New police surveillance technology is being deployed in Montgomery County.
These scanning systems read license plates from up to 3,600 licence plates per hour, by being withing camera range of any of 4 cameras mounted on a police cruiser. Plates are tagged and cataloged, and any license plates that register as a “hit” on a law enforcement database alert the officer in the vehicle to immediately take action.
According to ultimatewoodlands.com, license plate hits can result from a car being stolen, an amber or silver alert, identify known felons if their cars are spotted in an area know for drug activity, and a host of other actions.
Because the scanners track location of the hit by GPS location, they can also be used to only flag cars owned by registered sex offenders when they are within proximity of a school or playground, or might be violating other court imposed restrictions.
Other common uses are for matching car owners who might be drivers, and be wanted for failure to appear on a warrant, or who might be driving on a suspended license.
These systems can be part of a greater government surveillance net, when all the data from all licence plate his is combined. After all, the aren’t only collecting data on criminals, they are collecting hits on everyone. While they don’t need to take action on every plate, that data is stored, so a history of anyone’s travels can be assembled after the fact, matching locations with anytime a car was tagged with these systems, anywhere in the country.
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