As time passes by, more and more surveillance cameras and automated license plate readers are watching the highways of the United States.
Sometimes you can see what they see, like in Virginia – but it’s not as if you have license plate recognition software on your home PC, or that you can see a resolution higher enough to do that.
In Washington D.C they have 250+ cameras doing just that:
…police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.
GPS tracking of private/personal vehicles is sometimes allowable – the reasoning is that it is the same as a police officer tailing someone, just more efficient:
But little is known about how or how often law enforcement agents use them. And without a clear ruling requiring agents to obtain a “probable cause” warrant to use the devices, it leaves citizens who may have only a distant connection to a crime or no connection at all vulnerable to the whimsy of agents who are fishing for a case.
How long before vehicle black boxes are compulsory, and the authorities can download the data in an instant?
