The data, obtained through the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) operated by the Boston Transportation Department (BTD), has been leaked online, according to a report by DigBoston.
Automatic number plate readers have been developed in many US cities, are highly controversial due to invasion of the privacy of citizens and have been actively used by local authorities to issue fines for illegal parking and to recognize cars sought by the police.
In most cities, the ALPR developed and managed by the transport service, as is the case with the city of Boston.
And while storing users' personal and sensitive information on third-party servers is prohibited, the City of Boston uses a server owned by Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) (ACS), a subsidiary of Xerox, to store the data recorded by its ALPRs systems.
DigBoston reporter Mr. Kenneth Lipp has revealed that this Web-server lacks security and has exposed data obtained by ALPRs since 2012.
The data includes details such as the plate number, the location where the car's number, make and model were located.
In response to Quperp's questions on the subject, Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) isolated the 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 massive practices collectionς data.
