Given this ruling, the 2012 ruling about GPS trackers, and the ubiquity of number plate scanners, it’s possible someone could challenge the constitutionality of requiring license plates on vehicles — they’re not all black model Ts anymore, so there’s less need for the registration number to be visible a mile away.
Both the GPS and the chalking cases involved a government officer committing a physical trespass. Requiring you to affix a registration plate isn't remotely similar. So, while there might be a challenge available, the GPS and chalking cases don't really pace the way for it in any substantive new way.
> Like the GPS trackers, license plates are devices designed to aid in identifying and locating a vehicle from a distance by technological means.
License plates originated in the early 1900s, long before color film cameras were a thing, and more than a century before inexpensive, at-scale license plate readers were a thing.
License plates were devices designed to aid police officers in identifying a vehicle from up close by requesting a license plate check.
It was remarkable in 2002's Bourne Identity when the highly-trained agent remarked that he knew the license plate numbers of every vehicle in the lot, and the implication that he'd recall them if they happened across the same cars again was scary.
The fact that it costs almost nothing to outfit every meter reader with a license plate scanner and log the motion of people and cars in a central database is an accident caused by the progress of technology, not a design goal of the license plate.
Preventing abuse of technologies as they become possible is a hard problem.
> is an accident caused by the progress of technology, not a design goal of the license plate
It certainly wasn’t a design goal for 1910-era license plates, but it probably is for 2010-era license plates. The only way to really know would be to subpoena the records relating to the most recent redesign process.
Not everything is binary. Driving is a privilege, yes, but making use of the privilege does not imply forfeiture of civil rights. A balance has to be struck.
And many, many people are perfectly ok with the balance of "if you want to drive on public roads, you have to display a somewhat-opaque identifier on your vehicle so you can be held accountable if you screw up".
As people point out, the opacity has lessened over time, and it's reasonable to question if we should re-evaluate how it's being used. Kind of like how social security numbers have changed their role in society.
Being required to identify yourself and related property in relation to suspected crimes (with probable cause) is acceptable. E.G. "License and Registration please, you are suspected of committing X and possibly other crimes."
Being required to wear a real-name badge in a public place is much more unsettling.
FWIW, that is not exactly true (in the US). Driving is not an explicitly enumerated right, but it cannot be taken away without due process, so it's more than a privilege.
In a great many cities, this right is actually restricted. City codes often prohibit parking unregistered/expired vehicles on private property if they're visible.
To put that another way, middle-class and wealthy people don't like to see poor people.
The way most places I'm aware of structure it is vehicles that don't have current registration or that can't move under their own power. That's potentially more broad than "junk" but also a more objective standard.
This sort of law can have a severe impact on poor people. Imagine you're barely getting by, then your car breaks down. This is not unlikely because as you're barely getting by, you have an older car and you're not having it maintained professionally on a rigorous schedule. It's going to be a while before you can afford the parts - let's say a "new" transmission from a junkyard. It sure would help if you didn't have to pay $100/month to keep insurance on it though. Of course, that means you have to turn in the license plate, or they'll suspend your driver's license (in certain jurisdictions).
A lot of people have to sell their car for scrap in this situation, which does not give them anywhere near enough to replace it with something reliable.
We have bylaw officers in my town. They would be the ones to decide what a junk vehicle is and obviously they are not experts in every area possible so they just use their judgement and make a call. Some other person who applied for a job in my city that my taxes pay gets to determine if my stuff is crap or not. Of course you can always take the city to court if they are acting inappropriately. What criteria do they use? I am going to guess the does the car look like crap test. If so get ride of it. Or how about when did you insure or drive the car last? Not for years well get rid of it. The fact of the matter is, like others have said, no one wants a neighbor that collects a bunch of cars that just rot and look like crap. No one is asking people to get working vehicles and get rid of them. Also, the city gives you plenty of warning. You could show them look the car drives or your intent to fix it. No different then if they determine your yard isn't clean enought....I personally like long grass and bugs, the city not so much. Some person gets to decide is the answer.
Law does work by similarity, but to the features cited in the decision rationale (here and in the GPS case, physical trespass without probable cause), not similarities unrelated to the decision rationale.
It's practically required to carry a transponder in your car on the east coast as there are many toll roads and they are in the process of phasing out cash.
There are companies that want to turn your cell phone into that transponder so that you can just use your phone as a universal transponder.
This seems likely to happen. Once it does, will having a smart phone with this feature enabled be required to drive on a road? If so, it is seems likely that this requirement will be challenged in court, but what's the difference between being required to have a plate on your car or an app on your phone?
> So all they'd need to do is compel the driver to chalk his own car?
The typical method along those lines is paying at a machine, getting a receipt, and posting the receipt visibly inside the windshield or the street side window, but, yes. This was about physical trespass for information without sufficient cause, not a right not to have parking time tracked.
Is looking in a window not itself a 'search'? Like, a police officer dragging a street by looking in every window for pot or guns would presumably be indiscriminately searching without probably cause, why would it be different with tickets in windows legally?
My experience though is this particular style of parking pass is usually on private property where the people checking are not part of a branch of police though, and thus I think are not bound against unreasonable search in the same way?
No, by the plain view doctrine information gathered at least by normal human senses without a physical trespass is not a search.
> Like, a police officer dragging a street by looking in every window for pot or guns would presumably be indiscriminately searching without probably cause
No, they wouldn't, just like a police officer indiscriminately looking through your car window for violations of cellphone use while driving laws without any particular cause isn't.
I know for searches you need to have a reasonable expectation of privacy for the search to be illegal.
For example, I saw an article a few years ago where a cop was literally walking a drug dog around a house. The dog detected drugs so they busted the door down. The courts threw the case out, there was no reason for a drug dog to be searching around his house.
I’d expect if you had a drugs or a dead body in plain view of a window then your expectation of privacy is gone.
You could just require a permit to park, and permits are issued by a ticket machine, and are valid for 2 hours (or whatever). Cars without prominently displayed tickets are fined, and cars with expired tickets also.
Without the physical intrusion, I don't think this ruling would apply at all.
In a sense, yes. The argument would be that they're not really compelling you, because you don't need to park there. The city is allowed to make all kinds of crazy rules about who may park where and when on public roads.
In another sense, no, because what the chalk does is establish that this car has not moved since the last time the officer went by. If you chalk the tire yourself, the officer cannot know when you did so.
I'd imagine drug dogs sniffing you while you walk down a public street to be unconstitutional. At airports, concert venues, and so on, it seems like you've already consented to being searched.
If the state hasn't shown that an accused has committed a crime before the state trespassed but needs to trespass first to then dig up an ex-post justification for trespassing witch hunts develop.
And yet, their accuracy is poor to say the least and no objective, informed, reasonable person would conclude that a drug dog scratching someone's paint would be considered probable cause. But here we are.
Drug sniffing dogs aren't accurate. You might as well allow the cop to flip a coin and if it comes up heads he has probable cause to search the vehicle. Combine that with civil asset forfeiture laws and you have a nasty incentive. Cops have been caught giving their dogs signals to bark so they can seize the car.
The Constitution isn’t code, so new behaviors can’t be stumbled into like a buffer overflow. There is no national outrage over license plates and everyone seems pretty OK with them so the Court is not going to throw a massive wrench into society for no reason by making them unconstitutional.
A huge chunk of the population is fine with Trump blocking people he doesn’t like, and a court ruled that unconstitutional. Just because a huge chunk of people support it doesn’t mean it should be legal and upheld in court.
But that’s a new behavior. How can license plates suddenly become illegal after 100 years, unless there is an “evolving standard of decency” in this regard?
In Beverly Hills, a shocking percentage of people drive without license plates. Most are dealer advertisement plates. The cops rarely pull people over for this.
I like the idea of reverse regulations. Like I shouldn’t have to display my license plate unless I’ve been cited as a dangerous driver.
Mountain View, CA is already using automated roving photo technology to enforce the 72 hour parking limitation (anti-RV living). Personally I have a coherent position on data retention that could apply to any DB like this and make it ephemeral. Legislation about data retention with room for lossy aggregates like counts.
Oh good, even less chance to catch hit and runs. Removing license plates would mean a field day for criminals all to appease a few tinfoil hat wearers.
Note, in particular, "Don't be snarky" and "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." Also the one against calling names (such as "tinfoil hat wearers").
Understood regarding name calling, but the other guy literally cited a wikipedia article on Nazi Concentration Camps to corroborate what he was talking about. How did I in that case did I respond to a "weaker interpretation that was easier to criticize"?
Why not? Our cities are built around widespread use of multi ton "killing machines", where walkability is often sacrificed so that cars become the only realistic option.
Yeah, no. /r/conspiracy has a 1000 comment thread that witchhunts people at my friend's company because it shared an address in SF with some dating site loosely related to Hillary Clinton. People I cared about were literally threatened with their lives.
Say a savant in your neighborhood has been able to memorize everyone's license plate, when and where they park. This violates a privacy law on data retention. Do you advocate fining and imprisoning the savant for the facets of her mind? Would you advocate that if this information ended up in a book, that the government should start collecting these books and destroying them? Maybe in a fire? like a book burning?
>> Do you advocate fining and imprisoning the savant for the facets of her mind?
>No
>The government is in it rights to very specifically limit what people[...] can do with license plate data.
Ok, thanks for retracting your previous position, for a second there you were advocating for people to be imprisoned for things they do with their mind.
You would replace photo radars, red light cameras and automatic paying tolls with actual employees? That sound like a waste of manpower.
Does that also mean that petrol is now free since you could just fill up and drive away without ever being recognized? Or are we also putting someone at each pump to make sure nobody drives away?
This would also make actual police investigation harder. How would you call the police on someone driving recklessly without being able to provide the plate? What about when they need to find someone that has a done a crime? Should they close down traffic and search every single cars of the same color and make as the criminal's?
The only way removing plates would work is if you replace it with something more invasive (i.e. facial recognition).
In short, you could do any crimes you currently do with a stolen car or fake plates without any effort.
Re petrol, you could do what's done everywhere in Canada as far as I know, which is simply have people pay at the pump before filling. (And yes, it works for filling the tank too, since you can authorize a larger amount than is spent.)
I think all gas stations in the areas I frequent in the US (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia) are prepay only. I haven't seen a gas station that you could pump first since I was a teenager in the 90s.
Very true, but by definition that means that you need to establish payment before they will pump. I thought it would unnecessarily complicate my comment to mention this so I'm actually glad you made this comment so I could make this reply.
I can't talk about all of Canada but I know that those pump before paying stations are still quite common in the eastern provinces during daytime hours.
It's strange, now that I think of it, to consider that getting gas before paying has died out in a lot of places, such as where I live, but getting (and consuming) food before paying has not.
Along with the social norm, there's probably a financial incentive behind that. If you make people pre-pay, they're much less likely to stick around and spend more. But obviously the norm is huge too; you'd be associated with fast food.
