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Title: Woman Wrongfully Accused by a License Plate-Reading Camera - Then
Exonerated By Camera-Equipped Car

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/11/01/23592...

CBS News investigates what happened when police thought they'd tracked down a
"porch pirate" who'd stolen a package - and accused an innocent woman. "You
know why I'm here," the police sergeant tells Chrisanna Elser. "You know we
have cameras in that town..." "It went right into, 'we have video of you
stealing a package,'" Elser said... "Can I see the video?" Elser asked. "If
you go to court, you can," the officer replied. "If you're going to deny it,
I'm not going to extend you any courtesy...." [You can watch a video of the
entire confrontation.] On her doorstep, the officer issued a summons, without
ever looking at the surveillance video Elser had. "We can show you exactly
where we were," she told him. "I already know where you were," he replied.
Her Rivian - equipped with multiple cameras - had recorded her entire route
that day... It took weeks of her collecting her own evidence, building
timelines, and submitting videos before someone listened. Finally, she
received an email from the Columbine Valley police chief acknowledging her
efforts in an email saying, "nicely done btw (by the way)," and informing her
the summons would not be filed. Elser also found the theft video (which the
police officer refused to show her) on Nextdoor, reports Electrek. "The woman
has the same color hair, but different facial and nose shape and apparent age
than Elser, which is all reasonably apparent when viewing the video..." But
Elser does drive a green Rivian truck, which police knew had entered the
neighborhood 20 times over the course of a month. (Though in the video the
officer is told that a male driver in the same household passes through that
neighborhood driving to and from work.) The problem may be their certainty -
derived from Flock's network of cameras that automatically read license
plates, "tracking movements of vehicles wherever they go..." The system has
provoked concern from privacy and freedom focused organizations like the
Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union. Flock also
recently announced a partnership with Ring, seeking to use a network of
doorbell cameras to track Americans in even more places.... [The police]
didn't even have video of the truck in the area - merely tags of it
entering... (it also left the area minutes later, indicating a drive through,
rather than crawling through neighborhoods looking for packages - but police
neglected to check the exit timestamps)... Elser has asked for an apology for
[officer] Milliman's aggressive behavior during the encounter, but has heard
nothing back from the department despite a call, email, and physical
appearance at the police station. The article points out that Rivian's "Road
Cam" feature can be set to record footage of everything happening around it
using the car's built in cameras for driver-assist features. But if you want
to record footage all the time, you'll need to plug in a USB-C external drive
to store it. (It's ironic how different cameras recorded every part of this
story - the theft, the police officer accusing the innocent woman, and that
innocent woman's actual whereabouts.) Electrek's take? "Citizens should not
need to own a $70k+ truck, or even a $100 external hard drive, to keep track
of everything they do in order to prove to power-tripping officers that they
didn't commit a crime."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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