License Plate

[don moore]

As a LE officer, and a Cyber Cop too boot, 80-90% of the info we gather is from public sources. Mind you, A photo of a license plate is much harder to search for than text based info. Unlike the shows on TV, there is no magic software nor hardware that can scan a blurry, pixilated photo and instantly tell what color of underwear the suspect was wearing last Tuesday while he was visiting China.
...
I saw NCIS ...they were looking at a out door security video of a car 10 yards away with two guys talking and one had a piece of paper in his hand ..so they froze the picture zoomed onto the first guy..then and zoomed in on the piece of paper ..hit a few keys on the magic computer and was able to read the barcode on it and with less then a min.. they did a scan of the barcode and found it to be a plane ticket reciept.....lol
I love tv shows.

[Triathlete]

Ah Don but LE does have some cool stuff (yea, I know, not like all the junk on TV). Here in Tucson we have a car that drives around with a camera that reads liscence plates on all the vehicles it passes or that pass it. The #'s are automatically ran through an on board computer system that within seconds tells the officer if the plate/car is a reported stolen one. I think we are one of the test subjects since auto theft is big here with our proximity to the boarder.

[Scott Harness]

I keep hearing circus music...




















CLOWNS

[pbkid]

I keep hearing circus music...




















CLOWNS

[Moncha]

Can't sleep.... Clowns will eat me!


Now that's FEAR!

[JAMAS]

Can't sleep.... Clowns will eat me!

Is that true?.....Aw crap, I finally got over my fear of the Sasquatch finding me. Now I have to worry about clowns!

[deermagnet]

"Hey buddy, I need ya to run a tag for me when ya get to work tomorrow."
"No problem. What's up?"
"I saw a great set of wheels and tires posted on our Vehicross forum I want to try and score. The guy lives not too far away, but I need an address. At the very least I can easily get his roof rack that'll get me $500 on eBay."
"Sure thing. Just drop off a case of beer this weekend."

If it cost $200 and took a week to block a plate from a photo, then why bother. It only takes a few seconds, so why not do it? What do you have to lose by blurring the plate number?

Mark

[SomeBeach]

Haven't seen anything so far fetched since they cancelled Fantasy Island. I guess your made up suspect wouldn't be able to see the car driving down the highway and follow it. If it makes you feel safe do it. By the way, if this occurred the investigating agency could see that this victim's tag was run and they could tell which officer ran it. A rookie could solve this one.

[deermagnet]

If it makes you feel safe do it.

There ya go. In your first post you kinda implied that there was no reason to do this. Now you gave a valid reason to do this.

Why lock the door to your home when you leave? Any adult male could easily kick it in. So why bother locking it? Because it only takes a few seconds and it makes us feel safer.

Mark Griffin

[vt_maverick]

I used to spend a lot of time on a sports car forum, and they blacked out their plates for another reason that I don't see mentioned so far: to prevent law enforcement from tracking down owners who post pictures of illegal activities (street racing/burnout competitions, etc.). A lot of guys would post videos on YouTube or elsewhere, so when they posted still pics of their car they wanted to make sure the license plate couldn't tie the two together.

As SomeBeach and others in this thread have suggested, I don't know whether the law has time or even cares to look at these forums, but in places like SoCal where street racing is a serious issue, guys just didn't want to take a chance.

[SomeBeach]

I suppose a law enforcement officer could use the tag to track down someone who is racing but the actual racing event could not be prosecuted based on a video on youtube. The officer would not be able to testify to the time or place. He could also not prove who was operating the vehicle. Then throw in all the other things cops need to address and it's unlikely it would spark much interest.