Boston's finest - license plate scanning
From the
Boston Globe:
Boston Police halt license scanning program
The Boston Police Department has indefinitely suspended its use of high-tech scanners that automatically check whether drivers have outstanding parking tickets, lapsed insurance or other violations after a Globe investigation raised serious privacy concerns.
The police inadvertently released to the Globe the license plate numbers of more than 68,000 vehicles that had tripped alarms on automated license plate readers over a six-month period. Many of the vehicles were scanned dozens of times in that period alone.
And this little tid-bit:
Nearly 1,700 plates registered five or more scanner hits over the six-month period, most for insurance violations or unpaid traffic fines. The most-scanned plate came back as a hit for lapsed insurance more than 90 times.
But some repeat alarms were for serious violations. One Harley Davidson motorcycle that had been reported stolen passed license plate scanners a total of 59 times between Oct. 19, 2012, and March 13, 2013. It was often recorded on sequential days or multiple times in a single day, all by the same scanner and almost always within the same half-hour span in the early evening.
Boston police chief technical officer John Daley indicated that each of these scans prompted an e-mail alert to the department�s Stolen Car Unit, but there is no indication that the motorcycle was ever apprehended or even stopped.
They spent all that money on the technology but failed to implement the organizational changes to make use of the new data. Stupid is as stupid does. Our tax dollars at work.
Posted by DaveH at December 14, 2013 4:33 PM