Driver Finds Himself Surrounded By Cops With Guns Out After Automatic License Plate Reader Misreads His Plate

from the automatic-bullet-catcher-creator dept

Mon, Apr 28th 2014 3:35am — Tim Cushing

Automatic license plate readers can scan plates at a rate of one per second. Nationwide, several hundred million plate/location records have been captured and stored by a variety of contractors. Mathematics alone says mistakes will be made. Except when mistakes are made with ALPRs, they tend to put citizens on the bad side of men with guns.

According to the Prairie Village Post, earlier this month lawyer Mark Molner was driving through a Kansas City suburb on his way home from his wife’s sonogram. All of a sudden, his BMW was blocked in front by a police car as another officer on a motorcycle pulled up behind him. (His pregnant wife witnessed the incident from a nearby parked car.)

According to what Molner told the Post, one of the officers then approached his car with his gun out.

“He did not point it at me, but it was definitely out of the holster,” Molner told the Post. “I am guessing that he saw the shock and horror on my face, and realized that I was unlikely to make (more of) a scene.”

The mistake prompting this guns-drawn approach of Molner's video could have been made by anybody. The ALPR read a "7" as a "2" and returned a hit for a stolen vehicle. The hit also returned info for a stolen Oldsmobile, which clearly wasn't what Molner was driving. But that could mean the plates were on the wrong vehicle, which is also an indication of Something Not Quite Right.

The PD's statement on the incident is fairly sensible and measured.

“The officer has discretion on whether or not to unholster his weapon depending on the severity of the crime. In this case he did not point it at the driver, rather kept it down to his side because he thought the vehicle could possibly be stolen. If he was 100 percent sure it was stolen, then he would have conducted a felony car stop which means both officers would have been pointing guns at him while they gave him commands to exit the vehicle.”

That makes sense, but there's still a chance this situation could have been averted. Molner's plate triggered the hit several miles before he was pulled over as pursuing police were unable to verify the plate due to traffic density. But it appears the officers made a last-minute decision to perform the unverified stop shortly before Molner would have driven out of the PD's jurisdiction. The stop occurred on the city/state boundary between Kansas and Missouri.

This lack of verification is what bothers Molner.

“I’m armchair quarterbacking the police, which is not a good position to be in,” Molner told the Post. “But before you unholster your gun, you might want to confirm that you’ve got the people you’re looking for.”

So, when the plate reader kicked back a bad hit, the cops did attempt to verify the plate, but it looks very much like they overrode procedural safeguards in order to prevent possibly losing a collar.

As these plate readers become more common, the number of erroneous readings will increase. If the verification safeguards are followed, problems will be minimal. But if anyone's in a hurry... or the vehicle description is too vague... or it's night... or someone's had a bad/slow day... or if the end of the month is approaching and the definitely-not-a-quota hasn't been met… bad things will happen to good people.

Placing too much faith in an automated system can have terrible consequences. Molner came out of this without extra holes, electricity or bruises. Others may not be so lucky.

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Filed Under: database, errors, license plate reader, police, stolen car

78 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 3:47am

If you think license plate scanners are bad, just wait until facial scanner mishaps start happening.
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Mega1987 (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 3:56am

Human Factor
This is one of those occasions that you SHOULD NEVER EVER remove Human factor in such delicate operation...

you say Humans can't scan as fast as an automated scanner?
those license plate are also subjected to wear and tear...

a few dirt on certain area of the plate will mess up the reader's result. Thus the situation above occurred.

and seems the police is a bit trigger happy to get into the action....
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 3:57am

"But if anyone's in a hurry... or the vehicle description is too vague... or it's night..."

Or the driver is of the wrong color.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 4:03am

Simple solution: let cops check what platenumber they got a hit on before stopping someone. Doublechecking carplate against ALPR-plate saves time, embarrasment and probably lifes in the future.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 4:11am

Paranoia
It just occurred to me, 1984 isn't where we are headed. Paranoia is. The computer isn't really broken or insane, it's just suffering from human data entry errors or making mistakes with face and plate recognition and too many people believe that the computers are always right.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 4:34am

Re: Paranoia
This phenomenon is otherwise colloquially known as 'data blindness'. The asumption is that the computer is walways right.
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Keroberos (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 4:37am

We're sorry Mrs. Buttle, We were looking for an Archibald Tuttle--but, you know--mistakes happens.

What worries me is after pulling the car over an eyeball verification and manually rerunning of the plate number would have told them that this was not the car or plate they were looking for. They just blindly accepted that the ALPR was correct in reading the plate. And you can't tell me they couldn't see the license plate for a manual verification after the car in question pulled over and stopped.
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Spaceman Spiff (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 4:41am

Wanna bet
Wanna bet he was a middle-aged white dude? If he were Black or Hispanic, I'm thinking there would be one more grieving family out there... :-(
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Lurker Keith, 28 Apr 2014 @ 4:53am

chaos ensues?
This was a lawyer. The cops are lucky it wasn't the "WRONG" lawyer. Imagine what would happen if this ever happens w/ one of the lawyers over at Popehat.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 4:54am

Re:
Even better, once they have model and color of the car, do a database check for a near match on the number. They new that well before they stopped him, and a reader misreading the number is more likely than plates on the wrong model of car.
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Quiet Lurcker, 28 Apr 2014 @ 4:54am

Re:
But that would require (shudders) work and integrity on the part of the badge-wearers.

Can't have that now, can we?

/sarc
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 4:59am

Re:
Common sense is not all that common.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:01am

Re: Re: Paranoia
That looks like a lake, but the GPS says it is a parking lot so here we go ... Oh NOooooooo
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:02am

Right. Cops shouldn't be able to be ready to defend themselves. And they shouldn't verify reports what ever the source. Tim, you won't be happy til all cops are gone won't you? A COPLESS LAND FTW!
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:04am

technical solution
This sort of mistake can be reduced by not issuing plates with numbers an letters that are easily confused.

Don't use:
2 7
1 I l
5 S
0 O
Y X
Etc..

This not only helps ALPRs but also humans trying to read plates in dense traffic.

I made the same suggestion to our developers at work to improve the automatic password generator. Too many users have no clue how to copy and paste and also have a hard time reading.

Maybe I should apply for a patent on this obvious idea, imagine how much money I could make licensing this. (pun intended)
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Keroberos (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:12am

Re: Re:
No, they were correct in pulling the car over. Issues with verifying a plate number in heavy traffic are common, and the plate could have been switched to another car. But the car was stopped with a cop in front and back, you would think they would manually rerun the plates, before confronting the driver (he wasn't going anywhere at that point). In every traffic stop I've been involved in, it's been a minute (or more) after the stop before the officer gets out of his car to talk to you. I always assumed they were running the plates at this time to check for any outstanding issues on the car or the registered owner. Taking a minute to verify this manually would have turned a situation that caused citizen concern (and sparked the attention of the media) into something everyone involved gets a chuckle out of (and no one else hears about).
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Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:29am

Re: technical solution
There's another technical solution that could have saved some time. I'm also mildly surprised no one has brought this up yet.

The ALPR could have taken a picture of the license plate at the same time it read it. Then, if the system gets a hit, it saves the image. A human can look at the image and double check the machine. If the license plate can't be read, then the ALPR probably can't read the license plate ether.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:32am

Re:
Defend themselves from what? A gun was drawn on the supposition that the person was dangerous based on a single piece of data. That data was unverified and the person in the car was not acting dangerously when stopped. If the officer was not law enforcement, he would probably be arrested for brandishing a gun in that manner. I don't mind cops defending their lives with guns, but they don't get to just pull them out whenever their nerves get a little jumpy. Pulling out a gun before a threat is present makes you the threat.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:42am

If they want more reliable results they need to either put a barcode on license plates or put one of those QR codes.
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zip, 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:50am

non-violent "crime" met with lethal force?
My objection is not so much with the traffic stop, but the way it was done -- with guns drawn. Which is apparently the proper police dept policy for dealing with any *suspected* non-violent crime:

As for the department�s policy around unholstering weapons, Lovett said the officer was within the guidelines.

�The officer has discretion on whether or not to unholster his weapon depending on the severity of the crime,� Lovett said. �In this case he did not point it at the driver, rather kept it down to his side because he thought the vehicle could possibly be stolen. If he was 100 percent sure it was stolen then he would have conducted a felony car stop which means both officers would have been pointing guns at him while they gave him commands to exit the vehicle.�

I wonder how many car "thefts" reported to police are over a family argument or misunderstanding -- yet settled by deadly police shooting.

http://rt.com/usa/iowa-police-deadly-force-400/
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John Cressman, 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:53am

Plate readers
This whole situation could have been avoided by a LITTLE extra work on the police's part.

1) Pull up behind the vehicle in question and manually run the plates using the officers visual inspection, which as we learned in a previous article is far superior to any camera recording actual events.

2) Flash the lights, pull the driver over and before you exit the vehicle, run the plates again to verify.

Officers did neither and there is no excuse for laziness in someone who carries a gun.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:53am

Re: Paranoia
Computers still suck when it comes to recognizing text and numbers because those things aren't meant to be easily recognizable by computers. Heck, with certain fonts even certain letters tend to be easily confused by humans (ie: a lowercase l, the number 1, and the capital I, though I can tell the difference with the font being used now) though license plates require fonts and standardizations that make it more difficult to confuse (I believe they must be all caps for instance).

For this reason we came up with barcodes, QR codes, and magnetic strips. While I have seen misreadings on them before they are very rare and certainly much more reliable than a computer trying to read characters. Perhaps license plates can have a QR code to supplement the number along with maybe a magnetic strip for close proximity readings using a device that can read them.

QR codes finally have another practical use, further driving the U.S. into an even bigger police state.
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Geno0wl (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:58am

Re: Re: technical solution
I don't know how your system does it, but that is exactly how our system works. Though AFAIK it will only save the picture if it gets a "hit" or a "close match"(because of errors like this) to hotlist cars.

This ultimately comes down to training issues. The officer didn't do his due diligence before approaching the car. Though give him a smidgen of credit for not approaching with his gun aimed at his head yelling about him needing to eat pavement. We have seen many officers take approaches like that. And while this officer did make a mistake, he handled his mistake well.
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Andrew D. Todd, 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:58am

It Happened Before-- In The Railroads
Well, you know, years ago, the railroads tried to use painted bar-codes to identify railroad cars, but they got an unacceptable level of false readings, because it turned out that the bar-codes got dirty in actual service in the field. And, of course, bar-codes are more accurate than printed numerals. So the railroads gave in, and spent the money for an early system of RFID. And, mind you, the railroads' stakes were comparatively low. A failure would only result in a car getting misrouted, and delayed. If you are going to shoot someone on the strength of a tag-reading, you have to be more accurate. If you want to read license plates by machine with reasonable accuracy, you have to replace all the existing license plates with new models which incorporate RFID tags.

At this point, an intelligent criminal is not going to steal license plates, he is going to photograph them, choosing the right model of car, and make fake license plates, using the numbers. That way, the plate owners do not report them stolen, because they aren't. License plates are a long way behind twenty-dollar bills and credit cards in terms of anti-counterfeiting technology.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:58am

Re: Re: Paranoia
Furthermore, certain red lights on intersections should have QR code readers so that every car passing them gets read so that when a stolen car crosses it would show up on the police databases. Then we can really live in a police state where your every move gets tracked.
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Geno0wl (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:01am

Re: non-violent "crime" met with lethal force?
Sorry but I don't consider auto-theft the same level as "non-violent" as drug use or noise complaint.
Maybe it is just me and my experience, but the officers approaching the car with their gun unholsterd(not aimed at them) seems perfectly legit given their assumption the car was stolen.
Many officers pull their guns in situations that really really don't need to, but this one seems fine. Especially considering they never aimed at him.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:01am

Re: Re: Re:
With their database capabilities, including partial number matching given make and color of car, they could have checked for obvious misreads. They already knew the car did not match the plate, but rather than checking for an obvious misread, they jumped to the conclusion that the plates were on the wrong car. Crooks are generally a bit more careful when using copied or stolen plates on a car, so that a police check does not immediately throw up the wrong make or color of the car.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:03am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
How would you know, are you a crook? From my understanding most crooks are on drugs and are too lazy to do all that.
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Geno0wl (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:03am

Re: It Happened Before-- In The Railroads
The intelligent criminals already didn't steal plates. They would/will go to junk yards or other places and pay/steal old plates not in use anymore.
As one detective once told me.
They typically only have the time/resources to catch the stupid criminals, but fortunately 95% of them are stupid.
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zip, 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:04am

Re: Re: Re: technical solution
"Though give him a smidgen of credit for not approaching with his gun aimed at his head yelling about him needing to eat pavement."

That's becoming the new standard. As always, for your own safety of course.

http://www.policestateusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Checkpoint_RosevilleCA_20131026.jpg
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:05am

Could has been worse
Good thing this didn't happen in Cleveland. He would have died of lead poising.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:08am

Re: It Happened Before-- In The Railroads
But an RFID with a reasonable range would require a power source ... maybe the car could provide the power ... maybe the criminal can disconnect it ... how would the automatic scanners know?
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:16am

Re: Re: It Happened Before-- In The Railroads
uhm ... for that matter QR codes could be tampered with so that they are difficult to read or so that numbers get flipped. An automatic mass scanner may have difficulty identifying this. At least with a license plate reader a mass scanner can pull up the license plate number that both the scanner and the cop sees and the cop can look to verify that they match and see what kind of car should go with that number. But what happens when a mass RFID or QR code scanner detects one number but the license plate number is something completely different. Would the cop/automatic mass scanners even be able to detect that there is a discrepancy?

The RFID idea works great if you make the assumption that everyone involved is honest (ie: there is little reason for someone to tamper with the RFID on a train). but when the person in possession of the car is the criminal he maybe in a position to make some changes to throw cops off.

Perhaps a Google glass app that the cop can use to look at a car and have a reader read the information and tell the cop what car should go with the QR or RFID code he is looking at or if the code is even legible.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:16am

Re: Re: Re: It Happened Before-- In The Railroads
(great, now google glasses can be used to further the government's police state agenda).
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zip, 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:25am

Re: Re: It Happened Before-- In The Railroads
"The intelligent criminals already didn't steal plates. They would/will go to junk yards or other places and pay/steal old plates not in use anymore."

Plain common sense. I once did that trick myself when buying a used car from a person just so I could drive it home without attracting unwanted attention (in a state that -to my-surprise- required the seller to keep the plates and turn them in to the DMV). But with license-plate scanners everywhere these days, driving with junk-yard plates is pointless, since they would know in an instant that a plate had expired.
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ChrisB (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:26am

Re: Re:
This is just idiotic. Situations with stolen cars can quickly escalate into life or death. You ask, "What is the threat?" How about 1 ton of steel? There are many reports of cops being seriously hurt and people killed when criminals try to run in a stolen car.

As long as the driver doesn't do something insane, like get out the car and run towards the cops, everything will turn out fine.
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ChrisB (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:30am

Re: non-violent "crime" met with lethal force?
Zip, the story you link to had the kid driving a huge truck out of control near a college campus. Did you want a few students dead before it is appropriate to use guns?
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PRMan, 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:50am

Re: Re: Paranoia
Well, I think we have one more year before we get barcode plates? Right? On our flying cars?
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art guerrilla (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 6:55am

Re:
1. not sure, but it seems most states only require the rear plate; PLENTY of rear plates here get beat to shit, because they have a bumper hitch and it is constantly getting dinged when getting the boat/trailer/whatever hitched up...
not to mention 'dirty' plates from our limerock roads...
i'm sure that will make the readers more accurate...
2. a LITTLE annoyed at the blase reaction of 'oh, that's okay, then...', to 'SOP that both officers approach with their guns drawn and targeting...'
no, that's NOT 'okay'; it may be perversely "NORMAL" for these police state times, but it is NOT 'okay'...
3. to emphasize my point above, i will repeat a factoid that needs telling to deflate the BIZARRE kid-glove treatment given to a cohort which terrorizes and MURDERS 8-10 times more people than so-called 'real terrorists'...
in 2011, 33 donut eaters were shot/killed on the job...
33...
the lowest number since 18-fucking-87...
kops aren't being killed in ANY kind of out-of-control numbers, CITIZENS are being MURDERED by KOPS in out-of-control numbers...
(which -conveniently enough- the dept of (in)justice has NO IDEA what the exact numbers are, because NOBODY IN POWER CARES how many mere citizens the kops kill...)

kops are NOT your 'friend'...
when good kops start SHOOTING bad kops (LIKE THEY DO TO INNOCENT CIVILIANS ALL THE TIME), THEN i'll cut those overstuffed bullies some slack...
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 7:11am

Re: Re: Re:
As long as the driver doesn't do something insane, like get out the car and run towards the cops, everything will turn out fine.
There's just one huge hole in your logic here. Your statement is perfectly valid if we assume the cops are well trained, even tempered, and careful to follow procedure whenever practical. Such a cop would probably be a little more cautious than to override procedural safeguards just to avoid losing a collar. Let's even suppose that it was within procedure to prematurely conduct a dangerous stop just to avoid him leaving their jurisdiction. Once he is fenced in, what possible reason could they have for overriding a procedural recheck of the plate?
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Quiet Lurcker, 28 Apr 2014 @ 7:17am

Re: Re: Re:
Situations with stolen cars can quickly escalate into life or death.
...
As long as the driver doesn't do something insane, like get out the car and run towards the cops, everything will turn out fine.

This 'situation' escalated from 1) a piece of technology not working as advertised and 2) a cop not being able/willing to stop and compare what the machine was reporting to what (s)he could make out with his/her own eyes.

The only people doing something insane here are the cops. They did NOT exercise common sense, which failure led to the cops being forced into doing things that would limit the legal exposure for the cop shop.

Before you ask, the common sense approach would have been 1) compare actual plate to reader information and (in this case) discover the error, 2) call in actual plate for warrants, stolen, etc., 3) assuming no warrants, stolen, etc., and no crime committed then walk away. If you can do all this while still giving chase, great. If not, if stopping the car was necessary before reading the plate, get out of the patrol car, go up to the driver and either 1) explain that the stop had been because the technology got it it wrong, apologize, and thank the driver for their time and patience or 2) hand out citation as appropriate for any violation.
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Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 7:26am

Re: Re: Re: technical solution
It's not practical for cops to pull someone over then confirm, takes too long. However, someone at the police station could look at the picture before dispatching anyone.

I personally think the cop did exactly what he should have. Maybe drawing the gun was a little much, but he definitely should have been ready. The problem I have is he was dispatched in the first place. This should have been checked beforehand.
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Geno0wl (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 7:31am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
Thats great. But let ye cast the first stone of somebody who has never misread something on a computer screen.
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Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 7:33am

Flabbergasted...
...at the number of folks trying to sort out the technical details of the ALPR system. What about the underlying legal issues? Just exactly what is the difference between one of these systems and a GPS attached to your car? I do not mean technical differences, I mean results differences. They both track you.

Arguments for probably include, well it's public, one has no expectation of privacy, or nothing was put on your car.

Argument against: they are tracking you, and without probably cause.

Don't fix the technology, fix the systems underlying it.
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Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 7:34am

Re: Re: It Happened Before-- In The Railroads
Modern RFID chips can be read from hundreds of feet away with a hand held scanner. I learned this while researching a way to keep track of kegs at our brewery. The problem with RFID chips (any RFID chip) is that the signal is blocked by metal. The RFID wouldn't work if attached to a car.

We also researched QR codes, but they would get damaged too easily.
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weneedhelp (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 7:36am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yes... and when we stole cars we would cruise around to find another just like it to lift the tag from.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 7:38am

Re: Re: Re:
I expect the cops to take a bit of extra care before escalating a situation that could go bad far any number of reasons. By pulling their guns, even when not aimed, they are acting in a threatening manner, and given the number of bad cops stories, that can be enough to make someone panic and do something stupid.
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David, 28 Apr 2014 @ 8:00am

Usually if I misread something on a computer screen, I don't draw a gun on people in consequence.

Usually there is still enough time to draw a gun after asking "Sir, it would appear that you are the author of this particular piece of code. Is that correct?"

At any rate, I don't see that approaching a car with a drawn gun is likely to increase your chance of survival. The only thing that will do that is to have backup as a principle.

You can't ultimately mitigate the principal danger of police (or anybody else) being killed on the job. But you can make sure that doing so would put an assailant in a much worse position than he started with.

It would also help if things like copyright violations did not carry penalties indistinguishable from murder, in order to make sure that criminals are less often in the "nothing left to lose" category where murder seems like a comparatively cheap offense to commit in exchange for a small chance at escaping.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 8:17am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
You're correct, the cops around here (I live in the area mentioned in the article) are not well trained or even tempered. In fact, that particular city's cops have a pretty bad reputation when it comes to being overaggressive.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 8:46am

Re: Re: Re: Re: technical solution
10 round magazine? Must be California. (insert ENDO "no right to bear arms" image here)
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 8:49am

Re:
Not verifying shit is precisely what prompts so much police fucking things up, dumbass.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 8:51am

Re: Re: Re: Paranoia
That isn't the problem, the problem is that the GPS doesn't properly indicate that it is a seasonal parking lot. Bemidji State University has this type of supplemental parking for about 4 months of the year.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 9:13am

Re: Flabbergasted...
Again there are technical solutions to your concerns!

I think we can all agree that giving police a useful tool to catch known criminals is a good idea. ALPR do that.

Most here agree that the tracking aspects are bad.
So........

If the ALPR in the patrol car has a pre-populated list of plates to be on the look out for rather than calling home to check each one it sees the privacy concerns are eliminated.

When it sees one of the plates on the list it then phones home the only other time it phones home is to get an updated list of plates to look for.

no logs of all the other plates driving by, no privacy problems.

Basically make the system work like an electronic eye with a 'hot sheet' that all the cops used back in the day to find stolen cars.

That I would have no problem with and neither should law enforcement.
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John Fenderson (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 9:38am

Re: Re: Flabbergasted...
"I think we can all agree that giving police a useful tool to catch known criminals is a good idea."

As a blanket statement, I don't automatically agree with this at all. We need to balance off the usefulness of the tool with whether or not it's compatible with the sort of society we want to live in and the potential for abuse of the tool.

To dredge up the old hackneyed argument -- it would be incredibly useful to law enforcement if they could just come into your house and searched anytime they wanted. But it would be a terrible idea because it's incompatible with liberty and has an unacceptably high potential for abuse.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 10:31am

Re: technical solution
Don't use:
2 7
1 I l
5 S
0 O
Y X
Etc..

I have a friend who once had (may still for all I know...) a vanity plate what was something like I01OIO -- knowing that cops would get confused as hell if they pulled him over. And, indeed, the one time he told me about getting pulled over, he said the cop kept punching it into the computer and finally just let him go, saying "you're one of those computer nerds, huh? and that's like code speak, right?"

Of course, given the story above, you could also see how this might backfire.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 11:28am

How many real criminals got away while they were focused on this false hit on his tag?
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 12:25pm

Re:
I wish this wasn't so true...
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 12:29pm

Everyone forgets what their real motive was.

They had a good enough reason to pull him over, mistake or not. All that cop had to do was detect the odor of marijuana and boom, bonus prize! Too bad the driver was white and probably had the number of an attorney in his wallet.
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Felix Atagong (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 12:42pm

I got it now, Americans are crazy
Since when is a stolen car a matter to take out a gun? Must be my decadent European culture, but I don't get that.
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steve, 28 Apr 2014 @ 1:00pm

uhm wait
So, they're following the guy and rather than run the plates on his car, they "assume" the plates are stolen? Simplest thing in the world to do is run the plate on the vehicle, which would come back as a BMW! This simple 15 second query is all that was needed. Why didn't that happen???? ... something is fishy here!!!
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2014 @ 1:38pm

Re: Re: Re: Flabbergasted...
You make a good point, my generic wording is undesired.

It is good for law enforcement to be able to search your home.....once they obtain a warrant meeting the requirements of our Constitution.
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JBDragon, 28 Apr 2014 @ 2:00pm

I've watch Parking Wars, and still even with their Auto Scanners, they still call in and check and make sure it's correct!!!

Would of that been so hard to do? You know before flipping on the lights to double check what the scanner says and if it's correct then you can flip on the lights and pull the person over and have the guns out, but until them, Double check first. Why people think Computers are 100% correct?!?! You have to use your BRAIN!!!

Seems there needs to be some training done!!! Not jumping to instant conclusions!!!
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rumplestilskin, 28 Apr 2014 @ 3:11pm

Automatic plate reader stop
Only takes a 5th grade education to do what cops do most of the time, so don't expect them to exercise their brains.
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Bluesman, 28 Apr 2014 @ 3:42pm

Re: Paranoia
If you have read Nineteen Eighty-Four, you'd realise we are actually living it (for example, NSA=Big Brother, Gitmo=Room 101, and the torture of prisoners etc is well documented).

You are free of course to believe I am wrong, but Eric Blair's book would tend to belie that assertion.

HTH.
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myperbole (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 3:47pm

Compromise
I'll be more accepting of things like this when the police agree to replace "To Protect and to Serve" with "Mistakes Will Be Made."
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Anonymous, 28 Apr 2014 @ 4:22pm

Re: Re: technical solution
I've been thinking about getting a license plate with GRL-LVR. Most people wouldn't grasp the true meaning, and what's really funny is that most cops wouldn't have a clue.
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Anonymous, 28 Apr 2014 @ 4:26pm

Re: Wanna bet
Or he would cry "Racism!" and some lawyer would get rich.
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Epi, 28 Apr 2014 @ 4:58pm

Re: Will, not may.
In the future, others WILL not be so lucky. There is no may, no maybe, no might not be... We have to face the facts that cops are not capable of consistently following procedures. They will virtually always act in service and protection of themselves before doing so for the public. If anything goes wrong, the greatest likelihood is that the police will lie. If they make a mistake, a few bad apples will plant evidence to frame the innocent, while the "good" apples will quietly watch, and file identical reports as their fellow "bad" apples. Having automatics license plate readers is also just another system the police can exploit. They can always claim it was the fault of the reader. I think a lot of people are lucky these cops didn't call in an air strike to prevent the car from going over the state lines. I could definitely see this encounter ending with dozens of people injured from gunfire as police claim they were fearing for their lives. And of course some administrative flunkie coming out an eighth of a second later to claim that all procedures were followed and the police were not at fault for anything. And yet we still have people who make it sound like it is only a few bad apples and most cops are good... yeah...right!
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BeeAitch (profile), 28 Apr 2014 @ 5:41pm

Re: Re:
A friend of mine would drive an extra 2 miles around a certain local town (on gravel roads) to avoid being pulled over for DWB*.

He drove though the town four times, was pulled over four times.

*Driving While Black.
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Gary, 28 Apr 2014 @ 8:51pm

BAD TAG SCANNING
Thanks for this report!

I shall not only check my lights before every trip, but my license plat too.
The more I think about this!
I believe i'll remove my tags and put them in the trunk before I lock it and walk away!
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M. Alan Thomas II (profile), 29 Apr 2014 @ 12:53am

I assume that errors are made at a much higher rate than is reported, but because most plates don't belong to wanted/stolen cars, most errors result in no action and thus are never noticed.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Apr 2014 @ 6:07am

Re: Re: Re: It Happened Before-- In The Railroads
The problem with the hand held scanner is that the cop is driving and shouldn't be too worried about holding a scanner and scanning each car.

Also, most modern cars are made of plastic these days ;)
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Rob McMillin (profile), 29 Apr 2014 @ 8:12am

What a dumb opinion
�I�m armchair quarterbacking the police, which is not a good position to be in,� Molner told the Post.

Really? Isn't this the express abdication of citizen oversight? Of course we should be reviewing police response. It's part of living in a participatory government.
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Rob McMillin (profile), 29 Apr 2014 @ 8:13am

Re: Re: Will, not may.
Yes, and this guy was -- I assume -- white and driving an upscale car. Imagine if, coincidentally, the vehicle turned out to be the same make and the driver were black.
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DMNTD, 29 Apr 2014 @ 1:20pm

So really.
The issue we are really talking about is how these gang members have a monopoly on violence. So I guess it's not amazing when they utterly abuse it and are really out of control. Imagine that.
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Reality bites, 29 Apr 2014 @ 7:24pm

BMW ..... Oldsmobile.... only a dumbass
Since even a chimp could tell the difference... guess pigs are dumber than chimps.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 May 2014 @ 8:17am

Armchair quarterbacking the police
I have no problems "armchair quarterbacking" the police. Seems to me they need alot more of it.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Mar 2015 @ 7:28pm

He WAS a lawyer... Methinks if his plate indicated the fact, the cops may have steered clear in the first place, given that they fear attorneys. A vanity plate like 'ISUE' might be a good unwarranted-stop deterrent.
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