here in the UK the police can already scan each plate to check for known criminals, tax avoidance etc etc.

Sometimes things aren't as bad a the paranoid ones make out.

At the end of the day, if you have done nothing wrong, your reg plate will give a green light and you will be none the wiser.

Please don't get me wrong, I hate CCTV, it creeps me out a little knowing someone is watching my every move in the town centre, even though I know I'm doing no wrong.

But this isn't intruding on privacy really.

I fear the power creep that will likely occur if these kinds of systems are adopted. It then becomes a matter of time before they use the system to track movement, have police stop you if you owe city money or have minor fine for something, add 'people of interest' to database who are not criminals so they get stopped all the time.

I feel paranoid now...

a reply to: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

I am not sure but i think all cameras have that capability but these are dedicated cameras .

Edit . All cameras can check now , i am not sure if they check every car though .

a reply to: Domo1

without proper check and balance this system can be used to harass anyone.

there are already cameras everywhere. stores, banks, streets, parking lots, schools, fuel stations, every where. if you step out of your home, you have been photographed. at least in cities there are cameras. rural may not be affected quite as much.

I'm sure we already have a system like that here in the UK, one of those police programmes showed it in use last night.

CX.

a reply to: woogleuk

I think this really is a case of if you've done nothing wrong, then don't worry

So if you are doing nothing wrong, you should hate your civil liberties and trust the government?

That makes no sense.

a reply to: InverseLookingGlass

How is them looking at your number plate (like any pedestrian/other driver) going to affect your civil liberties?

So these are the same pretty much as the UK anpr cameras that are fitted to police cars, traffic cameras etc? Really if you have a problem with these your a well dodgy bloke or way too paranoid. These aren't like CCTV and will only flag up law breakers like people with no insurance who tbh we all want the police to arrest and throw the book at.

a reply to: woogleuk

I think you've missed the point. Not only are they checking every plate, they're keeping a database of them for 60 days. So they can track where any person has been, at least when they were caught on camera, for 60 days. Completely innocent people that have done nothing to warrant being tracked like some sort of criminal. Perhaps in the UK that's not a big deal but here in America where this happened we (used to) have laws that protected us innocent people against this sort of nonsense.

Unfortunately for years and years now those rights have slowly been eroding, meanwhile people like you always end up saying basically the same thing, "Well if you haven't done anything wrong..." Nonsense. If I haven't done anything wrong then don't take away my rights. I'm pretty tired of the government pissing on our constitution.

a reply to: Domo1

A city of only 3000 people and this is needed? I guess if it includes Bill Gates's house, perhaps there are some pricey houses and this is a justification for them in regards to the very few burglaries? Still, 3000 is hardly any.

I live in a small town of about 4400 people, and out local PD (which consists of 12 officers) recently got a car decked out with license plate readers, which is unneeded IMO. We barely have crime—at all. We have so many police that all they do is look for "speeders" so they can stay busy and bring in money. License plate readers are not needed, it's just another new "toy" they now have.

a reply to: Liquesence

I have a stinking hunch part of the reason why this little city has taken such extreme measures may be due to their name "Medina". Medina is also a city in Saudi Arabia, it is the burial place of Islam's prophet Muhammad and the second holiest city in Islam. Maybe the city officials in Medina Kansas believe their city may be a target for terrorism or something like that.

In any case, instead of simply passively accepting these scanning technologies, the question we should ask is how to defeat these technologies.

For example almost anyone can defeat facial recognition technologies, quite easily too. All one has to do is wear mask or motorcycle helmet (with a dark visor or see through mirror and a mask worn underneath just in case) that obscures any and all facial features.