Don't do it. Even though there is some merit to the concept with a town like PV with finite ingress/egress points, the proposal has two gigantic problems:

1) The NCRIC does not have a general purge policy. The "1 year retention policy" would be a 'goal' not a commitment.

2) Keeping this kind of data on citizen movements for a year is far too long in the first place. 30-90 days would be more than enough for someone to report an issue and have officers look through the data. That which could become evidence can be flagged for longer retention while the average citizen's data would be purged quickly.

Do you use FasTrak?

It keep track of every time you go through a toll booth.

Anybody complained about that?

We are a rural community without street lights and stop lights. We pride ourselves on our volunteer ethic and natural beauty. True there are several homes in our town that could attract burglars. Would keeping track of every license plate that enters the town really help with the detection of those crimes? Our country is moving toward a big brother mentality of recording citizen movements in the name of security. I suspect most of the town's most lavish homes have security in the form of alarms and cameras, or they have safes. It feels like too much data and invasion of privacy in a data overload world.

Perhaps we should apply for grants from Homeland Security for a couple armored vehicles equipped with tear gas canister launchers! Secure the Fatherland!

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

May God bless America.

Yes and Ben Franklin signed his name.

He also did not go about in public wearing a mask to hide his identity.

A man of true courage.

Pete: Nice argumentum ad hominem. Way to deviate off topic.

Almost as fun as watching a guy insert himself into every issue for neighboring towns. Don't see a lot of folks doing that on Athertonian issues.

Oy vey, such courage!

LOL

Amazing how childish people become in these posts. Especially when they can't even use their own name.

It may be of use for town residents to have references to the benefits/disadvantages to communities which have used this technology previously. While I do have concerns about potential mishandling of the data, say through a security breach of a database, the proliferation of inexpensive IP cameras at many homes may make this issue moot. Enabling a data-based decision based on previous communities success (e.g., perpetrator capture rate) or failures would be beneficial.

"Police-enforced ANPR in the UK
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Closed-circuit television cameras such as these can be used to take the images scanned by automatic number plate recognition systems
The UK has an extensive automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) CCTV network. Police and security services use it to track UK vehicle movements in real time. The resulting data are stored for 2 years in the National ANPR Data Centre to be analyzed for intelligence and to be used as evidence."

@trailrunner: I do not see any posted evidence for SMC, but there are numerous example online.

In Virginia, triple the error rate percentage to successes - "The license plate readers demonstrated a high error rate. Four ALPR vehicles used in Fairfax County over the course of five nights in February 2009 scanned 69,281 vehicles. The camera database produced twelve bogus hits and recovered four stolen vehicles, for a recovery rate of 0.6 percent and an error rate of 1.7 percent." Web Link

George Mason University crime study - "Especially with law enforcement technologies, efficiency is often mistakenly interpreted as effectiveness, which can perpetuate a false sense of security and a mythology that crime prevention or progress is occurring (Lum, 2010)."

"Further, especially in the case of license plate readers, efficiency may not be significantly connected to effectiveness. The most accurate license plate readers might be used by law enforcement officials in ways that have no specific or general deterrent, preventative, or detection effect whatsoever. Some have even argued that if LPRs can at least reactively catch a car thief, then it does not matter what its crime deterrent effect might be. At $20,000 to $25,000 per unit, such assertions seem, at best, naive and, at worst, very expensive."

"DO POLICE AGENCIES EVALUATE THEIR LPR USE?
It is uncommon for police agencies to conduct outcome evaluations of their operations using rigorous evaluation methods. The same is even truer of police technologies like LPR. Lum, Koper and Telep (ONLINE FIRST, 201 0), in their Matrix on policing evaluations show no evaluations or police technology with respect to crime outcomes prior to the PERF and GMU studies. Most agencies only evaluate the process of tactics or the efficiency of technologies, concluding "success" if an arrest is made or if the technology works faster.
Of the 35 agencies that use LPR, only five (four large and one small) conducted any type of assessment of LPR use, and none conducted impact evaluations."


@trailrunner: Note that other studies have shown the majority of hits are for expired registrations. A very expensive way (in dollars and loss of privacy/police state) to do the job DMV eventually gets done anyway.

Static LPR's just to collect everyone's movement, everyday, just in case there is a crime somewhere, someday?

Absurd. Maybe Police States such as China, North Korea or Saudi Arabia, one supposes.

@trailrunner: "potential mishandling of the data, say through a security breach of a database" Do not discount misuse of data without a security breach. It happens far too frequently.

I'm opposed to the increasing intrusions on our privacy. There is no sure way of ensuring the information gathered would remain private. To compare this type of surveillance to FasTrak is specious. FasTrak is an option because a driver can choose to buy it or not; constant camera surveillance is not the driver's option.