They do in Philadelphia as shown on the TV series “Parking Wars.” Two enforcement officers cruise around in a van with boots checking each plate they drive by. When the camera spots a plate with a warrant for a boot, it comes up on a laptop being worked by the officer in the passenger seat. They then get out of the van and apply the boot.
If you watch enough reruns of Adam 12 you’ll sometimes see the start of the officer’s day where they’re in the room and Sarge is giving them a list of cars to watch out for. It was then a mathematical exercise in whether the patrol officers would see a plate, and remember it was on the list or not. (Or of stopping someone and noting that the plate was on the list.)
This camera automates the process and applies it to more cars by orders of magnitude.
I don’t like Big Brotherishness any more than the next guy, but I can’t find a fault with the difference between a random observance by an officer and the dedicated function of this system.
Here’s an article about how New Haven is using the technology to catch cars of people with unpaid taxes. Although they say that locating stolen cars is the most common use (which means that if you steal a car, you should also steal the front plate off a different car).
Thank you for that clarification. I was starting to think I was holding my score card backwards. 
Eh, but until recently, no one expected high-speed cameras and computers to make a blanket search of all passing cars feasible. Isn’t this a bit like stopping every human being on foot and asking to see ID, then running it through a computer to look for outstanding issues? Isn’t there some requirement to show probable cause and not just search every human being who appears in public?
What happens when the technology to see through the walls of your house is developed? Extension of the argument advanced in this thread implies that when that happens, it will instantly become unreasonable to expect privacy in your home or on private property. Just because a technology is developed does not imply use of it – especially, I would think, indiscriminate use of it – becomes reasonable.
Not exactly, but I’ll bow out anyway as a simple courtesy to everybody else.
With the “War On Terror” going on strong for another 30, 40, 300 years, (an endless war seems to be Big Government’s wet dream) I don’t think it’s paranoid to think this is within the realm of possibilities.
Ask anyone who has flown regularly for the past 15 or 20 years if they ever thought that they would have to go thru the horseshit that the TSA’s “Security Theater” department has dreamed up for us in 2011…
(bolding mine)
To me, the difference is that *you’re **not *being stopped. You’re going about your day with no inconvenience at all, no being stopped, no being searched. You’re just driving to/from your destination.
You only get stopped if you have an outstanding warrant issued already.
In your scenario, it’s “guilty till proven innocent.” In the real-world scenario of the OP, it’s “driving along, going to the grocery store, singing with the radio.” Unless you have a warrant out for your arrest, in which case, it’s really only a matter of time till you’re in the clinker.
The license plate is always in public view. That makes all the difference.
As a previous poster said, they aren’t searching you or your papers or your home -they are searching their own databases. The whole point of having public display of registration numbers is so they can tell who you (or the owner of the car) are. How about if the license plate actually had your name and address on it for all to see? If the cops then checked your name for warrants would that be an invasion of your privacy? And what technology is out there that “reads” plates w/o seeing them? Are the plates now equipped with RFIDs?
This isn’t a matter of, “If your not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about.” Its more, “You’ve ALREADY done something wrong (I know, allegedly) and you should be worried” And no one’s rights are being violated by any stretch.
Please head over to Room 17, the Room of Ironic Punishments, for your beating…
…with corduroy pillows.
No, it isn’t like stopping everyone and demanding to see ID. It’s like a cop walking down the street, and if he sees a guy who looks like the guy in a wanted poster, arresting the guy.
It is not a search to look at someone’s face. It is not a search to look at the (outside) of someone’s car. It is not a search to read someone’s license plate. In fact, it is mandatory for you to display a license plate while driving on the public roads. It is not mandatory for you to display ID at all times.
It would be perfectly legal for a cop to run the plates for every car he sees, and in fact it is routine for cops to run the plates on every car they stop, that’s why, if you ever get stopped, the cop doesn’t come up to your car for a few minutes–he’s running your plates first.
However, if he runs your plates and finds that you have unpaid traffic tickets, what is he gonna do? Arrest you? No, because unpaid fines isn’t an arrestable offense. If you’re driving along, and the cop runs your plates and finds that you have unpaid fines, he isn’t even allowed to stop you for that.
Again, cops run the plates on the cars they see routinely. It happens all the time. It isn’t creepy or big-brotherish to have an automated system of doing so.
It makes it a lot easier for them, and they can check the guy whether he is on a wanted poster or not.
This post is the embodiment of everything wrong with today’s nanny state. People with this permissive attitude are why privacy is being eroded little by little. You don’t mind being videod in public spaces. You don’t care. What happens when they start videoing you in private? Don’t pretend that’s not an eventuality, because quite frankly, given the rate of progression of current surveillance technology, it is.
I have nothing to hide (my car is legally licensed, I don’t have a history of unpaid tickets, never been arrested, don’t generally do illegal things other than the occasional speeding, etc), but I disagree. You should know that the government is never satisfied with access to a certain amount of information. They will ALWAYS want more. Just because you haven’t drawn that line yet doesn’t mean they won’t one day cross it.
BTW, there’s no way to “go back” and unwrite these laws or unmake this technology after it starts to bother you. Either be concerned now about the future, or don’t ever bother.
Slippery slope! Slippery slope!
Tell that to the lawmakers who repealed parts of the Patriot Act as unconstitutional.
Was Franklin slippery-sloping when he said those who give up freedom for security deserve neither? It’s extrapolation. It may be logically fallacious, but governments do not operate purely on principles of logic.
If I’m wrong I’ll eat your hat.
I am terribly unobservant, but I missed that. Please enlighten me. 
Could you explain what freedom you think you’re giving up?
And also whether you prefer wool or beaver.
To address the other part of the OP’s issue: perhaps a shower cap held on by a velcro wire tie? It would likely stand up to a pressure wash.
As for the other issue, I kind of wish it had been available a few years back when I had a car stolen. It might have been recovered instead of just disappearing into the land of chop shops and the like.
I’d think twice before I dissed Ben Franklin.
He was a pretty smart old guy.