New ALPR Scanners on the Road in Lynn
Details from itemlive.com on the new license plate scanners being deployed by the Lynn police department.
There are a number of interesting details in this latest Massachusetts law enforcement deployment of these automatic license plate scanning and tracking systems.
For an overview, these systems are camera’s mounted on police cruisers that snap pictures of all license plates in range, and scan the plate ID, and match it against “hot lists” tagged in onboard computers for any vehicles that might be wanted for any reason: stolen vehicles, expired insurance, suspended drivers license, outstanding court warrants, amber alerts, BOLO alerts (Be on the lookout) for criminal offenders, and more.
The hotlists are uploaded from local and federal law enforcement agencies, Registry databases, and local towns can have their own hotlists, for cars with too many parking tickets, unpaid taxes, or anything they choose.
The systems can identify as many as 1000 cars per hour, driving at highway speeds, or parked by the side of the road.
And though the lookup of the plate match happens on-board, and isn’t run remotely, all the data is stored. The police can collect and save the data on every plate identified, and store the vehicle’s location by time, date, and GPS location.
The town of Brookline recently rejected state funding for ALPR systems because of data sharing privacy concerns.
This report doesn’t mention whether or not the Lynn PD is sharing this data with state and local systems, or where the funding for these devices was acquired from.
Related posts:
- More Police Surveillance in Brookline Update: Brookline ultimately rejected state funding for these devices, due...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.