TX: Automatic license plate readers helping to deter crime and track registrants in Houston-area cities

Source: khou.com 2/21/22 HOUSTON — Some Houston-area cities are fighting crime by installing virtual gates around their communities. Dozens of cameras are taking millions of pictures of driver’s license plates each month. One local police chief said the technology helped catch 25 times as many suspects in wanted vehicles as the year before. Each time a vehicle passes one of the automatic license plate reading cameras in the Memorial Villages, a picture is taken. … In addition to stolen vehicles and missing persons, the Memorial Villages Police Department is alerted…

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IA: New tool to monitor registrants: License Plate Reader Contract Approved in Davenport, Iowa

[ govtech.com 10/15/20] While the devices are touted as investigative tools — helping to locate stolen cars, missing persons and the like — privacy and civil rights advocates say the technology also raises concerns around misuse and surveillance. (TNS) — Davenport City Council members on Wednesday unanimously approved a contract that will give Davenport police an enhanced tool for tracking stolen vehicles, wanted criminals and abducted children. The little-noticed, high-speed cameras mounted on police cars, road signs, bridges and poles photograph thousands of plates per minute. The devices convert each…

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Kat’s Blog: Tracking Registrants

SMART/the government’s office of sentencing, monitoring, apprehending, registering and tracking, is in the business of tracking registrants. Registrants are tracked locally, within their hometowns. P.O.’s, police and other law enforcement officials always want to know where they are, where they’re living, working or relaxing. Registrants are tracked through domestic interjurisdictional informational tracking, law enforcement across jurisdictions sharing information regarding the whereabouts of registrants on the move. Registrants are tracked by international tracking, the number of countries they are allowed to visit seems to shrink daily. Our country’s “unique identifier” on…

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LA: Louisiana sheriffs promoting new app that alerts parents if sex offenders contact children

[theadvocate.com – 10/16/19] Louisiana sheriffs are backing a new mobile app that will alert parents if a registered sex offender contacts their child. The app, Safe Virtual Neighborhood, is the newest development from OffenderWatch and parent company Watch Systems, a Covington-based company known for tracking sex offenders. Watch Systems and Louisiana’s law enforcement community have worked together since 2000, when the company launched its sex offender registry system. … The Safe Virtual Neighborhood app utilizes existing information collected in law enforcement offender databases and applies it to people’s personal mobile…

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Disneyland and Fingerprints

[austinstartups.com – 8/27/19] It may surprise many people but the Walt Disney Corporation is an enthusiastic and early adopter of biometric technology. All the way back in 1996, Disney added a magnetic stripe to their park pass. Instead of the bar-coded laminate photo IDs traditionally used, the new pass had no photo and minimal printed information. The magnetic stripe stored pass information plus it added one new piece of information: a biometric “finger scan” (fingerprint). Disney didn’t provide clear information on what was happening when a guest made the “peace…

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