California police agencies sharing motorist data illegally.

[just Warren]

It's a Vice article.

This needs to stop. And people need to be punished. But it won't and they won't be.

Now with this sort of thing there are not enough people to actually look at this information, let alone track every individual. So most people are mostly safe from anything happening to them.

Mostly. Most people are too boring to pay close attention to, but: Become ensnared in an investigation even though you've done nothing wrong or have someone with access to this stuff become fixated on you and your life can be turned upside down.

So it has to go. But it won't. The right folks will make the right noises and something on the surface level will change and the concerned folks will forget and the problem will continue, just under a different name or with slightly different, but still illegal procedures.

So what to do?

[brimic]

Not to downplay the severity of it, but everyone is being tracked by their cellphone apps already.
Worse, Police agencies use Stingray units to hoover data from your phones.

[griz]

This statement from the article caught my eye.

Wiener said he plans to introduce follow-up legislation to ensure law enforcement agencies are following the laws.

Sort of a Mobius strip of logic, what's the purpose of having a law enforcement agency that doesn't follow laws, and who would enforce the new law that requires them to obey the law?

[brimic]

This statement from the article caught my eye.

Sort of a Mobius strip of logic, what's the purpose of having a law enforcement agency that doesn't follow laws, and who would enforce the new law that requires them to obey the law?

https://dilbert.com/strip/2013-05-25

[Ned Hamford]

We need this information to stop kidnappings --> We need this to help with parking enforcement; It's just essential for our daily work. 

It's just typical authoritarian creep.  What scares me is how widespread the tools are that we known little about.  My eldest brother works for the local sheriff office and got liaison-ed with the DEA, FBI ect, in under 5 years of employment, he immediately used the tool from who knows what agency to snoop around my data and investigate my social circle.  Its also a fairly known thing you hire ex law enforcement investigators as they just ask a friend and bam, all that data is handy to them too.  Interning with the Queen's DA's office way back when, they'd scrub their investigation data/records, to the easy explained and more so lawful means.  Power without oversight or accountability. 

I'm a law and order man myself; but when you have the blue wall, a bad cop gets covered by an otherwise great officer, you've got two bad cops.  If a cop is smiling while perjuring himself for a speeding ticket; lord help us relying on his character for stuff more dire.  Giving more power to folks with a proven culture of abuse without some damn high oversight seems like madness to me.  But we've got blue worshiping folks who'll see a video of an outright execution and say 'well, as long as the officers made it home safely.'  [Thinking of you Aunt Carol].

[brimic]

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/blogs/proof-and-hearsay/2016/12/23/7th-circuit-rejects-appeal-stingray-case/95766862/

[RoadKingLarry]

It's easy enough to just leave your tracking collar cell phone at home. How easy is it to actually temporarily disable the GPS tracking in a modern vehicle?

[just Warren]

Yes, you can leave your phone at home but your license plates will always be on your car.

[RoadKingLarry]

Sure, but not every where I would be interested in going in a semi-clandestine manner would have cameras on every corner. Also I drive a lot of rural unpaved roads and it isn't uncommon around here to see a vehicle so completely covered in mud as to obscure not only the plate but also the color of the vehicle, particularly with the extremely wet seasons we have had the last year or so.
I could always hop in the M715 and be assured of not being electronically tracked but it is a bit of an eye catcher.