{"id":6294,"date":"2011-11-20T13:02:23","date_gmt":"2011-11-20T12:01:54","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-20T12:01:54","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=6294","title":{"rendered":"Low-tech GPS: WaPo.com: “License plate readers: A useful tool for police comes with privacy concerns”"},"content":{"rendered":"

WaPo.com: License plate readers: A useful tool for police comes with privacy concerns<\/a> by Allison Klein and Josh White:<\/p>\n

An armed robber burst into a Northeast Washington market, scuffled with the cashier, and then shot him and the clerk\u2019s father, who also owned the store. The killer sped off in a silver Pontiac, but a witness was able to write down the license plate number.<\/p>\n

Police figured out the name of the suspect very quickly. But locating and arresting him took a little-known investigative tool: a vast system that tracks the comings and goings of anyone driving around the District.<\/p>\n

Scores of cameras across the city capture 1,800 images a minute and download the information into a rapidly expanding archive that can pinpoint people\u2019s movements all over town.<\/p>\n

Police entered the suspect\u2019s license plate number into that database and learned that the Pontiac was on a street in Southeast. Police soon arrested Christian Taylor, who had been staying at a friend\u2019s home, and charged him with two counts of first-degree murder. His trial is set for January.<\/p>\n

More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.<\/p>\n

With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}