31–40 of 191 posts
I remember reading a paper on confusing road sign recognizers by adding certain bits of noise to the sign that completely baffled the recognizer. I wonder if one could do this to the license plate which would still look normal to a human but be unreadable to an AI.
Yet another piece of evidence that the US is turning into an authoritarian state - as, to be fair, others do too (especially China!), but the US have the unique advantage of being the technologically most advanced civilization. In earlier times, when situations got too authoritarian, there were rebellions and revolution. With the level of militarization in police and military and the abilities made possible by today'…
I don’t understand, Europe has national ID laws I can fill up a form and get the details including owner details for any license plate in the EU (you need cause but it’s not verified in most cases it would land you in trouble if it’s abused tho), and automated license plate tracking is pretty darn common across all EU countries yet no one here yells Stasi about this.
A huge chunk of Europe doesn't use driving as their primary means of transportation.
I remember reading a paper on confusing road sign recognizers by adding certain bits of noise to the sign that completely baffled the recognizer. I wonder if one could do this to the license plate which would still look normal to a human but be unreadable to an AI.
Most plate cameras rely in part on the reflectiveness of the plate. You can definitely modify a plate to be mostly illegible to these cameras but easily human readable.
Yet another piece of evidence that the US is turning into an authoritarian state - as, to be fair, others do too (especially China!), but the US have the unique advantage of being the technologically most advanced civilization. In earlier times, when situations got too authoritarian, there were rebellions and revolution. With the level of militarization in police and military and the abilities made possible by today'…
I don’t understand, Europe has national ID laws I can fill up a form and get the details including owner details for any license plate in the EU (you need cause but it’s not verified in most cases it would land you in trouble if it’s abused tho), and automated license plate tracking is pretty darn common across all EU countries yet no one here yells Stasi about this.
No it's not. It may be legal in some countries, yes, for example the Italians are doing it for speed-tracking in certain highways, but the data is not shared between the countries, aggregated to form movement profiles or stored longer than required.
With ICE one can be sure that: a) nothing ever gets deleted b) it WILL get data-mined c) it WILL be abused.
> I can fill up a form and get the details including owner details for any license plate in the EU
That's a new to me - in Germany if you want the data e.g. for a lawsuit you have to file a complaint at police and before you get the data the validity of your request will be checked. In addition, this does not allow everyone to build a movement tracking system.
> yet no one here yells Stasi about this.
Oh hell yes people did. In Germany they went to the Bundesverfassungsgericht (~ Supreme Court) and got the legal base for automated tracking banned: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urteil_des_Bundesverfassungsge...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To quote madam secretary, "at this point, what difference does it make". People have been more then willing to give up their data to FB, Google, Apple, etc. The only difference is this is captured by governments --who at least in theory represent the voting public. It'll be interesting to see what the outcome is. Will the public demand the government regulate industry as well as ask it to rein in its own capabilities…
> The only difference is this is captured by governments --who at least in theory represent the voting public. Actually I trust a megacorp like Google, Amazon, Twitter or Facebook more with my data than I trust the state. The state can arrest me based on that data. The tech giants not, and they are fighting like hell that the government does not get access to that data (as that would compromise trust, and by that the…
I've heard them grumble about mass surveillance laws, but I haven't heard about them openly defying them, or using any of their substantial lobbying muscle in Washington against them. If they really cared, they could encrypt a lot of communications data, and simply not store things like real names, GPS co-ordinates and IP addresses as soon as they're not necessary to provide a service. The data wouldn't be as profitable, though.
If it makes you feel any safer, your license plate data is already being sold to private companies who want to build a file on you for profit.
From the EFF[1]:
> Vigilant Solutions' subsidiary Digital Recognition Network, along with MVTrac, are the two main companies hiring contractors to collect ALPR data across the country. The companies then share the data not just with law enforcement but also with auto recovery (aka "repo") companies, banks, credit reporting agencies, and insurance companies. Data collected by private entities does not have retention limits and is not subject to sunshine laws, or any of the other safeguards that are sometimes found in the government sector.
[1]: https://www.eff.org/pages/automated-license-plate-readers-al...
For fun, I tracked my rental car from Georgia to Texas after a vacation a few months back to see how often I hit one of my client's customer's cameras. It was a lot. I saw myself hit toll booths, go under over passes, and parked at a service station. About 25 hits that my account had access to (probably hundreds or thousands that I didn't have rights to see).
One of my clients does license plate reading and tracking. They have hundreds of tiny customers, and a handful of VERY LARGER customers, so I can say with 100% certainty, there are hundreds of agencies across the USA already doing this. For fun, I tracked my rental car from Georgia to Texas after a vacation a few months back to see how often I hit one of my client's customer's cameras. It was a lot. I saw myself hit…
What they don't tell you is that all those plate numbers are going into a database, time- and location-stamped.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To quote madam secretary, "at this point, what difference does it make". People have been more then willing to give up their data to FB, Google, Apple, etc. The only difference is this is captured by governments --who at least in theory represent the voting public. It'll be interesting to see what the outcome is. Will the public demand the government regulate industry as well as ask it to rein in its own capabilities…
> The only difference is this is captured by governments --who at least in theory represent the voting public. Actually I trust a megacorp like Google, Amazon, Twitter or Facebook more with my data than I trust the state. The state can arrest me based on that data. The tech giants not, and they are fighting like hell that the government does not get access to that data (as that would compromise trust, and by that the…
Why? As detailed in this article, the government doesn't need to collect the data -- they just buy it from these private companies and get it anyways.
At that point, there's no difference whatsoever. They have the data, it doesn't matter who they got it from.