Boston: Automatic License Plate Scanners

[Pat McCotter]

From Bruce Schneier's October 2005 Crypto-Gram

http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0510.html#5

Automatic License Plate Scanners
The Boston Transportation Department, among other duties, hands out parking tickets. If a car has too many unpaid parking tickets, the BTD will lock a "Denver Boot" to one of the wheels, making the car unmovable. Once the tickets are paid up, the BTD removes the boot.

The white SUV in the photo (link below) is owned by the Boston Transportation Department. Its job is to locate cars that need to be booted. The two video cameras on top of the vehicle are hooked up to a laptop computer running license plate scanning software. The vehicle drives around the city scanning plates and comparing them with the database of unpaid parking tickets. When a match is found, the BTD officers jump out and boot the offending car. You can sort of see the boot on the front right wheel of the car behind the SUV in the photo.

This is the kind of thing I call "wholesale surveillance," and I've written about license plate scanners in that regard last year.

Richard M. Smith, who took the photo, made a public request to the BTD last summer for the database of scanned license plate numbers that is being collected by this vehicle. The BTD told him at the time that the database is not a public record, because the database is owned by AutoVu, the Canadian company that makes the license plate scanner software used in the vehicle. This software is being "loaned" to the City of Boston as part of a "beta" test program.

Anyone doubt that AutoVu is going to sell this data to a company like ChoicePoint?

AutoVu:
http://www.autovu.com

The Boston Globe has written about this program:
http://www.autovu.com/website/content/pressreleases/Boston_Globe.html

The white SUV photo:
http://www.computerbytesman.com/privacy/spycamsonwheels.jpg

Me on wholesale surveillance:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-057.html

[Pat K]

Oh please some body put the boot on their SUV.

[Kat Kanning]

Hehe

[AlanM]

Oh please some body put the boot on their SUV.

I've got a boot aimed for a certain part of their anatomy. 

[Pat K]

Well you better have reallly good aim cause I'M sure there really small.

[polyanarch]

boot to the head!