Friday, July 09, 2010
License plate website revealed
by Larry Geller
Several readers managed to locate a website that may be the one first reported by KITV on June 25. Reporter Daryl Huff demonstrated using a smartphone in a parking lot to reveal the name of the owner of some license plates. KITV noted that the data may be problematic in cases of domestic violence.
The information may also be of use to professional burglars. For sure, if the owner is right there in the parking lot, they are not at home. Imagine seeing a van unload a family of six at a beach park or at an evening concert in the park. Or in a movie parking lot. It may be safe for a burglar to conclude that no one is home back where they live.
A comment with the website address is posted now on Website that identifies drivers from license plates will be a boon to burglars (6/26/2010).
The commenter observes that the address is not given, only the name. That is correct. But it took me only a few seconds to locate the current address of the previous owner of my own car, given the information retrieved from the website. It would not work for all of the plates listed in the database, but it worked for mine.
The link provided in the comment is to the Judiciary Information Management System (JIMS). Of course, we don’t know if that is the one featured in the KITV report. It works well enough, though.
It will locate any plate if a citation has been issued against the owner. Clean record? No problem. You can go to the comment and check out your own license plate to see if you are at risk.
Should this information be publicly available? If not, someone will have to do something about it.
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