Ultimate Cop Car. No civil liberties required.

[Dust Monkey]

Interesting. I always wondered when something like this would hit the streets. Its scary. I dont want to have officers fighting crime with one hand tied behind their backs, but this is a long way from what our founders intended. More like that standing army they warned us about.


http://http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534935,00.html??test=faces


Popular Mechanics Designs the Ultimate Cop Car
Monday , July 27, 2009

Erik Sofge



ADVERTISEMENTThe typical cop car isn’t born—it’s slapped together. Traditionally, this involved taking a production vehicle, bolting on a reinforced bumper and adding some lights and a divider between the front and back seats.

But as law enforcement agencies update their fleets, the police car is evolving. The Ford Crown Victorias of the past half-century are losing ground to more powerful models, like the Dodge Charger. (Dodge was in financial limbo at press time, but we’re not giving up on the Charger just yet.) And these cars are being outfitted with gadgets that add extra eyes and ears to a policeman’s arsenal.

Not all of this gear is on the road yet, but the trend is toward turning the police car into another node in an omnipresent network of surveillance sensors, capable of tracking even people who have done nothing to arouse suspicion. And this has civil liberties groups worried. “These devices allow for the forensic reconstruction of much of your life,” says Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The police could go back through GPS data and plate records and know when you visited a strip club or an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, or which political rallies or gun shows you drove to."
But those who have used the new technology say it could help protect civil liberties. “When a license plate camera looks at a plate, it’s not looking at gender, race or ethnicity,” says Sgt. Daniel Gomez, a member of a Los Angeles Police Department division that tests new technologies. “All it’s looking for are numbers.”

Whether the next generation of police cruisers will be a breakthrough for investigators, a step toward a surveillance society or a little of both, the era of the crime-fighting cab is screeching to a halt. Here’s what cop cars of the future may look like.

 

[B.N.Real]

When you enter any military base now ,they will scan your License number bar code on the back of your drivers license.

Information technology is now making it easy for even the most basic things like getting a parking ticket to go directly into your driving record.

So expect not much to be private.

Anything you buy with a credit card is recorded.

Everytime you use your cell phone,your bill records it.

Everytime you log into the internet,your internet provider records it and every site you visit as well.

Everytime you use your computer their are partitions in your hard drive that you cannot delete without completely formatting the hard drive that record everything you look at.

Sadly,today,those who prize their privacy are looked on as people with something to hide and not just people who want the world to simply leave them some peace and quiet to themselves without asking for it.

When it gets too much,just find a forest and listen to what nature has for us to forget all the surveillance.

Just remember-that quickly moving star in the sky?

Is a spy satellite.

 

[shade_1313]

Don't want to come off confrontational, or start arguments, but I enter an Air Force base every working day of my life, and I've never had any documentation or ID of any kind scanned, nor even heard of that happening to anyone else.

 

[J A]

I have

Try entering Whiteman AFB as a civilian.

 

[Brian Pfleuger]

This seems like an odd compilation of statements that are unrelated.

No police car can track your movements via GPS, unless the police car is following you. Tracking you would require the GPS information from your own car.

Plate records could only pinpoint the location of your car at a single point in time, and even then only if the police car with the plate camera was tying plate records to GPS coordinates. Something which they do not do at this time.


Plate cameras as they are currently employed do not keep any record of plates scanned at all, so I am told by the officers that drive the cars. In fact, the only time they do anything at all is when they get a "hit". In which case they inform the officer of the pertinent information.

 

[NJgunowner]

Shade, that's because when you got a job there they took every piece of info they needed from you in the beginning. You've already gone through all the background checks... They probably know everything down to your underwear size . They don't NEED anymore info hehe.

 

[Wagonman]

The plate readers in Chicago keep a record of every plate scanned. It could be used if there is a BOLO for a particular car. I don't see the CL issue.

 

[Al Norris]

No legal or civil rights issues? Not a gun related thread ... Um, I don't see a need to keep this open. PM me with the pertinent facts, if you object.