The Texas Senate has voted to give federal, state and local authorities the ability to track and identify every passing vehicle on state highways. The bill provision calls for “automatic license plate identification cameras,” although the bill also continues to ban red light and speed cameras. The surveillance camera proposal will put in private hands the operation and maintenance of the cameras - the same private hands whose income stream is threatened by the elimination of red light and speed cameras.The plate readers will store a video image of the front passenger compartment and rear license plate of every single passing vehicle. Optical character recognition software identifies the registered vehicle owner and allows for easy indexing of the time and location of travel for each person identified using the highway. The bill gives law enforcement broad authority to use the cameras to prosecute any state or federal crime other than a traffic violation "punishable by fine only."
