The Oakland Police Department , like many local constabulary forces , apply a permit plate reader , collecting data on locals ’ commute , ritual , and private behavior . Until lately , all the data from the plate surveillance was lay in for however foresighted a computer could hold it . But in discrete manner the police department did away with the “ no formal limit ” convention andis now only keeping the information for six calendar month .
What changed ? Did police finally see theyshould put a ceiling on the invasive surveillance of secret citizens ? Did they come to their sens after a detailedArs Technicaarticle about the secrecy implications of aggregated licence plate data assemblage , as Ars suggests ?
Nah . harmonize to the sergeant in commission of Oakland ’s system of rules , the computing gadget ’s strong drive just ran out of space and function kept them from getting another one .
The OPD scheme saving all the data , by the way , is a calculator running Windows XP with an 80 GB storage private road . At one point , the dataset the computer apply had more than 4.6 million scan , reports Ars , and that only represented December 2010 through the end of May 2014 . That ’s a massive time span ; in comparability , it seems like the new six - calendar month limit point will leave the 80 GB drive mostly empty .
Which is a good thing . The data point being collected is relatively harmless if catch in a vacuum , but when cross referenced with other information place a soul ’s individual life could almost beplotted out on a function . Some states have already begin to recognize this pattern as an encroachment of privateness and blackball the use of crustal plate reader , like in New Hampshire , or at least limited the use , like in Maine , New Jersey and Virginia .
[ Ars Technica ]
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