zlacker

> It's cheaper for them to literally pay a guy to stand at a boom and get that information than to install the technology required to track that automatically.

It depends of the local cost of labor, also the technology is easier to scale, imagine New York City having employees at the bridges writing all the entering license plates! And searching through those records how many times a certain plate entered the city on a given time frame. To me the problem with technology is that they’re used for lazy policing to just inflate the numbers of solved cases. There were cases of cops feeding hand-drawn suspects to face recognition software. Every case becomes a “throw something to the wall and see what sticks”.

>>neural+(OP)
Your complaint seems more like a failing legal system than unnecessary surveillance.

Legitimately if an investigator put a hard drawn sketch through facial recognition and that was even remotely allowed into evidence by the court then the suspect evidence wasn't the issue

>>jpc0+Df1
I don’t recall the actual case but what I try to point out is that technologies are used as dragnets to “fish anything” be it facial recognition, cell tower logs or license plate reads. I’m all out in favor of using any tool to catch criminals but not to manufacture them, specially when the only goal is revenues for the agency du jour.