alt Hacker NewsAll of this presumes that residents in municipalities with ALPRs don't want them used the way they are. That's not true! These things are broadly pretty popular among a broad set of residents.
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They're only popular because people are routinely lied to. We see this same issue time and time again in "free markets".
If you tell people this will help stop crime and that's it, everyone and their mama is gonna say yes.
If you tell people the truth, that police don't really care to look at the data and this surveillance is going to be used to target innocent people for unrelated "crimes" on the taxpayers dollar, then everyone would say no.
This is also why 99% of surveys are broken. You can get people to agree to literally anything if you just lie a little. After all, Adolf Hitler got elected by promising to fix the German economy and, in a way, he did.
I am in favor of them. There is no expectation of privacy in the public setting. I can record anyone on a public street w/o their permission. If these license plate cameras are making the streets safer and helping to reduce crime, why not? Sure there may be some mis-uses here and there, but for the most part they seem to be working and in places where they are deployed, crime is being reduced.