[danhorner]

I'm a little confused about the mall operator's incentive to do this.

Are they using ALPR for their own security and voluntarily sharing the reads? Is the provider giving them a discount to do so or paying to place cameras or something?

[Spooky23]

The government will just ask. Security types crave the opportunity to do a favor for the cops, and voluntary cooperation is not a legal issue.

I served on a jury where the police were able to gather footage covering like 14/24 hours of the defendants time from a variety of camera feeds (up to 40 I think).

After torturing us with introducing dozens of these videos to build the timeline, the case was fucked up (and defendant found not guilty) because they couldn’t explain NTP in the context of a camera used as the primary time reference point.

[reaperducer]

In some cities, the police departments have programs to allow the cops to tap directly in to people's internet cameras at their homes, or to immediately turn over recordings to the police that their home cameras have made. People willingly join the program.

Here's one called Vegas SafeCam: https://www.lvmpd.com/en-us/Pages/VegasSafeCam.aspx

"You’ve purchased a home surveillance system and have registered your system with the LVMPD. Several weeks later, a Patrol officer comes to your door and informs you of a recent burglary in your neighborhood. The Patrol Officer has used the database for this program in their patrol car, and has gone to your residence for follow-up. The Patrol officer asks you if it would be possible for you to review your video for a suspicious person or vehicle between the listed times of the event."

The Las Vegas one isn't real-time, but I believe Chicago's might be. Then again, about 10 years ago, CPD was bragging about having 3,000 cameras around the city. It must be 300,000 by now.

Max Headroom wasn't campy sci-fi. It was a warning.

[jstarfish]

A former employer of mine opted to install ALPR cameras at the entrances to/from the office park. It would establish a direct feed to the local police as to who was entering the property at any given time.

I questioned why this was necessary and received a vague hypothetical about domestic abusers/deranged exes harassing employees/kidnapping suspects entering the property, with no clear indication as to how we'd flag such individuals without them having active warrants out.

The only practical use case was perhaps catching vehicles with active Amber Alerts out that might try to hide out on the property.

So the police basically got free intel from us, and we received no incentives to install or maintain such equipment from them.

[dahdum]

It's not meant to stop vehicles in real time, but that data can be used to solve break-ins (identify all new vehicles and narrow down), establish proof of harassment / breaking of a restraining order, etc..

So could cell phone records, but ALPR is simpler and fewer legal concerns. As a business owner, there's little downside, and most of the employees would have been caught on ALPR, toll booths, cell phone tracking, and other tracking a dozen times on their way to work already.

I don't really like that location data is near-public information nowadays, but I don't see it getting any better.