License Plate Scanner Equipped Helicopters
 

Thursday night, the task force checked over 2,200 license plates all from a helicopter

huh? How did they do this and why?

Well this story is inconsistent..

The Times says:
"The operation scanned 2,190 plates, netted six misdemeanor arrests, 34 traffic tickets and five cleared warrants." (6+5=11)

KTAL says:
"checked over 22-hundred license plates...They did make 11 arrests, and issued 34 tickets."

These reports sound like the same numbers. But here is where someone has it wrong:

The Times says:
"Troop G this week rolled out a mobile plate hunter, a device stuck to an unmarked car that uses tiny cameras to simultaneously scan multiple license plates while traveling streets and parking lots"

Whereas KTAL says:
"All from a helicopter. The high tech chopper can scan plates from both parked and moving cars"

Me thinks someone has their facts a bit messed up. :confused:

Pretty soon, they'll be able to track car movements across state lines, no matter where you go. If you leave the state, the government will know where you've gone. This may make it easier to track criminals and such.

Looking for the witch that had on the Ruby slippers
 

If you have seen this witch of the east then report to SPD as soon as you can and look out for those flying monkeys and bring a bucket of water to protect yourself.
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Back to thread they are getting big brother ready to take full control of the Matrix by using these license plate scanners and our tax dollars too. Welcome to the machine.
Isaac

Hey Pokie, I bet if we threw that bucket of water on Isaac he would melt!!!!:laugh:

Back to the original topic though, I have heard that they can do this with a device on a car. So I suppose that is how it was done. In my logic though, I am wondering if this is really where they need to be spending efforts. I mean you have so much going on with drug users/dealers, burglaries, etc. Who cares about an expired tag? Let's concentrate on the things that really matter.

My sentiments exactly!

And you know your nobody's fool....

I agree, but we should also acknowledge that cracking down seriously on smaller crimes and making them hard to commit will discourage the greater crimes from happening in the first place. That is until the criminals find a clever way to beat this method too.

I'm not sure I buy that. Or at the very least that would be a bass acwards way of managing law enforcement. I don't mean to debate, but have you ever watched the movie 1984? Did you see the original Orwellian Macintosh commercial? In a weird way, those 60 seconds sorta shaped my life.

In any event, I hope you never find yourself in "the machine". Or in the matrix". Or in a "suit". Or in any number of artful expressions of the bondage that might await you if you fall into certain social traps..............

I will leave you with this one quote which I'm probably misquoting.... But it is close...

Benjamin Franklin (or was it Thomas Jefferson)...
"The government is best that is governed least"....

:peace: Government is not your friend.. The Constitution is your friend. Government is what stands in the way of you and your Constitution. It doesn't get more ironic than that!

Morpheus: Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. ;)

Anyone ever heard of the term "Police State"?

Tracking smaller crimes and making them harder to commit is not something that's possible. People will do things without prior knowledge to the law, most people in our country do not know the finer details of the law, whereas I believe you are not an astute or proper citizen if you do not know the laws you are forced to abide by.

Crime will happen because people now weigh the risks of getting caught beforehand, they obviously choose to do so because they rely on the lack of police presence in their homes and private sector, and this kind of activity by government officials is diminishing the space we may even be able to call private. There is hardly a place anymore with the foundation of the Patriot Act that we can even make the choice to enact on ourselves in a way the government would deem punishable.

The representative government we have only further separates us, the citizens, from our political counterparts. We need to educate ourselves and spread the word that there needs to be a reform on the powers of the government. There is no choice anymore as to who rules us, we are forced to choose from a list of candidates, and those who oppose the system we have, by not voting, negate their voting powers rather than make a vote against the current system.

Remember what we all agreed upon over 200 years ago, that laws would be made FOR the people, and BY the people. If you are unsatisfied about laws you are forced to obey, speak out, rather than cowering in your hole (which is getting even smaller by the amount of police presence lately) and allowing our government to overtake us.

Mullethead

Watch out Isaac..Wise Eyes is lurking!!!!:D

She says it is her friend that is on and not her
 

She is here in the house so we will delete that account.
Thanks,
Issac

Something about this bothers me. They tout this as an effort to recover stolen cars, but recover no cars and instead write 34 tickets at oh lets say $100 each for a total of $3,400 in one day. Apparently this $20k reader will pay for itself in no time! Even if it recovers no stolen cars. If less than 1 in 2,400 cars is stolen, then do we really need this level of intrusion in our lives? But we might as well get used to it because government is getting ever bigger while computers are getting ever faster and cheaper.. this could lead to a bad mix someday.

Well made point Rhertz. I would love to know what those 34 tickets were for.

Something about this smells...
 

There's definitely something fishy about this whole thing. All this expensive high technology and only 1 in 2400 cars are stolen. Sure sounds more like an excuse to spy on everyone and pick on the smaller harmless perpetrators...such as parking tickets etc.:(

Only the government can come up empty handed and still call the results a huge success. Free enterprise sure doesn't work that way. I guess what they mean by "huge success" is writing more ticket$ without having to work as hard to write them.

You are so right rhertz that is why public employees could not work in the private sector. I think if we look at the police and people that work at the post office you will find birds of a fetter tend to flock together.
Isaac

Oh I'm sure it is stuff like expired registration, lapse in insurance coverage, or otherwise not paying some mandatory tax, fee, or expense.

Why not setup 50 of these stations all over town and when a real crime occurs such as an armed robbery or Amber alert, then they would type the plate into the system and wait for the tags to surface. Now that might be worth the intrusion.

Police are a good thing to have, and I respect much of what they do. But I think they should focus more on violent crime. (crimes against society) Sure there is no quick money to be made here, but it is a much more noble effort than writing tickets because you left your garbage can on the curb too long. People want to move to areas with less violent crime and this is the best "economic development" program that we could have, rather than building government owned hotels, steel mills, sugar plants, golf courses, etc. Clean things up, and these businesses will happen driven by the private sector as it should be. But launching expensive fluff programs while there are real criminals floating around is wrong.

Why would police using this device to issue tickets bother you?

Also, if it "pays for itself in no time" then how is it expensive?

The government is more powerful than we are so how do you win? You can speak up all you want but are you heard? As a middle class person and I believe most of us here are this, we pay the most in taxes. I feel middle class pay for everything the rich get richer and the poor get richer but the middle class stays the same.

Just for curiosities sake Scarlett, what income level do you consider rich and what percentage of taxes do you think they pay?

Anyone that makes over 250k-300k/yr would be sitting comfortable. After 90k you don't pay social security, from there anyone making that much believe me gets a tax break on everything. Rich honestly has to make more than 500k/yr but sitting comfortable is 250-300k.

I know I pay 33% due to being a business owner sucks for sure but i am a small business owner i'm not microsoft who is very wealthy not just sitting comfortable.

What do you feel is rich and what do you think they pay? I know rich people get too many tax breaks that the middle class picks up.

Government just gets more and more intrusive by the damn day. They just keep pushin and pushin...if the bastards aint careful they're gonna end up pushin this country into a revolution. I hope they do. Things'll have to get worse before they can get better, and we're all ready for it to get better. They're skatin on thin ice.

It bothers me because of the high efficiency of computers while nearly 100% of drivers break the law on a regular basis (on purpose or not). As the old expression goes, "Rules are meant to be broken". So this all amounts to is nothing but another tax, unless maybe it actually locates significant numbers of stolen cars as designed. (or was that really the design)

As for the expense of the thing, good point. I will respond with two points. If it pays for itself in no time, then I the taxpayer am the investor, but with no vote on the matter. Second would be the faulty design precept. (intend to find stolen cars but really intended to generate revenue thru ticketing of much smaller offenses)

I think you are very misinformed is what I think. I would prefer not to give up much on my lifestyle but there are not and I repeat not tax breaks on everything for what you feel are rich people. We fall into about a 40-45% tax bracket which means us at this level no longer even get to deduct our children. How is that fair? Another example would be medical expenses. You probably get to deduct all of yours. We do not get to deduct ANY unless they are 10% of our income. How is that fair? I could go on and on but I won't. We'd be here all night. I can reassure you though that there is "rich" and "superrich" and it's probably the super rich that may be hitting the real tax breaks.

I wonder how Neo feels about this?