[HN Gopher] SJ police recover stolen cars using license-plate re...
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SJ police recover stolen cars using license-plate recognition and
helicopter
Author : hindsightbias
Score : 19 points
Date : 2023-01-08 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kron4.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kron4.com)
| moloch-hai wrote:
| [flagged]
| brunoTbear wrote:
| Nice to see the Bay Area police doing something though a
| helicopter seems an expensive way to get a stolen car back.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| "a helicopter seems an expensive way to get a stolen car back."
|
| I am not sure, but I think that the chopper time may be
| diverted from other usage, not added on.
|
| Eg. Chopper flies 400 hours per year total. Instead of 400 used
| going around in circles doing nothing, 350 hours are spent
| going around in circles doing nothing and 50 hours are spent
| assisting in stolen car related operations.
|
| I could be wrong, though...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Police choppers here fly ~ 2000 hours annually, I don't think
| that having them for 400 hours per year is going to be worth
| the price of buying them in the first place.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| I was just using 400 as an example...I have no actual idea
| of how many hours police helicopters fly. Well, I do now...
| dkn775 wrote:
| Helicopter usually in the air already it just respnds To the
| call like a cop radio
| willcipriano wrote:
| The costs of automobile theft going unpunshied in society is
| probably much greater than the cost of a helicopter at these
| population scales. For a low income person a car going stolen
| could set in motion a very costly chain of events. It can be
| incredibly disruptive.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| So I guess this is how they plan to sell persistent ALPR
| surveillance by the police to the public. I guess that's just how
| it goes. Convenience will always be an easy way to convince
| people to give up any freedoms they have.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| While I agree with you in principle, that ship sailed years
| ago. Most countries, the US especially have defacto no privacy
| laws or limits on information gathering. I'm just glad it's
| finally being used for something that might help the average,
| reasonable citizen.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| I guess it would be done that way in the US, because you have
| no privacy and no data protection laws.
|
| In the UK if your car is reported stolen the number plate is
| added to the ANPR search database, and if a camera spots it -
| including vehicle-mounted ones - it'll flag up. Otherwise, it's
| not going to get noticed.
| garblegarble wrote:
| >Otherwise, it's not going to get noticed.
|
| I'm afraid that's not the case, the ANPR data for all cars is
| stored (currently) for 1 year whether your plate is on the
| search list or not[1]
|
| 1: https://www.police.uk/advice/advice-and-
| information/rs/road-...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > In the US, ..., because you have no privacy and no data
| protection laws.
|
| > In the UK, ...
|
| Thanks for the chuckle
| discretion22 wrote:
| You are correct that stolen vehicles go onto the priority
| list to help recover them and most people, especially if your
| vehicle is one recovered relativity undamaged as a result,
| are completely OK with that part. If it's wrecked, you're
| going to be less happy.
|
| However, the UK has an extensive police ANPR network
| throughout the country (at least 13k cameras) and these, like
| all policing databases, operate under the blanket exemption
| in data protection laws for "policing purposes"[0]. There are
| regulations surrounding these systems, but they do not stop
| the dragnet surveillance enabled by ANPR.
|
| Every vehicle passing is recorded (55 million records added
| per DAY) and stored for a minimum of 1 year[1].
|
| [0] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-
| protectio...
|
| [1] https://www.npcc.police.uk/FreedomofInformation/ANPR.aspx
| robert_foss wrote:
| San Jose?
| [deleted]
| vondur wrote:
| I'm fairly certain here in Los Angeles County they've being doing
| this for a while. Helicopters are only used if the suspect flees.
| jay3ss wrote:
| > Helicopters are only used if the suspect flees.
|
| Unless you're in Northeast LA and then you have police
| helicopters flying over head at nearly the same time every day
| for years
| dkn775 wrote:
| They do this in Baltimore weekly. The LPR network flags from one
| of the car mounted units and the helicopter is en route.
| Sometimes they even coordinate a team of pickups that do a
| takedown on the vehicle coordinated over the radio before the
| person notices. But from the sky you'll see the cars coming from
| various streets together in a pinch pattern
| grapescheesee wrote:
| I was on Fort Worth Texas about a year ago, and was staying at a
| hotel. Every few nights I saw a car driving around the lots
| there. It was equipped with 4 scanners on the front of it.
|
| I stopped him one night, he had two laptops running some type of
| ALPR setup. He closed them pretty quickly.
|
| He went on to tell me he was part of the police. So I asked, are
| you a police officer? No, he wasn't and never has been. He works
| for a company based in FW, that has contractors who funnel data
| to various entities. Used to find repossessions, stolen, and who
| knows what else.
|
| He told me in so many word to get lost, and call the police to
| tell them he says hi, then speed off.
| zht wrote:
| Who are you to stop someone else on a public street?
| grapescheesee wrote:
| It was not a public street. It was in a private parking lot.
| The hotel management was also happy to call and make a report
| with the license plate I provided them.
| [deleted]
| grapescheesee wrote:
| The company is DRN. The YouTube video I wanted to add has been
| removed.
| jmakov wrote:
| Whay don't they use GPS data that is sent to the manufacturers?
| bastawhiz wrote:
| You wouldn't need the police for that if you own the car,
| right?
| hedora wrote:
| Now that the supreme court eliminated our right to privacy, can
| we at least eliminate license plate registration stickers and
| registration paperwork requirements now?
|
| (Both are purely revenue streams for the police at this point.)
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| In theory, sure. In reality it sounds way, way, way worse.
|
| Having one less BS violation to write isn't gonna stop revenue
| policing when these guys can just lie and the courts will take
| it.
|
| Having the .gov bureaucracy automatically mail out fines would
| be worse. At least with the police you can usually show up to
| court and get it dropped if you have corrected the condition.
| Good fucking luck if the unaccountable bureaucracy decides to
| fine you. And at least the police have to expend the labor to
| do it and it's a personal transaction. When the unaccountable
| bureaucrats enforce those laws there is massive labor savings
| and it's impersonal.
|
| Basically you've taken a revenue stream and moved it from a
| group of jerks who are inefficient and somewhat accountable and
| moved it to a different group of jerks who are less inefficient
| and less accountable.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Pennsylvania eliminated the stickers several years ago.
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(page generated 2023-01-08 23:01 UTC)