I’ve always wondered that too. A lot of people will claim that “it’s their right” to not be recognized by surveillance and that’s why they use those covers, but seems a lot more likely that they don’t want take responsibility if they get in an accident that they can slip out of without being identified.
I now have a Flock camera at both ends of my street. There is no way for me to come or go from my own house without the government having a record of it.
Unfortunately installing a smoke cover on my plate and waiting to get pulled over and issued a ticket is the only real way to kick off a 4th amendment challenge.
That requires a warrant (I'm very familiar with the process to request data from cell carriers). ALPR can be queried at any time because they are government owned cameras.
After Snowden and stuff like this, I assume if the government (at least federal) really wants it, they can procure it. Plus, the location data is probably saved so it’s just a matter of querying a specific phone number to see the whole history.
> The suit stems from recent investigations into how AT&T and other wireless carriers share the sensitive data. A New York Times article last year found that law enforcement has used the data to track phones without a court order. In another investigation, published earlier this year, Motherboard was able to pay a bounty hunter $300 to track the location of a phone using the data. Several lawmakers were quick to criticize the companies’ policies following the Motherboard report.
Privacy is a spectrum. The “they already have all my information” seems like avoidance of a complex topic. Just because some people hand over all of their information to social media apps doesn’t mean we should tolerate even more intrusions into our privacy.
I think a lot of drivers view speeding and extending yellow lights as a bit of a cat and mouse game. As Carlin once said “Cop didn’t see it? I didn’t do it.”
Red light and speed cameras give police too much advantage in this “game” so they seek to take their own advantage.
I don't feel great about toll roads, personally, but I do feel that if you're using a license plate contraption to dodge tolls, your car should be crushed into a cube while you watch.
