Certain repo companies have been driving around different
cities across the U.S. with dashcams recording drivers’ license plate numbers.
They then aggregate and sell this data openly. Now with just a license plate
alone, one cannot do much, but there are many different institutions that have
access to this information. Police Departments, for example, can use this
information to find where certain cars have been sighted, and they can then
connect this back to the owner. The privacy concern with this is that it gives
anyone access to someone’s location if they have the means to trace back the
plate number. “Todd Hodnett, founder of the company that aggregates and sells
that data, defends the activity as lawful and harmless. ‘We're just
photographing things that are publicly visible,’ he said.” This is technically
true, but people are still being tracked. Lee Tien, an attorney with the EFF,
says, “We think people are entitled to wander around this grand country without
being concerned about being tracked, what they're doing ... is making it
possible for someone to come back and check."
Hodnett
takes this a step further with his service: National Vehicle Location Service. This
service is exclusively available to law enforcement agencies. They assure us
that no individuals can gain access, and that the database does not contain any
identifiable information. But as the article states, there are a wide array of
companies that can connect a license plate number to a name. It also states
that if a person had money, they could hire a private investigator, which would
have access to the database, and they could get the information that way.
In the
article, it’s stated that five states have adopted laws that regulate or ban
the practice of using the license-plate readers. I think that this needs to be
looked into more by the state government. After just watching, “United States
of Secrets” on Frontline, I feel like letting the government have even more
easy access to where we are at any time is a bad idea. Any law enforcement
agency can pay for access to these databases, and some functionality is free.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the NSA has already gotten these companies to play
ball, but even if they don’t, they can just pay for it. With this service
available, they can get your location, and they can track you. It’s technically
legal because the license plate information is publically available. We are
already having problems with government agencies illegally tracking us and mining our information. If there is some
kind of legal way, we should definitely be writing to our state officials to
take some kind of action to make this information gathering illegal. Privacy is
seriously slipping through our fingers in a variety of ways, and if we want any
hope of keeping it we better nip these kinds of practices in the bud before
things get out of hand.
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