By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and Councilmen Johnny Khamis and Raul Peralez proposed installing license plate readers on garbage trucks. If there is one thing apparently that is important to the collection of your trash and rubbish it is reading every license plate in the neighborhood it seems. The city officials believe it will make a strong dent in the number of stolen and wanted vehicles left out in the street around garbage day.
The proposal involves installation of the readers and feeding the license data to the central computer system that serves the police department’s LPRs installed on patrol cars. It promises to be a monumentally cost inefficient system despite what city officials might claim. The civil liberties implications notwithstanding.
Psst, car thieves of California: be sure to take in your stolen car when you take out the trash.
We featured an article HERE describing this type of system of license plate readers.
Reportedly, the cost of fitting a police vehicle with the license plate reading system is about $34,200.00. While it is unknown if this type of cost will be applied to a garbage truck owned by a private corporation, it certainly describes well the amount of money involved.
In our sister article the Oakland Police Department reported approximately .16% of all license plates read resulted in a hit on a wanted vehicle. Yet, the city here spends over thirty four thousand per vehicle to read these plates. Now, there is this proposal to equip a number of garbage trucks. Why is this a poor cost benefit?
First, San Jose is the tenth largest city in the United States. The number of garbage trucks that would be required to read each neighborhood, a goal of these city officials, is likely to be in the hundreds. To make such a system effective would require each truck on duty to carry a reader or, alternatively, have few trucks that are rotated. The advantage of the former would be a quicker turn around time for reads of neighborhoods, that is once per week. The disadvantage is certainly cost. In the latter scenario having few trucks that are rotated makes the probability of finding stolen vehicles nearly consistent with mere chance and luck.
The best element of assessing cost/benefit would be to estimate the cost of the system per vehicle recovered. Few would agree that if the cost per recovery was a few thousand dollars, it would not merit such expense but it could easily be the case.
Additionally, if the wanted vehicle discovered is moving, the data is of almost no value to the police because, frankly, garbage trucks generally do not pull over stolen vehicles. The police are not going to be around when the hits occur unlike a police vehicle mounted system where they obviously will.
Privacy issues aside, this is not a reasonable use of the city’s money–especially when the department is reportedly reducing its staffing levels.
By Darren Smith
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First they should install license plate readers and facial recognition software at the Mayor’s office and Governor’s office so voters can know who their elected leaders are meeting with at all times.
Steve Groen, I have a story I think you’ll appreciate. I was doing surveillance maybe 20 years ago. I was in the back of my van, parked on the street. A very disheveled woman was walking down the street and stopping every 10-15 feet for a few seconds. I could see she was talking. As the woman got to my van I could hear and see what she was doing. She was reading, and probably memorizing license plates like Rain Man. She recited my license plate 4 or 5 times and then moved onto the next vehicle. i trusted her much more than the govt. We are absolutely simpatico on the 4th Amendment. Cops had field days putting GPS trackers on vehicles sans warrants until SCOTUS got their minds right and said a warrant was needed.
The photo in the article is of a front-loading trash hauling truck which is usually operated by private trash disposal companies, not municipalities. The side-loading trucks that city governments normally use would not be as good for licence plate reading. The reader equipment likely would have to be installed on the street (driver’s) side of the truck in order to get an unobstructed view, and it would have to read licenses on cars in driveways on the opposite side of the street from the truck. Plates on cars parked by the curb on the street would not be readable. This would produce very limited results for the costs involved.
This is a proposal by an idiot government official who doesn’t understand either basic economics or the technical aspects of the equipment and its requirements.
A better idea would be to strike a deal with Google for them to provide license plate data with their Street View vehicles and pay them a fee based upon a percentage of the revenue generated from recovering stolen cars and the proceeds from selling the seized vehicles and property of criminals their system finds.
No cost to the cities and citizens, more income for Google, fewer criminals running loose. Win, win, win, with no added cost or size of city governments.
But Nanny, what big eyes you have…
… All the better to see you with, my dear.
When will people rebel against their every move being tracked? I guess the overlords are just waiting until old people are gone and the young’uns, with no conception of privacy, don’t see a problem. Life lived under surveillance is different, and data mining is another “service” that profits the few. This makes me feel that governments of all stripes have given up on a decent planet and are just putting in measures for whatever apocalyptic events await.
Firstly, it’s not really necessary as a stolen car left on a street will eventually be reported by people living there. Once a car is reported stolen the police are already on the look out.
Secondly, it appears way, way too expensive for the purpose stated.
Thirdly, it is a broad brush that will take in information in an expansive and intrusive manner.
So, either it is intentionally an attempt to surveil the sleepy suburbs or it is a ‘brilliant’ idea of some official who simply can’t back down.
What Spinelli said (both comments above). Government snooping without a warrant is unconstitutional. It’s meddling to keep control of the sheep. And if it aids in recovery of stolen cars and convictions, it still does more harm than good.
Tom Nash, If the govt. collects information IT WILL BE ABUSED. I’m a PI and get info I should not get, from govt. people all the time.
If this technology is used in catching a criminal ( e.g., car thief), the jurisdiction/ agency using the license plate readers will likely cite that example as proof that this mass survailance and data mining is nothing but positive.
If that same jurisdiction uses these license plate readers to target out of state motorists in speed traps, or if an officer checks on the visitor(s) to an ex and the time of the visits, those particular uses are somehow not publicized and touted.
I’m going to join the chorus of people trashing this program. I had the same thought as others when reading the post, namely, that someone’s buddy or family member stands to make $$ if this goes forward.
Today such a practice is already illegal. Recent U.S. Supreme Court cases have ruled that longterm tracking of individuals is illegal and violates the Fourth Amendment. The California legislature has a duty to spell it out in California law.
If a trash truck is travelling the same routes every day scanning the same plates – that would clearly violate the U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
The only way to make some of this nonsense stop is to FOIA the collected data and make a map of public officials and police officers daily travels around town. When it’s THEIR data being collected and displayed for everyone to see, maybe they’ll stop.
After all, it’s all public data. Why could they possibly object to releasing the collected plate scan? It’s all happening in public right?
Awh. . . One of their buddies must have started a business and since he didn’t build it, they’ll fund it instead.
The name of my trash man is appropriately named “Progressive” Waste Solutions. lol
http://www.coldbloodworker.com/louisiana/progressive-waste-solutions/progressive-waste-solutions-abortion-clinic-20140725-0004.jpg
License plate readers are the NSA bulk collection version for local police. It is Orwellian, like much of our current culture.
No way Jose.
San Jose is one of the cities in California that was just recently on the brink of bankruptcy. I assume that this expenditure is just another example of its great “fiscal Managment”.
Looks like someone’s cousin is selling license plate readers for garage trucks. What a ridiculous idea but then someone will make money out of it. It’s only tax payer money after all.
If it reduces the number of stolen cars I am in favour.
The science geek
http://www.thesciencegeek.org
I would be happy if the garbage truck didn’t knock my garbage can over twice a week. If they have a system for not knocking over my garbage can I am all for it.
BTW, can they afford this? CA cities are having financial troubles and I am not up for bailing them out.