In an ominous report, Lt. William Tyler of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department explains how citizens in San Jacinto and the surrounding area will soon be monitored and tracked by police just for driving down the street. The location and identity of every vehicle in visual range or a police vehicle equipped with this license plate scanning system will permanently store this data, and share it with other law enforcement agencies across the country in a “nationwide web”.

Automatic license plate scanner technology allowed police vehicles to identify cars on the road that may be wanted on suspicion of being stolen, amber alerts, or matched with drivers/owners who may be wanted for outstanding warrants, or driving on suspended driver’s licenses. If a vehicle in the database is in scanning distance of the system, the officer in the cruiser in immediately altered to take action.

But the system does much more than that, as this report in the Valley Chronicle explains. The system is passively capturing data on every vehicle, and the time and location via GPS. The data can be called up to determine vehicles that may have been in the vicinity of a crime scene, sensitive security site, or any other location of interest to the government. The data can be mined by homeland security to put together a pattern of the movements of any citizen.

These powerful capabilities raise serious questions about who has access to this data. And what will they be searching for? Can you be a suspect or person of interest just because you were parked near suspicious activities? Are they going to track anyone who might be in the area of perfectly legal events and political rallys?

And what is the next step in the surveillance state? How much longer will it be before these systems are accurate enough to scan people and perform instant facial recognition matching with DMV photos?

These kind of extremely powerful monitoring tools school concern every California citizen, and we should know exactly what they are used for.

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License Plate Scanning System Used in Lomita, CA (photo credit)

The latest license plate scanners in California belong to the Lomita CA Sheriff’s department. There is a nice picture of the unit (right) in the article that hints at the impressive capabilities of these systems.

The license plate scanner is able to identify and track 1000 vehicles an hour by using three camera systems mounted on the police vehicle. It can scan and identify vehicle license plates while parked stationary by the side of the road, or moving rapidly down the highway.

When a vehicle with a known license plate and associated legal issue is spotted by the system, the officer in the vehicle is instantly alerted with an audible beeping tone.

Currently, these license plate scanning systems in California and nationwide are most commonly used to locate stolen cars. Vehicles that have been registered in the database as stolen are matched on the spot, in real time. A sheriff’s or police cruisers equipped with these license tag scanner systems just has to be within camera range. The driver of a stolen vehicle is quickly caught and arrested, and the vehicle is impounded, and ultimately returned to it’s owner. Stolen car recover percentages are expected to significantly increase due to these systems

These scanners can be used to identify vehicles or drivers with a variety of legal issues, from active “Amber Alerts”, to the locations of registered sex offenders, and whether they are keeping a legal distance from schools and playgrounds as required by law and the terms of their probation and release.

Other common uses for these scanners in California include identifying outstanding criminal warrants for failure to appear in court, or people whose drivers licenses are under suspension. The system can easily be adapted by cities and towns to flag cars with too many parking or traffic tickets.

The most disturbing element of this technology may be it’s capacity for massive data gathering. By matching license plate data and storing the GPS location, date and time, these systems are capturing and storing data on millions of law abiding citizens. As different police and sheriff’s department across California and nationwide are sharing these data, the government is essentially tracking your movements. Where your car has been spotted at any time in the past can be accessed.

The government will use this for data mining experiments to determine patterns of traffic and behavior. Some uses will be to flag houses that have significant visitor patterns that could suggest drug sales going on at that location.

Ultimately, this data can be combined and used in extremely intrusive ways. Constitutional law and civil liberties have yet to catch up to and defend citizens from this near constant spying surveillance. The use of this technology will require careful scrutiny.

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If you are charged with any criminal offense in California, please contact our attorneys for a free case evaluation.

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Another California law enforcement agency is being added to the growing list of those employing passive license plate scanning and tracking technology. The Oceanside police department is the newest participant, along with the recently added departments of Escondido and Carlsbad.

This article does a very good job highlighting some of the many potential civil liberties issues and government abuses that are possible with this technology.

These license plate scanners photograph and scan all license plates within range of the police vehicle. The license tags are translated into text and matched with an on-board database of license plates identified to have any outstanding government-identified issues.

The primary mission of these systems is said to be locating stolen cars. But with a push of a button the systems are easily configured to identify driver’s who many have criminal warrants, hit and run driver’s, back tax payments, suspended driver’s licenses, or lapsed auto insurance

Even more troubling is the vast tracking capability and historical data that is captured and stored by these systems. Each plate captures is saved and matched by it’s location at the time via an onboard GPS.

So it is entirely possible for police officers to review your past history, and find out where your plate has been scanned at anytime in the past.

With more and more police and law enforcement agents using these systems, now is the time to be concerned about safeguarding our Constitutional liberties and protetions.

These units will only become cheaper, and will likely be standard equipment on all police vehicles in the very near future. And database tracking and sharing will only become more robust. Your driving history and patterns are essentially an open record. And unlike with EZ Pass toll systems, you are not allowed to opt out of this government surveillance.

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If your are facing any criminal offense in the state of California, take advantage of our free legal defense consultation on any California criminal charge.

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Rancho Cordova, near Sacramento is the newest police department in California to deploy automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) scanning systems. This technology allows police offers to passively scan and cross-check hundreds and possibly thousands of plates per hour against law enforcement and DMV database lists.

The most typical use is to locate vehicles that have been stolen. License plate scanning technology is also used to find drivers/car owners who may have outstanding warrants for failure to appear, or have a suspended license. Because of the increasing use of these passive systems, it is incredibly risky to drive if you face any of these charges. The odds of being caught are just too great.

If you know you have an outstanding failure to appear, you should attempt to deal with the problem immediately, before you are stopped and arrested. Your options to “explaining it away” and avoiding spending additional time in jail are best when you have some leverage, and are showing good faith in resolving the problem.

We can help you try to fix the warrant for failing to appear in court, and possibly get you a new court date with no additional penalties.

Please contact us for a consultation on your case, and we’ll go over the situation with you. We can suggest options, and tell you exactly what we think we can do to help you in this difficult situation.

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A mall in Manteca California is setting up video scanning technology, and directly connecting it to police tracking databases. The automatic license plate scanner will be looking for stolen vehicles, and could be used for locating the cars of anyone believed to have a criminal warrant, or be driving while their license is under suspension.

These license plate scanners typically are mounted on police vehicles of many departments, and are in use in a number of communities such as Sacramento. They allow police officers to passively scan up to thousands of cars per hour, checking license plates against databases generated by the DMV and other law enforcement agencies. When a vehicle is flagged by a computer in a police cruiser, the officer is instantly notified to pull over you vehicle.

The use of these scanners in stationary, unattended locations is a new trend that is often associated with homeland security related monitoring and tracking. In this case, it is primarily said to be employed to track down stolen vehicles, in an area with among the highest incidents of car thefts in the nation.

Once set up, however, these scanners can easily be employed to match information about the owners of the vehicle license plates scanned. If the owner has a suspended driver’s license, or has an open criminal warrant for failure to appear, the police will instantly be notified.

These scanners are being added to new locations and used by more police departments all the time. If you have a warrant out for your arrest, it is becoming extremely difficult to avoid being caught. It always makes sense to talk to an attorney about how you can fix your problems with the courts and the law as quickly as possible, while you may have an opportunity to avoid the harshest result.

This information is also stored and can be used to later trace your movements. For example, if the police or other law enforcement agents are interested in where you or your car have been recently, they’ll be able to run a check on any license plate location hits from any of these scanning sites, or mobile monitoring stations. They will know that you’ve been to the mall, or were driving down I-5 at a certain time of day.

If you’ve been charged with a crime in California, please contact us to get a free criminal case evalaluation and legal consultation.

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Another California police jurisdiction (this time in Palm Desert) is employing automatic license plate scanners to search for cars and drivers with legal issues, expired licenses, outstanding warrants, and more. In the case of the article cited, the scanners located a stolen vehicle, but this same system also flags drivers with criminal warrants, expired drivers licenses, and more.

How do the License Plate Scanners Work?

1. Video cameras are mounted on police cars that could be either parked by the road, or driving down the highway.
2. The cameras are connected to computers in the police vehicles that use optical scanning and character recognition software to translate every video image of a license plate into scanned data.
3. Every license plate number scanned is instantly matched with an on-board database of flagged license plates, that is either updated in real time, or downloaded daily. The data comes from the DMV, or other law enforcement databases that is matched with known stolen vehicles. The data is also matched to the owner of the vehicle. If the owner of the vehicle is known to have a suspended driver’s license, outstanding criminal warrant, or other issue, the police officer in the vehicle is instantly alerted, and instructed to pull over that vehicle.

The technology can potentially scan thousands of cars her hour.

Isn’t that a little Big Brother-ish?

It is, yes, many people think so. But these scanning and surveillance abilities have survived court challenges so far, so they are likely hear to stay. All you can do is be aware that these systems exist, and are only going to become more commonplace as the technology gets cheaper.

The bottom line is that if you have any outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court, or are driving with a license that is under suspension, you need to understand the huge risks you are taking. If you are arrested, you will very likely go to jail.

And many of these problems can be avoided with an experienced criminal defense lawyer to tackle these problems, clear your name, and maintain your freedom. Please contact us right away to find out how we can help you out of any criminal issue in California.

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