law questions

24 Jul law questions

Read the attached article from The Examiner newspaper titled “Feds seek to expand use of license tag readers in Va.” Read also the supplemental information on the case that is provided below.

 

Prince William County Virginia has been experimenting with special license plate readers that can be set up at intersections and can read the number and letter combinations of every license plate that passes by. The license plates are immediately electronically checked against a database of known stolen license plates and license plates associated with stolen vehicles. The system could easily be set up to track individuals associated to vehicles as well. Individuals who are fugitives, people wanted for questioning by the police, individuals with past due parking tickets, foreign nationals, suspected terrorists, parolees, probationers could all be tracked from intersection to intersection. This information could be passed onto intelligence agencies or could be used to build profiles of suspicious individuals and their daily actions. This technology may have huge privacy implications. The potential for abuse of this technology is present as well. If the police have a suspect to a crime they will very likely use the stored data to find that individuals whereabouts at the time the crime was committed. It has not been resolved whether it will take a court order to release information from the database. The federal government now wants to expand the program because of its viewed success.

 

This term paper is comprised of five questions designed to test your legal reasoning and sensitivity to social issues. Utilizing two to three pages each, critically answer the following 5 broad questions. The term paper should be approximately 5 to 8 pages in length. The questions are listed at the very end of this assignment sheet. In answering the questions, document your responses with support material taken from library sources, your textbook, or the Internet. Be sure to give proper attribution to each source you document (e.g., provide URLs for online sources).

 

Do not use this assignment to vent your personal opinions on the issues covered in the case study. Your goal should be to present a fair and impersonal review of the issues based on good legal reasoning, sensitivity to societal issues, and careful research.

 

The answers to each of the five questions should be roughly 1-2 pages long, typed single spaced. Margins must be 1-inch on all sides. Pages beyond page 10 will neither be read nor graded.

 

DON’T CHEAT! On your assignments, you are required to present your own work. If your answers are supplied to you by other people, or if you copy material from other works without proper attribution, you are cheating and will receive a grade of F for your submitted assignment. If you want to quote other sources, that’s fine. Keep the quotations short. Use quotation marks and provide a link or reference to the cited sources. Better yet, summarize the cited material in your own words – demonstrate that you are capable of communicating ideas effectively.

 

The term paper is to be the original work of the student for this course and must not be based on extensive cutting-and-pasting from other sources. Complete and accurate citations are expected for all works used in preparing the term paper. Failure to provide complete and accurate citations will result in a grade of “F”, opportunity for rework is at the discretion of the instructor.

Instructions on citing sources utilizing the APA (American Psychological Association) reference style can be found at http://www.apastyle.org/ or a comparable website.

Instructions on citing sources utilizing the MLA (Modern Language Association) reference style can be found at http://www.mla.org/ or a comparable website.

 

 

Supplemental Information on the Case Study

 

The Examiner

July 16, 2008

http://www.examiner.com/a-1489662~Feds_seek_to_expand_use__of_license_tag_readers_in_Va_.html

 

By David Sherfinski

Feds seek to expand use of license tag readers in Va.

 

The federal government wants to expand a program that allows police to check license plates for stolen vehicles to also search for the vehicles tied to known or suspected terrorists, Prince William County police said Tuesday.

 

The Department of Homeland Security has asked for a grant proposal that would allow automated license plate readers to be bought throughout Northern Virginia for the purpose of pursuing “terrorist-type crimes,” county Detective Roland Mulligan said.

 

County police have recovered 10 stolen vehicles, located seven stolen license plates and arrested four people in the six months that they have been using their two license plate readers.

 

The plate reader also was used to apprehend one of the county’s top 10 parking violators — who had accumulated fines of more than $1,000 — in about 20 minutes, Mulligan said. The license plate reader uses infrared cameras to automatically check plates against a “hot list” that contains the license plates of every stolen vehicle in the U.S. and Canada, Mulligan said.

 

“The camera takes a picture and checks the plate against the hot list in a matter of milliseconds,” he said.

 

The Homeland Security grant money would be used by Northern Virginia police departments to buy more readers.

 

Mulligan added that because all plates that register in the license plate reader must be checked, there was little risk of pulling over a car that was not stolen, or “no more so than in any other situation. You have to call it in. The data could be 24 hours old.

 

“If you follow the procedures you’re supposed to follow, there shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.

 

He said, though, that the system does have drawbacks, including the device’s registering of “false positives” when it does not recognize a vehicle’s state of origin and its inability to read plates with mixed fonts.

 

Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart, R-at large, asked whether standards were being issued nationally to make sure that all plates would be readable.

 

Mulligan said antique license plates are not readable by the device, nor are non-photo-reflective plates.

 

 

 

 

Questions

 

Answer each of the five following questions/items. Your answer to each question/item should be 1-2 pages long, typed single spaced. Your answer should reflect research on your part – from library sources, government documents, your textbook, and/or the Internet. Give proper attribution to your research sources (e.g., for Internet sources, provide a URL)

 

1. 1. Which Constitutional Amendments, if any, are implicated with this new technology? Are there privacy implications with this new technology or are individual’s movements in public not covered by privacy rights? Give some examples.

2. 2. Should the information from the license plate readers be stored on a computer server and if so for how long? Should a court order be required to release information from any database of license plates picked up by the readers? (e.g. Search Warrant, FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court order, NSL (National Security Letter).

3. 3. Should information gained from the license plate readers be able to be used in criminal investigations and criminal prosecutions? Provide your legal reasoning for both sides of the argument.

4. 4. Who should have access to the information gained from the license plate readers? Federal, State, local or a combination of the three (including all three)? Should the information be a matter of public record that is able to be accessed by anyone? Given the potential for these reader’s to be used for National Security purposes, should citizens be able to file a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to find out whether the government has information about their daily movements?

5. 5. Do public safety concerns outweigh the privacy concerns created by these readers? Will these readers likely decrease crime? Could these readers be used to defend the nation against potential terrorists? Should profiles of suspicious individuals be built based on their daily movements?