license plate covers

Here in Illinois 2 plates are required but a lot of people only have one on the back. A lot of the smaller towns here will ticket you but the city won't.

if you can read it, the cameras can read it. If you block it so it can't be read, it is illegal - you may as well take it off.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the statistics, 82 percent of statistics are made up.

You know, it's funny. Some folks seem to spend more energy doing what's wrong and trying to get away with it, than just doing what's right and not worrying.

Just a thought from an old school dude.

I was going thu some old messages and came upon this one that was over 6 yrs old.. some things never change!

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/315

+ 1

There are other statements you made in http://www.poi-factory.com/node/42156?page=2#comment-369361 to which I plan to respond but, first, I would like like to comment on your reference to the "founding fathers".

You are like many people who invoke the "founding fathers" because they have the feeling that our constitution started out as - and remains today - a perfect document because the "founding fathers" were so wise.

Unfortunately, these people are merely parroting what they have heard others say. If they would but study history, they would find that the "Founding Fathers" did not give us a document that protected the rights of anyone other than male, white, land owning citizens.

Whole groups were left out. Women were second-class citizens, essentially the property of their husbands, unable even to vote until 1920, when the 19th Amendment was passed and ratified.

Native Americans were entirely outside the constitutional system.The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were in force for nearly 140 years before Native Americans obtained U.S. citizenship.

For 78 years after it was ratified, the Constitution protected slavery and legalized racial subordination. Slaves had no access to the rule of law: they could not go to court, make contracts, or own any property. They could be whipped, branded, imprisoned without trial, and hanged. It took a bloody civil war before additional amendments to the Constitution were passed, giving slaves and their descendants the full rights of citizenship. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery; the 14th Amendment guaranteed to African Americans the rights of due process and equal protection of the law; and, finally the 15th Amendment gave them the right to vote.

I might go so far as to say that the Constitution and the Founding Fathers set up a "government" that "limited" the rights of over half of the population of the United States of America.

I am following up on comments you made in http://www.poi-factory.com/node/42156?page=2#comment-369361

I also agree that I do not want to give up my rights. But, I know that there are limits on my rights. I do not feel, as you appear to, that I have the right to break laws. Indeed, I want those who break the law to be arrested and fairly tried.

However, I was taken aback that you would say ", I want the government to be unable to find enough evidence to convict citizens." I do not know any other way to read that statement than to understand that you are in favor of a country that is on the road to lawlessness.

I though I would look at Wikipedia to see what it might say about "police powers":

Now, Wikipedia is certainly not the be all, end all of sources, but I thought what was stated was pretty close to my understanding of the constitutional process.

You seem to take an opposite stance. What was your constitutional reasoning when you made the statement quoted above?

Absolutely right, it is funny.

It's like the old debate about privacy and people knowing where we are. We want the convenience of cell phones, which can then be used to detect our location. We want that when we have a problem and need to call 911 and may not be able to identify exactly where we are, but people freak about privacy at the thought cops could be able to detect cell info on anybody at all. Then we go sign up for iCloud / find my phone, Life360 and others.

If we don't do wrong, we have no reason to worry if somebody knows where we are. Yes, we all know mistakes happen and people go on watch lists because of mistaken identity and some bad things can happen - but really, how common is that?

Interesting comments on this thread. Everything from political rants to "big brother" paranoia. Love it!

As for the plate covers, the cops will start ticketing them when they become an economic threat. It has nothing to do with obeying the law -- it's all $$$$.

It is all about making money.

Cameras used for ticketing purposes are somewhat different than cameras used for general police surveillance (or parking garage surveillance etc).

Ticket cameras are aimed where a license plate is likely to be (in a traffic lane by a signal, for example).

The surveillance cameras scan everything, and detect license plates based on a shiny rectangle object with high reflectivity. These cameras simply record all the plate numbers that they can, and enter them into a database (along with time and location scanned).

In addition to police databases that capture the location and time of every vehicle they can, some parking lots/garages also use this to ensure "accuracy" of the number of days spent in a lot and also to help lost travelers reunite with the vehicle, for example in an airport parking lot after a week or two on vacation.

Changing the reflectivity of a plate is unlikely to affect a ticket camera, but it my make it less likely for a surveillance camera to capture a plate number.

There are some statements you made in http://www.poi-factory.com/node/42156?page=0#comment-369361 on which I want to comment.

You said:

just below your quote of my comments in which I said:

Either you do not read carefully what you yourself write, or you are making massive, incorrect inferences as it relates to my feeling on privacy.

I am unaware if I have ever written anything on this site that could be interpreted as being against individual rights. Accordingly, I would ask that you find and link to any of my comments that you may have interpreted as such. I suspect that you think that your interpretation of "rights" that you personally think you should have are coloring your judgment. For example, I suspect you think that Automated Traffic Enforcement (ATE) - of which I approve - are somehow taking away some "right" that you have.

However, I do not think you will be able to show me some court ruling that says that, in concept, ATE is unconstitutional because it violates some individual "right". Now to be fair to you, let me stipulate that some ATE implementations have been found lacking because the hoops they force someone to jump through clearly amount to a denial of "due process". In all of these cases, the process could be easily fixed or has been fixed.

I find it quite interesting that you, and a number of others, are so eager to deny law enforcement the right to employ new technology. You likely railed of a loss of your "rights" when law enforcement began using radar guns (and promptly went out and bought a laser detector). Now that there are license plate readers you claim a loss of privacy and said

although to be fair to you, you also said

Law enforcement has the "right" written into state and local laws to issue tickets for traffic violations. In those states where ATE has been made illegal, there was nothing constitutionally decided that ATE was a problem. Rather, the citizens decided that they did not want to allow ATE, period. In our constitutional form of government there is nothing to "prohibit" citizens from making this kind of decision. Whether it is a wise decision or not is not at issue. Are you familiar with the Eighteenth Amendment?

Given that law enforcement has the "right" to issue tickets for traffic violations, I see no reason to deny them the ability to use new technology as it appears.

Good grief—If you were a better writer I might be offended. Does the "years" you mention mean you have been a member for four years or are you divulging your age?