Philadelphia police spied on citizens by pretending to be the Google Street View team

Militiamen often act based on the phrase “the end justifies the means”. This applies not only to the CIS, but also to other countries. The other day in the USA, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), an interesting case occurred: the state police disguised their observation van as a Google Street View car. And it was possible to find out about this by chance, thanks to the vigilance of a professor from the University of Pennsylvania. Matt Blaze turned his attention to an SUV with Google Maps Street View stickers.

The scientist drew attention to the fact that two specialized cameras were installed on the roof of the SUV for reading license plates of cars. According to Blaise, this meant that the SUV could not belong to Google. The professor concluded that this is a government car that disguises itself as a Google Street View auto project. It is clear that on Twitter and other social networks immediately went pictures of a strange car.

WTF? Pennsylvania State Police license plate reader SUV camouflaged as Google Street View vehicle. pic.twitter.com/0z4yo2rVoR

- matt blaze (@mattblaze) May 11, 2016

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Respectable citizens of the state attacked the police of Philadelphia with a hail of requests for what happened. The police even had to make an official statement: “We knew that this vehicle belonged to the police department, however, the placement of any stickers on the car was not approved by the management, the relevant team was not given. As soon as we learned about it, the order was immediately given to remove the stickers. ”

Interestingly, the ALPR system installed in this car is capable of receiving images and recognizing thousands of license plates per hour. This automatically determines the coordinates of cars with these license plates, as well as automatically determine the owner.

Google Inc. has already announced that in some cases it cooperates with the authorities, but in this case we are not talking about working with the police. The company also said that the specified car does not belong to it.

"We confirm that this is not a Google Maps machine, and we are currently exploring this issue," said company spokeswoman Susan Cadrecha.