The data acquired through the automatic license plate readers (ALPR) operated by the Boston Transportation Department (BTD) have been exposed to Internet, according to a report by DigBoston.
Automatic license plate readers have been deployed in many US cities, are highly controversial due to the invasion of citizens' privacy, and have been actively used by local authorities to issue illegal parking tickets and identify cars that are wanted by police. police.
In most cities, the ALPR developed and managed by the transport service, as is the case with the city of Boston.
And while it is forbidden to store personal and sensitive user information on third-party servers, the city of Boston uses a server owned by Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), a subsidiary of Xerox, to store the data recorded by Its ALPRs systems.
DigBoston journalist, Mr. Kenneth Lipp, has revealed that this Web server is incomplete and has exposed the data acquired by ALPRs from 2012.
The data includes details such as the plate number, the location where the car's number, make and model were located.
Answering Mr. Lipp's questions about him themeAffiliated Computer Services (ACS) isolated that particular server from public view within two hours.
But the scandal doesn't stop there. The problem is that this data is still being used by the Boston Police Department, although in 2013 it had announced under pressure from various groups protectionof citizens' private lives, that he will stop using them.
Hundreds of emails containing numbers of traffic signs are sent daily to the Boston Police Department, as this PDF report.
Even if the data is only used to find stolen vehicles across the city, the problem of lack of transparency remains when it comes to public disclosures by law enforcement agencies and their addiction to enormous data collection practices.
