The New York City Department of Finance website links to an online application where pretty much anybody can search for parking violations by ticket number or by license plate number. If you click on the “Search for tickets” link under “Parking & Vehicles” from the link above, you’ll see what I mean.
In early September when I moved my office, I got two parking tickets for unloading my truck in zones I wasn’t supposed to be in. No biggie. It’s a pain, but my company pays for it, so after I let a couple weeks go by to make sure the tickets were entered into the system, I found them on this website by searching with my plate number. I paid the things off with my corporate card and promptly forgot about it.
Until yesterday. I dropped by a former address to pick up some old mail and I found a letter from a debt collection firm about another ticket I had received a while back from a different municipality. I had forgotten about this ticket. Again, no biggie, but a thought entered my mind… How do I know that this debt collection firm really represents the municipality that gave me the ticket? I’ve got enough sense to call and verify, but I’m sure a lot of other people might just pay the thing without thinking about it.
Which got me to thinking further about this. I thought that if ticket information is readily available and searchable by plate number, all an unscrupulous asshat would need to run a big scam would be a way to marry the plate/ticket data to a mailing address. Simply put, one could set up a fake collection agency, send out a big wave of letters referencing the ticket data and probably get a high percentage of respondents to send you checks for hundreds or thousands of dollars.
See where my stream of consciousness is going here? I started thinking about different ways an unscrupulous individual could marry plate data to mailing addresses. One could bribe someone at the DMV, or maybe purchase some data from a list company. Then it hit me…What is printed in easily-legible letters on the side of almost every commercial vehicle in New York City? Umm…the company name and address.
So marrying plate data to mailing addresses is pretty damned simple. One could simply write down plates and addresses from trucks passing by or parked on the street. Coincidentally, these vehicles are highly likely to get a ticket from time to time, which would make a scam like the one I described pretty believable.
So my questions are:
Why the heck would a municipality make it easy for anyone to access ticket data without taking reasonable steps to protect that data from being seen by people other than the registered owner of the vehicle?
If someone ran your plate to see if you owed ticket money, would you consider it a violation of your privacy?
Do you think this application is prone to abuse to the point where someone should bring it to NYC’s attention?
How is this handled in other cities? Is it this easy to get the information in a format that makes it ripe for abuse?
A ticket is court process. Courts are open to the public, as are court records, other than in exceptional cases. Why should there be a separate rule for tickets?
I’m not necessarily saying there should be, but I would like to point out that it’s much easier to get data through this online app in such a way as the data can be easily abused.
For instance, can you imagine the look you’d get from somebody in public records if you asked them to give you information on any tickets issued in the past year for a list of several hundred license plates? Not only would that request be refused, but it would throw up some privacy warning flags.
Yet it would be easy to get the data in an easily-abused format by simply querying a list of plates. No red flags.
I tend to agree. Court records are open to the public and should be, so that any unfairness in the system is open to scrutiny.
The whole online posting of the records seems to allow nosy neighbors to see what is going on and spread gossip. This isn’t an essential part of the court system…
I’ve actually asked myself the same question – in the City of Chicago system, you need a plate number and last name, honestly one of my fears is that my mom will find the website and call me up to nag me every time I get a parking ticket. (She’s retired, she would do that). And yes, with zabasearch and all it wouldn’t take long to implement the clever plan you described. But I think the one deterrent is that the frequently-ticketed such as myself know how the system works, and soon enough someone would recognize a fake collections notice for what it is. Keep in mind you’re probably not going to get a fast turn-around on unpaid parking tickets.
As for why cities put this info on the Internet? Well its a convenient system most idiots can use – the only thing you need to know is your license place #, how to spell your name, and how to use Google to find the website in the first place. And if its easy to use, well, more people pay tickets, more $$$ rolls in, more city workers are hired, more tickets are written … the cycle of life continues.
Well, I was a journalist before I was in marketing, and I ran into that quite a few times as a reporter. If it’s an instance of gathering public records yourself without assistance, you’re golden. But if it’s an instance where you require the assistance of a clerk, they’ve been known to refuse requests they deem suspicious or frivolous, even if they are matters of public record. I think requesting a bunch of parking tickets by license plate might throw up some red flags and some inquiries about exactly why one would want the information that way. Certainly if you were running a scam, you wouldn’t want that kind of attention.