Unless the Philadelphia Fire Department or Streets Department are using ALPR, this strongly suggests that the city’s police department is trawling city streets under the auspices of Google while snapping thousands of license plate images per minute.
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Soon enough, police confirmed the SUV belonged to its fleet.
A real Google Street View vehicle for reference.
As Ars has reported for years, license plate readers are used by law enforcement agencies big and small nationwide as a way to automatically scan, record, and analyze potentially wanted or stolen license plates.
First off we need to actually drive around and photograph the locations to show in Street View.
Blaze, a University of Pennsylvania computer and information science professor, discovered a SUV “tucked away in the shadows of the Philadelphia Convention Center’s tunnel” that was labeled as a Google Maps Street View auto. “It’s certainly concerning if the city of Philadelphia is running mass surveillance and going out of its way to mislead people”, said Dave Maass of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
However, Blaze also spotted a permit on the truck’s dashboard that clearly identifies it as being a government-owned vehicle registered to the Philadelphia Office of Fleet Management.
Finally, on Friday, the Philadelphia Police Department admitted to The Washington Post that the SUV is one of its vehicles.
Two immediate questions have surfaced as a result of Blaze’s discovery: Is the Philadelphia Police Department or another government agency disguising surveillance activities under the aegis of Google Maps, and, if so, what would necessitate covering it up in this manner? That’s very puzzling, because as of 2011, Philly police have been operating at least 10 mobile camera units and not hiding that fact. “With that being said, once this was brought to our attention, it was ordered that the decals be removed immediately”, a police spokesperson told Motherboard. Two spokespersons with the Philadelphia Police Department were not immediately available for comment.
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Google told several media organizations that it was investigating the situation.
