ACLUKade

Hi everyone. My name is Kade Crockford. I direct the Technology for Liberty project at the ACLU of Massachusetts, where I publish the Privacy Matters blog, available at http://privacysos.org/blog. I've been obsessed with the threat posed by license plate readers (aka trackers) for some time now, and am thrilled about the ACLU's fabulous new report. Happy to be here for my first reddit AMA. Thanks for having us!

I think the most troubling thing about them is that they enable police, intelligence agencies and even private corporations to track our movements without warrants, as we drive throughout our towns, cities and states. This is part and parcel of a trend in the United States moving away from suspicion-based surveillance, into a brave new world of information hoarding, sans probable cause or reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.

The government doesn't have any business keeping accurate records of our communications, movements or associations unless it has a good reason to believe we are involved in criminal activity, and shows that evidence to a judge. Unfortunately, as both our new license plate reader report and the NSA scandal show, that's not the case anymore.

Here in Massachusetts we are trying to fix one of those problems, by passing a law to regulate license plate reader use. Check it out: http://privacysos.org/lawreform

Information is power. The government shouldn't be able to amass detailed profiles of our day to day lives, unless it has reason to believe we are involved in criminal activity. That kind of government omnipotence is simply incompatible with a free society.

If you take the "I have nothing to hide" logic to its conclusion, you could conceivably hand over a key to your home to each police officer and FBI agent. After all, if you have nothing to hide, who cares if they randomly pop into your bedroom to check up on you?

Location privacy isn't exactly the same as home searches, granted. But it is incredibly invasive.

Justice Douglas Ginsburg nicely explains why location privacy matters. Let me pass the mic to him:

"A person who knows all of another's travels can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups—and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts."

It seems pretty clear that the NSA does not think it is barred from spying on our domestic affairs and compiling mass databases about our associations and habits.

In New York, the NYPD is using the data to profile Muslims who worship at mosques. http://www.ap.org/Content/AP-In-The-News/2012/Newark-mayor-seeks-probe-of-NYPD-Muslim-spying