GeoData Policy

Patty Day, PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, alerted me to the following two articles:

License Plate Readers to be Used in DC Area

Authorities plan to install about 200 automated license plate readers on police vehicles and alongside roads in the Washington area to thwart potential terrorist attacks, dramatically expanding the use of a high-tech tool previously aimed at parking scofflaws and car thieves.

Source: Mary Beth Sheridan, Washington Post, August 17, 2008, Page C01

For full text of the article, visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/16/AR2008081602218.html

Apparently they want to do this in New York as well.

The NYPD is developing Operation Sentinel, a proposal to use cameras, license plate scanners and radiation sensors to photograph and scan each vehicle crossing into the city via bridge or tunnel. A similar tag-reading system is planned for Washington, D.C., using $4.5 million of a $59.8 million federal homeland security grant.

Source: PTI Technology Matters 8/26/08

See also the previous GeodataPolicy Blog posting from April 2008: http://geodatapolicy.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/vehicle-identification-and-tracking/

Texas truant students to be tracked by GPS anklets

SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Court authorities here will be able to track students with a history of skipping school under a new program requiring them to wear ankle bracelets with Global Positioning System monitoring. … Linda Penn, a Bexar County justice of the peace, said she anticipates that about 50 students from four San Antonio-area school districts — likely to be mostly high schoolers — will wear the anklets during the six-month pilot program announced Friday. …Penn said students in the program will wear the ankle bracelets full-time and will not be able to remove them. They’ll be selected as they come through her court, and Penn will target truant students with gang affiliations, those with a history of running away and skipping school and those who have been through her court multiple times.

Source: Elizabeth White, Associated Press, August 23, 2008

For full text of the article visit: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080823/ap_on_re_us/gps_monitoring_truants