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reenorap 23 hours ago [-]
It's probably never going to happen because neither party cares about protecting Americans rights, but we need to have some sort of law that creates a Chinese firewall between these mass surveillance data and the government, or whoever else.
I don't know if you could ever collect this data and never have foreign entities or NSA moles infiltrate into it by sending their agents to work at that company and steal the data whenever they want. But I can see how this would be good at fighting crime but also a completely and absolute destruction of privacy.
We need politicians that actually care about Americans and their rights but no one who cares is dumb enough to want to go into politics, which is the sad thing.
wmf 23 hours ago [-]
Just don't collect the data. If it's too dangerous for the government to have then private companies shouldn't have it either. The entire purpose of license plate readers is to assist law enforcement; if we decide as a society that we don't want to do it then just ban it completely.
archontes 2 hours ago [-]
The way it should work is that if a government can't do a thing, then they can't pay for the same thing.
Remove the demand and the activity will dry up.
themafia 19 hours ago [-]
> The entire purpose of license plate readers is to assist law enforcement
It was the repossession companies that deployed them first. The police, as a general rule, are about 10 years behind on technology almost everywhere, so when new stuff drops, it's actually profit driven industries that deploy it.
Our company cut deals with several large business in the area, like malls, and we deployed the cameras at the entrances to their lots. If a car on the "hot list" pulled in, we'd get an alert, then dispatch a truck to go collect the vehicle.
salawat 13 hours ago [-]
Username checks out.
coliveira 18 hours ago [-]
It is the government that wants these companies to do this, so they can get access to the data!
wmf 16 hours ago [-]
I would say Congress is not the FBI but I guess that's no longer true.
baby_souffle 21 hours ago [-]
You can't realistically ban cameras and character recognition software.
It’d be hard to keep individuals from doing this. But individuals aren’t running networks of cameras. Companies are. Those companies probably couldn’t fly under the radar selling LPR data if the practice was banned.
tardedmeme 12 hours ago [-]
How do you know individuals aren't running ALPR networks?
fragmede 7 hours ago [-]
Most individuals I know only have access to a handful of places they could put ALPR devices. Their home, their work, a couple of really really close friends who trust them enough to let them setup a camera on their property. Individuals could pay people to host their cameras but then that starts looking like a business, so while it's theoretically possible for an individual to have a network of APLRs just for the fun of it, that just seems like weird enough hobby that, I don't have any evidence of this, but I don't think anyone is doing that.
saguntum 16 hours ago [-]
You can ban the commercialization and mass scaling of the technology. Just because you can't prevent something at a small scale doesn't mean you can't prevent corporations and government agencies from doing it without exposing themselves to unacceptable legal risk.
analog31 19 hours ago [-]
You can ban possession of the data if you attach statutory damages per infraction.
MaKey 20 hours ago [-]
You can make it illegal to use private cameras for surveillance of public spaces. In Europe this is already the case.
tardedmeme 12 hours ago [-]
It's actually a very cool law. You can see people expressing themselves more freely because of rules like this.
ihsw 20 hours ago [-]
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pictureofabear 20 hours ago [-]
You can ban what’s done with the software/hardware, just as we ban assault with a deadly weapon.
19 hours ago [-]
pigeons 20 hours ago [-]
You can ban certain ways of using them, and enforce it and serve punishment for violation.
tintor 19 hours ago [-]
You can ban mass surveillance.
ipaddr 20 hours ago [-]
You can ban pictures with certain content.
mothballed 20 hours ago [-]
There is little chance I could just post up cameras wherever my ex travels and note all the time she arrives and leaves at all intersections and get away with that without at least a restraining order ordering me to stop. What they are actually doing is stalking by method of a network of cameras deliberately installed to follow people from place to place. It isn't generalized observation in pursuit of speech, it arguably isn't even speech, but rather mass individualized stalking. Maybe 1A allows that but that doesn't seem to be the law on the books for anyone else trying to stalk people in such a way.
Personally I don't have a huge problem with 1A being broad enough to including recording literally everything in public and meticulously cataloging and following everyone, but only if the rest of the amendments are read in the same broad and literal manner. Meaning I can own nukes, I don't have to display a plate, the 10th amendment would stop the feds from outlawing intrastate weed, etc. What it looks like what happens is the feds cherry pick interpretations of the bill of rights to trump up their powers and then give the least charitable interpretations to the plebs.
SilverElfin 16 hours ago [-]
The government should not be allowed to violate civil rights by outsourcing the harm to private industry
leonidasrup 14 hours ago [-]
"The third-party doctrine is a United States legal doctrine that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties, such as banks and phone companies, generally have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in that information."
The fact that has been a routine practice is egregious, but the bigger insult is the fact that this loophole has been known for quite some time. Yet, our legislators and judiciary have allowed the practices to continue. There’s nothing but foxes in the henhouse.
They’re called ethical walls now, for obvious reasons (although the room is still Chinese, for whatever distinction).
qotgalaxy 16 hours ago [-]
No they aren't.
2 hours ago [-]
JumpCrisscross 22 hours ago [-]
> What's a Chinese firewall?
"The Great Firewall (GFW; simplified Chinese: 防火长城; traditional Chinese: 防火長城; pinyin: Fánghuǒ Chángchéng) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically" [1].
but we need to have some sort of law that creates a Chinese firewall between these mass surveillance data and the government
technically we have one, the Fourth Amendment, but SCOTUS defanged it completely, years ago.
hdgvhicv 22 hours ago [-]
Only america can think there no harm in mass collection of data, and actively is against any attempts to limit it (gdpr for example) because it’s “anti growth”
hedora 17 hours ago [-]
The Swiss are, if anything, worse. They passed a mass surveillance law, it was challenged at referendum, and upheld with 70% of the vote:
This will never change until we pass laws that make personal data a liability instead of an asset.
mothballed 21 hours ago [-]
How about a law that says your documents, like your car registration number on a plate, doesn't have to be displayed except in case of reasonable articulable suspicion a crime has been committed. We could call it, the 4th amendment.
janalsncm 19 hours ago [-]
I’ll throw you an olive branch and say the registration sticker is completely pointless. The source of truth for whether my car is registered is in a database, not on a sticker. Someone can steal your sticker which results in a false positive for the thief and a false negative (and huge headache) for the victim.
Melatonic 10 hours ago [-]
True - but couldn't the same be said for ID then ? Just memorise your license number - cops have been able to look it up in their car computer for years. Saved me at least once.
Typically also they don't even bother with looking at your registration unless the sticker is way out of date
janalsncm 3 hours ago [-]
There isn’t a simple mapping between IDs and car registrations. You can borrow a friend’s car without telling the government about it.
aetch 12 hours ago [-]
The point of a plate is to publicly identify the vehicle at all times, not just when you feel like it
foobiekr 14 hours ago [-]
The tech companies will just use face recognition, tracing, gait recognition, unique properties (like scratches) etc. etc. for the same purpose, same way they pioneered browser fingerprinting.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 21 hours ago [-]
Your plate is displayed because driving is a privilege, not a right (note that traveling is a right, but you can travel without driving).
So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.
It's like having a wrist band to an event. You're not required to attend the event, but if you do attend it, you're required to wear the wrist band.
janalsncm 19 hours ago [-]
Sure, but for decades the license plate was an implicit social contract of functional pseudonymity: a random string of characters that for almost everyone on a day to day basis meant the government wasn’t tracking your whereabouts but could identify you if they really wanted to (at a stop).
So what people are really reacting to is the government using technical means to change the terms of that social contract without our input.
Same thing with Flock. People do the whole civic engagement thing and cities still sign contracts anyways.
A lot of people wouldn’t even be opposed if the whole thing was on a ballot measure. It becomes a problem when the government decides they no longer need consent of the governed.
xboxnolifes 19 hours ago [-]
In the US, driving is a hard sell to call a privilege. It's basically a necessity. When society is designed around the assumption of getting around by car, it's no longer a privilege.
Also,
> So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.
You paid for a bit of the infrastructure being driven on just by being a tax payer.
tardedmeme 12 hours ago [-]
That's one of the best ways to do business. You take something that is technically a privilege, turn it into a necessity, and then charge through the nose for it. It makes you very rich and very powerful.
modriano 8 hours ago [-]
Cars are also lethal weapons and around 1 out of every ~83 deaths in the US is a traffic death (~38k traffic deaths/yr, ~3M total deaths/yr). It's good to keep track of cars given how dangerous they are.
hsuduebc2 17 hours ago [-]
Car is a neccesity in this country.
US is certainly not known for it's public transportation and walkable cities.
themafia 19 hours ago [-]
> driving is a privilege
Yet you can have a license without owning a car. They don't issue you a plate to use. So the plate is clearly for something else, mainly I think, to indicate that you've paid the appropriate registration fees on the vehicle. The plates are tied to a vehicle to prevent the obvious "plate swapping" attack that people would use against this regime.
> roof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure
Actually those are gas and sales taxes, are they not?
> you're required to wear the wrist band.
The wrist band need not have a unique identifier readable from several feet away emblazoned on it in order to function.
freedomben 7 hours ago [-]
> So the plate is clearly for something else, mainly I think, to indicate that you've paid the appropriate registration fees on the vehicle.
I think it's so they can identify the car owner quickly and easily and hold them liable for any law violations or damage. And of courese, at least partially (or ostensibly) for revenue generation and taxation purposes (though if that's all it was for, just using the VIN would make more sense IMHO, which is why I suspect it's more for the former).
mothballed 21 hours ago [-]
>Your plate is displayed because driving is a privilege, not a right (note that traveling is a right, but you can travel without driving).
But the 4th amendment is a right, that applies even when engaging in a "privilege." See also the fact police can't just willy nilly check your driver license while engaging in a "privilege."
>So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.
False.
Plates are required even on my own privately owned publicly accessible road, and a large portion of my trips happen on publicly available but 100% privately owned roads with 0 taxes to maintain them (in fact, I maintain a lot of the roads in my community myself because they are all private). In fact some of those roads, I 100% own and maintain, and yet since I legally can't bar anyone from driving on it the law in my state (AZ) requires a displayed plate (even for me).
>It's like having a wrist band to an event. You're not required to attend the event, but if you do attend it, you're required to wear the wrist band.
It's like citing me for not having a wrist band on my own owned road easement, which is the law in my state. There is no property right you are attempting to assert under which that makes sense. I can go about 90% of the way to "town" on privately owned roads in which none of the owners care if I have a "wrist band" yet the state can still cite me for not having it.
brewdad 16 hours ago [-]
The fact that the road is legally accessible to the public makes it a public road for the sake of this discussion. You must have a license plate to drive on a public road. It really isn’t any more complicated than that.
It doesn’t matter whether the road in front of my house is owned by the federal government, state, county, city, or Bob, I and everyone else is allowed to drive on it, so it’s a public road.
vjvjvjvjghv 19 hours ago [-]
They will find something else to track you by. I think the idea of no expectation of privacy in public doesn't work anymore with the available tech.
19 hours ago [-]
asdff 23 hours ago [-]
In socal people might not even use license plates at all. Some people mask them with a towel or something like that. Some run paper dealership plates which I guess don't need to have any license number on them at all, just the dealer logo. Others just take them off and drive. I've seen plates that were sanded clean and with different numbers stuck on them that don't match then indented numbers.
And then of course all the texas plates. No, it isn't just visitors from texas. Texas has a cool loophole where there is no registration information on the plate, it is on a little sticker on the dashboard. As such, there are a dozen plus cars that have been regulars in my neighborhood for years with texas plates, with some several years old sticker on their dashboard.
It is kind of surprising that they don't get hit with a huge ticket for failing to register their car after 20 days. Some even park on the street quite brazenly. But maybe that shows how these systems are, today at least, very poorly connected between states. I've even seen a car being sold locally where the owner openly admits it was never registered or smogged, and they used it as their local neighborhood runabout just rolling the dice that they would not get pulled over. Just an aspect of the driving culture.
jkestner 22 hours ago [-]
Note that Flock says it can identify a car by physical characteristics from dents to bumper stickers.
cucumber3732842 22 hours ago [-]
Having worked with the result of prior generations (circa 2010) of algorithms for that sort of thing in the radar spectrum (I was not privy to the actual algorithms that underpinned it all) I suspect accuracy drops off exponentially once you get away from text based stuff and flagrant body differences (missing mirror, aftermarket spoiler, etc).
pizzly 20 hours ago [-]
You properly could identify cars uniquely by the sound they make. If not now then soon.
ranon 19 hours ago [-]
My dog could do this 10 years ago. 2 miles away through the canyon she knew exactly who would be showing up in 10 minutes. And it's a popular canyon.
testing22321 4 hours ago [-]
I can identify the family wagon we had growing up from the door slamming.
Always makes me smile when I hear it across a parking lot.
Melatonic 10 hours ago [-]
"The whistlers go WOOOOO"
themafia 19 hours ago [-]
Note that Flock has incorrectly identified several vehicles as "suspects" to police during investigations.
Flock has two obligations. Sell equipment to police. Avoid freaking the public out.
Their statements are almost certainly not reliable.
FireBeyond 22 hours ago [-]
Absolutely they can. Vehicle panel colors, wheel rims, roofrack, tow hitch, bumper stickers, damage all factor into their vehicle fingerprinting.
And once they've got a real license plate for the vehicle, all the historical information for that vehicle fingerprint's activities are now linked.
HNisCIS 15 hours ago [-]
I routinely add/remove many of those things so I'm not sure how reliable they are.
Like I alternate between hitch/no hitch/bike rack, add/remove roof rack (it hurts mileage and is easy to swap), swap between my summer and winter rims+tires, and rotating through a set of magnetic bumper stickers would be trivial.
testing22321 4 hours ago [-]
So you’re in the < 1% they can’t accurately and reliably fingerprint.
On the whole, no big deal.
giobox 23 hours ago [-]
> Some run paper dealership plates which I guess don't need to have any license number on them at all, just the dealer logo
In California, isn't this just a normal person buying a new car? If bought from a dealership lot, a new car will run on temporary paper plates for several weeks until the permanent registration and new plate is processed. You see this all the time in CA, because CA buys a lot of new cars. There are even circumstances a used car will roll of the dealer lot with paper plates pending processing.
bagels 23 hours ago [-]
That isn't how it works anymore, as far as I know (it used to). The dealerships now can print paper license plates with numbers on them.
jerlam 22 hours ago [-]
Yup, I recently bought a car and you get temporary numbers that are associated with the dealer (who knows who you are and what car you have) until your actual plate with real numbers and registration comes from the DMV.
asdff 23 hours ago [-]
You can tell when it isn't a normal person buying a new car when it is your neighbor's car you see for multiple years with those "temporary" tags. I catch a lot of out of date registration too. Usually those cars are parked off street but sometimes not. I usually see about two dozen on my walks. Easy to tell at a glance when you recognize what color tag is now very stale.
everdrive 23 hours ago [-]
Sometimes, yes, but some groups of people just run with temporary tags for a very long time and roll the dice.
acdha 20 hours ago [-]
There are groups on Facebook Marketplace selling fakes. They used to have those Texas dealer plates but I believe the Texas authorities finally stopped procrastinating on doing something about that.
It used to be easy to search for terms like “tires” and find what were clearly counterfeiting rings.
dawnerd 22 hours ago [-]
I drive in socal a lot and I rarely see a car without a visible plate.
dfxm12 23 hours ago [-]
Car culture sucks, but on the other hand, I'm kinda glad we don't live in such a police state that we got people going out of their way looking over our shoulders at this level of detail.
Although, this does get enforced in some places, at least. I remember on Parking Wars, PPA ticketed or maybe impounded a car that had an out of state expired registration.
asdff 23 hours ago [-]
Well, it directly leads to registration fees and insurance rates being higher than they would normally with everyone paying in properly. There's also air quality concerns with people not going for smog checks. So people not playing that game are getting hurt by the people who do.
jerlam 22 hours ago [-]
Having laws that only some people follow, and others do not without penalty, bothers everyone's natural sense of fairness and eventually rots the whole concept of following laws.
dfxm12 22 hours ago [-]
We have a lowering trust society for many reasons. I don't doubt it plays a role, but I'm sure this is low on the list of contributing factors. The required deployment of LEO to our communities to enforce this as suggested would lower trust further. There are many more impactful ways to raise trust, and most of them involve addressing the corruption of those in power.
cucumber3732842 22 hours ago [-]
>natural sense of fairness
This sets off my spidey senses in the same way that "social contract", "law abiding citizen" and other turns of phrase like that do.
>Having laws that only some people follow
It's not like these people are all part of the system and protected from consequences. They're just saying fuggit consequences be damned. Be happy that some have the balls to tell the system to shove it. You can choose to be one of them any time you want.
21 hours ago [-]
21 hours ago [-]
mothballed 22 hours ago [-]
There's a certain kind of person cops don't like to deal with unless it's going to get them a nice promotional-tier felony arrest. Not a lot of people looking to wrestle with a gang banger over a registration ticket. If you look like a functional member of society though they'll ruthlessly enforce whatever money they can get out of you.
cucumber3732842 18 hours ago [-]
Anyone can buy a Chrysler 300 and pay the local detailing shop to limo tint it. There's nothing stopping you from looking like a tough nut to crack.
Regardless, the cops harass the shit out of people who "look sketchy" because your bullshit license plate or whatever pretext is what gets you the foot in the door to the felony BS.
HDBaseT 19 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tintor 19 hours ago [-]
How about digital license plates?
That change the code displayed daily.
Not unlike authenticator phone apps.
Police can still use them to identify the vehicle, and verify registration, but mass surveillance and repo companies can't use them to track vehicles for more than a day OR to identify vehicles.
rationalist 16 hours ago [-]
Flock uses other vehicle characteristics to track vehicles: bumper stickers, dents, etc.
HNisCIS 15 hours ago [-]
The gov will have that database though and it's a simple query to get all the displayed IDs and then search them in Flock's database. It makes it slightly harder for Flock to do things of it's own accord but that's not the problem here.
_factor 7 hours ago [-]
So you audit the database and the access. Just because it exists doesn’t mean it has be available.
goshx 18 hours ago [-]
What are the odds of Elon already providing this kind of service through Teslas?
akimbostrawman 13 hours ago [-]
The same odds as any other modern car spying on you and selling that data (100%)
amanaplanacanal 24 hours ago [-]
My local town runs their own license plate readers for red light and speed cameras. Not sure how the feds could get access to those.
bl4kers 59 minutes ago [-]
You sure that data is stored locally and not on a vendor's cloud offering?
asdff 23 hours ago [-]
These have funny loopholes usually. For our county they have a few connected to running the red light for a busway. But notoriously the information is collected by some company out of state with no actual policing power, who then begs you to pay the ticket with a letter every couple months. You can actually ignore this if you avoid any sign of life that indicates you might have received the ticket, such as looking it up on the county ticket portal. They don't serve you or send it via certified mail. The county courts motioned years ago that they aren't enforcing these tickets. They don't affect your ability to renew your license, register your car, or insurance rates. They don't come up when you get pulled over for anything else. It is basically a scam to support the traffic ticket company out of state hoping you pay them and sustain their business model.
jamiek88 22 hours ago [-]
Except current immigration enforcement. Ignoring that is enough to have citizenship denied. Just happened to a friend of mine in Houston. Culture is to ignore, courts ignore, police don’t see it. USCIS do.
testplzignore 23 hours ago [-]
The NSA would presumably have all of this.
From a taxpayer perspective, it's such a waste to have multiple agencies doing their own unconstitutional surveillance. Why have two Ministries of Love when one would do? :)
irishcoffee 23 hours ago [-]
This is the purview of the FBI. The NSA is focused on the rest of the world.
Is there overlap? Sure. But the amount of disinformation on the website about the FBI vs the NSA is comical. If anything, when people say “NSA” they really mean “CIA” and just don’t understand the difference.
cucumber3732842 22 hours ago [-]
>The NSA is focused on the rest of the world.
In the same way that the CIA doesn't sell cocaine.
I'm sure they "mostly" focus externally but that doesn't mean they're not still doing a hell of a lot domestically.
convolvatron 22 hours ago [-]
recently there has been some football and stopgap in congress about reauthorizing the patriot act permissions for the NSA to collect any communications where one endpoint is out of the country. so that's at least widely recognized and 'legal'
irishcoffee 22 hours ago [-]
I covered this with: "Is there overlap? Sure."
The FBI is the boogeyman everyone around these parts wants the NSA to be. The NSA has the skillset, they just don't use it like that, domestically.
That was my point. Carry on. I don't mind if you agree or not.
rockskon 14 hours ago [-]
Intentionally collecting everything to include millions of U.S. persons data, say the collection was "incidental", put the computer equivalent of a removable sticky-note over their name to say it's been "minimized" and thus a-okay for the NSA to use...
There is a debate the bulk of NSA's leadership has been wholly uninterested in having over what they do with regards to acquiring and parsing U.S. persons' private communications, instead preferring to use word-games and rhetorical sleight-of-hand.
Everything I've seen about the NSA domestic collection debate and publishings and statements from officials have boiled down to:
*The NSA taps communication sources they know with absolute certainty contains an enormous amount of U.S. persons' information because these sources also contain non-U.S. persons communications. An effort is made to remove U.S. persons' information from this programmatically but this step frequently leaves an enormous amount leftover. Despite this - the NSA intentionally parses these private communications - that include that of of millions of U.S. citizens - in bulk. That it isn't their intent or mission to specifically acquire and parse U.S. persons' communications are not germane considerations. Actions matter more than words.
*The NSA justifies this by dint of "it's okay, everyone! We trust ourselves to never do anything bad with your information! We never meant to acquire it! But we did. And we will keep acquiring more of your info 'incidentally' as your privacy is something we are willing to sacrifice in our efforts to acquire foreign intelligence."
*The NSA shares an enormous amount of U.S. persons' private communications with other intelligence agencies to include the FBI. Again - that it was not the NSA's intent nor mission to acquire the information to begin with is not relevant when they, nevertheless, keep getting the information!
joquarky 20 hours ago [-]
> The NSA has the skillset, they just don't use it like that, domestically.
That seems like a statement that needs backed up by sources.
irishcoffee 20 hours ago [-]
Fat chance. I don’t care if you believe me. I’m not lying to you.
mothballed 20 hours ago [-]
I believe you but this seems far more like HSI territory, who are comfortable, able, and excessively willing to overstep rights of both citizens and foreigners. They're also an underestimated agency that IIRC is larger than the FBI.
chaps 23 hours ago [-]
Presumably it's a system that can be viewed from a phone or from dispatch remotely right? All they'd have to do is share the credentials and that's that.
dayofthedaleks 23 hours ago [-]
It already goes to your local DHS Fusion Center.
masfuerte 24 hours ago [-]
By offering money?
giantg2 23 hours ago [-]
Or withholding money (grants).
vjvjvjvjghv 19 hours ago [-]
People are usually afraid of government surveillance but I suspected already a long time ago that all the data that's being collected by private firms will eventually be used by government and companies. Basically we have been building and continue building an infrastructure that Hitler or Stalin would have been envious of. And as we have seen in the last year, companies will fall in line quickly with whoever is in power as long as the profits keep flowing.
The only solution I see is to stop massive data collection no matter who does it. This is probably not going to happen so we will most likely end up with a surveillance society much worse than what "1984" described. And some day an authoritarian will use the data to its full extent.
scholarnet-AI 23 hours ago [-]
I believe technology is great but we must regulate to assure personal privacy is maintained.
nazgulsenpai 22 hours ago [-]
I don't think regulators (government) protecting the people from the FBI (government) is going to work out.
cute_boi 23 hours ago [-]
I think we can’t easily choose both, because these agencies will portray it as something they need in order to help children.
bpoyner 23 hours ago [-]
They'll also need it to track down terrorists. And who determines who is a terrorist? Why, the department of justice does.
baggachipz 24 hours ago [-]
I had already assumed that they were using Flock data for exactly this. I guess paying to speed the nationwide rollout makes it official and will free them from pesky courts and human rights.
delichon 23 hours ago [-]
It's not that they don't have access but that they don't have legal access that they can use as leverage. Parallel construction is a pain in the ass. They're buying the right to use it in court.
goolz 23 hours ago [-]
Exactly. It is not that they are not already spying on all of us; they are. Or that they cannot already nail you for something. It is that they need a way to launder their evidence so that it is kosher come prosecution.
spwa4 7 hours ago [-]
This has been the norm in the Netherlands for about 20 years now. Since then the number of license plate readers has expanded enormously. This is so old that the laws about it have been updated several times already.
At one point they were very proud of having developed an algorithm to go much further than just license plate reading: "trajectory control". By placing ANPR cameras on every road and checking the traffic, they could not just detect when your license plate drove by a camera, but locate the vehicle down to a few meters at all times. This algorithm is now also used for traffic indicators, speeding fines, ...
They also identify the vehicle (to check if you've paid correctly, and to give fines relating to vehicle type). They check how many people are in the car (there's a tax advantage for cars that never carry more than 2 people). And I'm sure this is not a full list.
Oh and in case you're wondering about the GPDR: every EU state, as well as a looong list of international organizations (from the UK tax service to Interpol) have the right to grant permanent and transitive exceptions to the GPDR to anyone they want. The license plates are collected and processed by a private company. A blanket GPDR exception has been granted to them. They have other business deals involving the license plate data.
The Netherlands is also doing face recognition in the public space, by the way. In a very similar way. The very thing the GPDR was explicitly "created to prevent", or so the story goes. It was even put into the GPDR law that without the GPDR face recognition would become commonplace. Well, GPDR passed, and it is commonplace. At airports + a lot of train stations + a number of locations in big cities. About 1.3% of all arrests in the Netherlands were made on the basis of face recognition cameras in 2023.
If they do, doesn't that make the companies running those readers agents of the state during the collaboration?
22 hours ago [-]
oliwarner 9 hours ago [-]
It's a special American madness that prevents law enforcement for installing their own mass surveillance systems, with all the oversight that it'd come with, and instead buy all the data they need from shady techbros siloing all the data they can, at ten times the cost.
If you don't like mass surveillance, you have to ban private companies doing it too. If you're okay with it, do it in-house. You still need to ban private companies doing it.
Zigurd 22 hours ago [-]
Not that it will help for long distance travel, but if I was running strategy for the big E-bike cartel, I couldn't think of a better meme to promote than the surveillance state getting a chubby about ALPRs.
Seriously, though, I think the Karens out there want E-bike licensed just so cops can keep hassling brown people even when they're not driving clapped out old Toyotas.
dawnerd 22 hours ago [-]
ALPRs, from Flock in particular, track more than license plates. They've installed Flock cameras on pedestrian paths even.
god_n_stuff 21 hours ago [-]
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black_13 22 hours ago [-]
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charcircuit 22 hours ago [-]
This information can be critical for understanding the movement of vehicles and can benefit law enforcement giving them more evidence and knowledge to work off of. As long as these systems are accurate and not being maliciously tampered with it keeps everyone accountable to their actions.
22 hours ago [-]
__MatrixMan__ 22 hours ago [-]
Corrupt government officials use this data to kidnap people. Not criminals, just people they don't like. Do you really think that's worth tolerating just because it'll help us catch more actual criminals?
Dibby053 20 hours ago [-]
Helping solve kidnapping cases is a direct and straightforward application of vehicle intelligence data.
simoncion 15 hours ago [-]
I have to wonder if the two who've replied to you are bots. Neither of them seem to have noticed what you meant by "kidnap people".
charcircuit 15 hours ago [-]
I am not a bot and I understand that kidnap people can also mean to abduct people which is the age independent term.
charcircuit 20 hours ago [-]
Yes, I think it's worth tolerating and I think all queries should be logged and monitored for abuse. Kidnapping already is not legal to do.
righthand 14 hours ago [-]
But if persons in power are already not being held accountable, what the heck is a log file going to do?
charcircuit 11 hours ago [-]
If people in power can freely get away with kidnapping than there are bigger problems to fix to restore law and order.
_factor 7 hours ago [-]
And giving those same people more power makes it more difficult to fix the core problems.
righthand 7 hours ago [-]
Exactly my point and you’re describing giving those people more power and suggesting an unenforced audit log is all we need to keep check.
martinbfine 21 hours ago [-]
Another AI click bait article. Fake news. And a conspiracy theory.
darkstar999 21 hours ago [-]
If you make a claim like that you should back it up in some way.
foofyter 19 hours ago [-]
They already know where you are.
NoMoreNicksLeft 23 hours ago [-]
Does anyone sell am eInk display that's 12"x6"? Doesn't have to be color, though bonus points for that...
__MatrixMan__ 22 hours ago [-]
Installing a license plate flipper, digital or mechanical, is likely more illegal than just putting bags over the readers.
I equate these license plates with terrible money management skills. $900 for a license plate: "a fool and his money are soon parted" regardless of what income bracket they're in
NoMoreNicksLeft 23 hours ago [-]
Nah, I was thinking a raw eInk panel. Not one controlled by the state. One that can flip the numbers for 2 seconds, while driving past the surveillance cameras but be back on my real license plate number immediately just in case there are any cops watching. Hell, I could even run recognition against the rear dash cam, so that it overrides a flip if there are recognizable cop cars within view. Could be fun.
I don't know if you could ever collect this data and never have foreign entities or NSA moles infiltrate into it by sending their agents to work at that company and steal the data whenever they want. But I can see how this would be good at fighting crime but also a completely and absolute destruction of privacy.
We need politicians that actually care about Americans and their rights but no one who cares is dumb enough to want to go into politics, which is the sad thing.
Remove the demand and the activity will dry up.
It was the repossession companies that deployed them first. The police, as a general rule, are about 10 years behind on technology almost everywhere, so when new stuff drops, it's actually profit driven industries that deploy it.
Our company cut deals with several large business in the area, like malls, and we deployed the cameras at the entrances to their lots. If a car on the "hot list" pulled in, we'd get an alert, then dispatch a truck to go collect the vehicle.
https://gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXI/261/261-75-b.htm
Personally I don't have a huge problem with 1A being broad enough to including recording literally everything in public and meticulously cataloging and following everyone, but only if the rest of the amendments are read in the same broad and literal manner. Meaning I can own nukes, I don't have to display a plate, the 10th amendment would stop the feds from outlawing intrastate weed, etc. What it looks like what happens is the feds cherry pick interpretations of the bill of rights to trump up their powers and then give the least charitable interpretations to the plebs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall
"The Great Firewall (GFW; simplified Chinese: 防火长城; traditional Chinese: 防火長城; pinyin: Fánghuǒ Chángchéng) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically" [1].
(I don't think they mean a Chinese wall [2].)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall#Alternative_terms
technically we have one, the Fourth Amendment, but SCOTUS defanged it completely, years ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/25/switzerland-vo...
Typically also they don't even bother with looking at your registration unless the sticker is way out of date
So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.
It's like having a wrist band to an event. You're not required to attend the event, but if you do attend it, you're required to wear the wrist band.
So what people are really reacting to is the government using technical means to change the terms of that social contract without our input.
Same thing with Flock. People do the whole civic engagement thing and cities still sign contracts anyways.
A lot of people wouldn’t even be opposed if the whole thing was on a ballot measure. It becomes a problem when the government decides they no longer need consent of the governed.
Also,
> So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.
You paid for a bit of the infrastructure being driven on just by being a tax payer.
US is certainly not known for it's public transportation and walkable cities.
Yet you can have a license without owning a car. They don't issue you a plate to use. So the plate is clearly for something else, mainly I think, to indicate that you've paid the appropriate registration fees on the vehicle. The plates are tied to a vehicle to prevent the obvious "plate swapping" attack that people would use against this regime.
> roof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure
Actually those are gas and sales taxes, are they not?
> you're required to wear the wrist band.
The wrist band need not have a unique identifier readable from several feet away emblazoned on it in order to function.
I think it's so they can identify the car owner quickly and easily and hold them liable for any law violations or damage. And of courese, at least partially (or ostensibly) for revenue generation and taxation purposes (though if that's all it was for, just using the VIN would make more sense IMHO, which is why I suspect it's more for the former).
But the 4th amendment is a right, that applies even when engaging in a "privilege." See also the fact police can't just willy nilly check your driver license while engaging in a "privilege."
>So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.
False.
Plates are required even on my own privately owned publicly accessible road, and a large portion of my trips happen on publicly available but 100% privately owned roads with 0 taxes to maintain them (in fact, I maintain a lot of the roads in my community myself because they are all private). In fact some of those roads, I 100% own and maintain, and yet since I legally can't bar anyone from driving on it the law in my state (AZ) requires a displayed plate (even for me).
>It's like having a wrist band to an event. You're not required to attend the event, but if you do attend it, you're required to wear the wrist band.
It's like citing me for not having a wrist band on my own owned road easement, which is the law in my state. There is no property right you are attempting to assert under which that makes sense. I can go about 90% of the way to "town" on privately owned roads in which none of the owners care if I have a "wrist band" yet the state can still cite me for not having it.
It doesn’t matter whether the road in front of my house is owned by the federal government, state, county, city, or Bob, I and everyone else is allowed to drive on it, so it’s a public road.
And then of course all the texas plates. No, it isn't just visitors from texas. Texas has a cool loophole where there is no registration information on the plate, it is on a little sticker on the dashboard. As such, there are a dozen plus cars that have been regulars in my neighborhood for years with texas plates, with some several years old sticker on their dashboard.
It is kind of surprising that they don't get hit with a huge ticket for failing to register their car after 20 days. Some even park on the street quite brazenly. But maybe that shows how these systems are, today at least, very poorly connected between states. I've even seen a car being sold locally where the owner openly admits it was never registered or smogged, and they used it as their local neighborhood runabout just rolling the dice that they would not get pulled over. Just an aspect of the driving culture.
Always makes me smile when I hear it across a parking lot.
Flock has two obligations. Sell equipment to police. Avoid freaking the public out.
Their statements are almost certainly not reliable.
And once they've got a real license plate for the vehicle, all the historical information for that vehicle fingerprint's activities are now linked.
Like I alternate between hitch/no hitch/bike rack, add/remove roof rack (it hurts mileage and is easy to swap), swap between my summer and winter rims+tires, and rotating through a set of magnetic bumper stickers would be trivial.
On the whole, no big deal.
In California, isn't this just a normal person buying a new car? If bought from a dealership lot, a new car will run on temporary paper plates for several weeks until the permanent registration and new plate is processed. You see this all the time in CA, because CA buys a lot of new cars. There are even circumstances a used car will roll of the dealer lot with paper plates pending processing.
It used to be easy to search for terms like “tires” and find what were clearly counterfeiting rings.
Although, this does get enforced in some places, at least. I remember on Parking Wars, PPA ticketed or maybe impounded a car that had an out of state expired registration.
This sets off my spidey senses in the same way that "social contract", "law abiding citizen" and other turns of phrase like that do.
>Having laws that only some people follow
It's not like these people are all part of the system and protected from consequences. They're just saying fuggit consequences be damned. Be happy that some have the balls to tell the system to shove it. You can choose to be one of them any time you want.
Regardless, the cops harass the shit out of people who "look sketchy" because your bullshit license plate or whatever pretext is what gets you the foot in the door to the felony BS.
Police can still use them to identify the vehicle, and verify registration, but mass surveillance and repo companies can't use them to track vehicles for more than a day OR to identify vehicles.
From a taxpayer perspective, it's such a waste to have multiple agencies doing their own unconstitutional surveillance. Why have two Ministries of Love when one would do? :)
Is there overlap? Sure. But the amount of disinformation on the website about the FBI vs the NSA is comical. If anything, when people say “NSA” they really mean “CIA” and just don’t understand the difference.
In the same way that the CIA doesn't sell cocaine.
I'm sure they "mostly" focus externally but that doesn't mean they're not still doing a hell of a lot domestically.
The FBI is the boogeyman everyone around these parts wants the NSA to be. The NSA has the skillset, they just don't use it like that, domestically.
That was my point. Carry on. I don't mind if you agree or not.
There is a debate the bulk of NSA's leadership has been wholly uninterested in having over what they do with regards to acquiring and parsing U.S. persons' private communications, instead preferring to use word-games and rhetorical sleight-of-hand.
Everything I've seen about the NSA domestic collection debate and publishings and statements from officials have boiled down to:
*The NSA taps communication sources they know with absolute certainty contains an enormous amount of U.S. persons' information because these sources also contain non-U.S. persons communications. An effort is made to remove U.S. persons' information from this programmatically but this step frequently leaves an enormous amount leftover. Despite this - the NSA intentionally parses these private communications - that include that of of millions of U.S. citizens - in bulk. That it isn't their intent or mission to specifically acquire and parse U.S. persons' communications are not germane considerations. Actions matter more than words.
*The NSA justifies this by dint of "it's okay, everyone! We trust ourselves to never do anything bad with your information! We never meant to acquire it! But we did. And we will keep acquiring more of your info 'incidentally' as your privacy is something we are willing to sacrifice in our efforts to acquire foreign intelligence."
*The NSA shares an enormous amount of U.S. persons' private communications with other intelligence agencies to include the FBI. Again - that it was not the NSA's intent nor mission to acquire the information to begin with is not relevant when they, nevertheless, keep getting the information!
That seems like a statement that needs backed up by sources.
The only solution I see is to stop massive data collection no matter who does it. This is probably not going to happen so we will most likely end up with a surveillance society much worse than what "1984" described. And some day an authoritarian will use the data to its full extent.
https://digitalfreedomfund.org/case-studies/collection-and-m... (dutch, sorry)
https://anprcameras.nl/ (a partial list, oh and there's mobile "stations" doing it too)
At one point they were very proud of having developed an algorithm to go much further than just license plate reading: "trajectory control". By placing ANPR cameras on every road and checking the traffic, they could not just detect when your license plate drove by a camera, but locate the vehicle down to a few meters at all times. This algorithm is now also used for traffic indicators, speeding fines, ...
They also identify the vehicle (to check if you've paid correctly, and to give fines relating to vehicle type). They check how many people are in the car (there's a tax advantage for cars that never carry more than 2 people). And I'm sure this is not a full list.
Oh and in case you're wondering about the GPDR: every EU state, as well as a looong list of international organizations (from the UK tax service to Interpol) have the right to grant permanent and transitive exceptions to the GPDR to anyone they want. The license plates are collected and processed by a private company. A blanket GPDR exception has been granted to them. They have other business deals involving the license plate data.
The Netherlands is also doing face recognition in the public space, by the way. In a very similar way. The very thing the GPDR was explicitly "created to prevent", or so the story goes. It was even put into the GPDR law that without the GPDR face recognition would become commonplace. Well, GPDR passed, and it is commonplace. At airports + a lot of train stations + a number of locations in big cities. About 1.3% of all arrests in the Netherlands were made on the basis of face recognition cameras in 2023.
https://algoritmes.overheid.nl/en/algoritme/oorg10264/354332...
If you don't like mass surveillance, you have to ban private companies doing it too. If you're okay with it, do it in-house. You still need to ban private companies doing it.
Seriously, though, I think the Karens out there want E-bike licensed just so cops can keep hassling brown people even when they're not driving clapped out old Toyotas.
Source: https://legalclarity.org/are-license-plate-flipper-devices-i...