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A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

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Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#161

Post by pimmen »

For comparison: in Sweden there was a chain of gas stations who installed plate recognition cameras to record people who didn't pay for the gas (if you opt to pay cash, you get to fill your car first and pay later, with this system in place the clerks could refuse that you got to fill up your car first if your plate showed up in a search).

The Swedish agency of data regulation was able to challenge the system in court and got the chain to dismantle the system, and with fines added to that. This was a couple of years ago, long before GDPR.

Something like this would absolutely not fly on this side of the pond, and I'm very glad about that.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#162

Post by bochoh »

jstanley wrote: post #145
ohbleek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if private actors were not involved, there wouldn’t be any way to verify that the information was destroyed by a governmental department. I suppose that is a possible area where a public blockchain that broadcasts the storage and deletion of data could be useful but now everybody has stopped reading this comment so they can talk about how blockchain tech is useless. Regardless, the indefinite/temporary storage o…

How exactly could a blockchain publish deletion of data in a way that can't be cheated?

Through a private key mechanism. If there was a mechanism to automatically remove the private key for a record then it would become effectively unreadable (in our life time, anyway).

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#163

Post by jstanley »

bochoh wrote: post #162
jstanley wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly could a blockchain publish deletion of data in a way that can't be cheated?

Through a private key mechanism. If there was a mechanism to automatically remove the private key for a record then it would become effectively unreadable (in our life time, anyway).

But what stops you from copying the private key before it gets removed? Or running a client that just pretends to remove the private key?

Half the point of a blockchain is that once data is out there it can't be removed. You can't leverage that to force the removal of something.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#164

Post by KozmoNau7 »

flukus wrote: post #134
Skunkleton wrote: post #13

To me the issue here is that this data is collected in the first place. It seems wrong to me that private corporations are tracking my every move.

It won't solve the license plate issue, but wearing a burka in public is starting to sound like a sensible response to the modern world just so you don't end up with your face scanned and location logged 38 times on your way to work in the morning. A niqab might do for now, but I'm guessing height, gate and precise location might provide too much fingerprinting information.

Many countries have anti-masking laws now, which make it illegal to cover your face, unless you have a "reasonable need".

Regrettably, the notoriously anti-immigration government here in Denmark has instituted just such a law, apparently because of a couple thousand women who wear niqabs and maybe 20 who wear burqas. They claim it's to "fight social control", which I find extremely ironic since it's the women who'll be getting fined!

And of course, the excuse the government uses is that it's for "public safety during demonstrations and for identification purposes in banks and similar situations".

I'm not actually sure whether it's actually meant to target the niqab/burqa-wearing women, or if it's because of the left-wing protests against the government, where some of the participants wear masks. Either way, banning specific types of clothes usually only happens in totalitation states.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#165

Post by frogperson »

mallstaff1992 wrote: post #150
ipsin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given this news, I'm going to contact some other large mall chains (e.g. Westfield), in the hopes that they'll confirm that they don't give out license plate data to third parties. I'll be interested to see how they respond.

Westfield uses third party hardware solutions in multiple malls to track in/out, matching against voluntarily-registered parkers so that parking tickets are not needed for smoother customer experience. These solutions track -all- in/out plates because that’s what they’re for. My info is dated but there was no data sharing. Significantly more creepily, WF uses wide-coverage anonymous device tracking to build customer…

Westfield recently spin that division off. All of this tracking tech is being built by a new company named OneMarket.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#166

Post by ryanmercer »

nkozyra wrote: post #114
ryanmercer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So hole up in a cave because someone might be tracking you every time you leave the house? Welcome to the late 20th century. Cat's out of the bag.

Cat was also out of the bag with child labor. It was out of the bag with DDT. We have the capability to reverse societal trends when we as a collective find them to be antithetical to our morals. This is no different.

>Cat was also out of the bag with child labor.

It's easy "you can't hire employees" and enforce it, it's a lot harder to go "you can't use the billions and billions of cameras in existence to record or track thing" and realistically hope to enforce it, especially when there is valid application.

I'm quite fine with the government knowing where my government registered, government licensed, government plated car is going. To legally drive a car you have to be licensed by the government, your car has to be registered with the government and you have to have a license plate issued by the government. You're going to be driving on public roads and private parking lots that have security cameras, ticketing cameras, news cameras, rear view cameras, autonomous car sensors, intersection monitoring cameras, internet streaming cameras and not to mention just about every human being you drive by will have at least one camera on their person.

This is a fact of life. Barring the discontinuation of using electricity this isn't going to change.

Do you have a phone? You're leaving records on every tower your phone connects to. Do you use WiFi? You're leaving records. Do you have a car with OnStar? You're leaving records. Do you use something like Automatic, you're giving a company all of your driving paths. Do you use Uber or Lyft, you're leaving a trail of where you go.

Are you an illegal immigrant or a human/drug/weapon trafficker that is under investigation using a specific vehicle to commit your crimes? Yes? Then don't go to the mall.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#167

Post by vinchuco »

blitmap wrote: post #140

I wonder where we're supposed to go from here. After 9/11 I worried about having something as convenient as Google Maps. Now we have more real-time surveillance and going outside I know I will be tracked and collected and bought and sold to private companies and the government. There's a psychological cost to knowing you're watched/exploited every time you go outside. In the past this was limited to what people might…

> Maybe I'm just paranoid

This common saying.

I'd rather be paranoid and informed than blissfully ignorant. But a person can only process so much while carrying on with their lives.

The jewel beetle attempts to mate with an amber glass bottle it finds attractive until it dies from exhaustion.

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/06/19/193493225/t...

We increasingly manufacture our own deception. Deep fakes, targeted advertising, you name it. We are both the beetle and bottle designers. It is definitely worth thinking about.

It's much easier to design glass bottles than to save beetles from the best and worst time of their lives.

Now, as crafty bottle designer, think of all the stuff you could do, given the necessary resources.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#168

Post by hartator »

test6554 wrote: post #131
narrator wrote: post #64

I read articles like this and I think that one's opinion on this is directly correlated with whether one thinks that immigration laws should be enforced. I don't think most people are calling for immigration laws to be eliminated and anyone who manages to make it here should be allowed to stay indefinitely. What I don't get is the whole selective enforcement of laws thing. If someone somehow managed to get across the…

I feel like there are two types of people, those who respect property rights and those who don't. You might say that one type of person wants everyone to be like docker containers, not interfering with one-another and another type of person wants to be like a monolithic application where anyone's problem becomes everyone's problem, but free resources are to be shared.

That’s a very bad analogy.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#169

Post by nkozyra »

ryanmercer wrote: post #166
nkozyra wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cat was also out of the bag with child labor. It was out of the bag with DDT. We have the capability to reverse societal trends when we as a collective find them to be antithetical to our morals. This is no different.

>Cat was also out of the bag with child labor. It's easy "you can't hire employees" and enforce it, it's a lot harder to go "you can't use the billions and billions of cameras in existence to record or track thing" and realistically hope to enforce it, especially when there is valid application. I'm quite fine with the government knowing where my government registered, government licensed, government plated car is go…

> It's easy "you can't hire employees" and enforce it

I wouldn't say that's "easy" by any measure. It requires(/d) a large shift of public opinion and awareness, enforcement is in many ways harder because there's less visibility.

> I'm quite fine with the government knowing where my government registered, government licensed, government plated car is going.

You're right. Most of us are. Are you ok with them implanting chips into you as a baby to track your every move? Assuming your response to that is "no" then you realize that the issue at hand is scope. There are limits to what we'll accept.

> Do you have a phone? You're leaving records on every tower your phone connects to. Do you use WiFi? You're leaving records.

Again you're confusing the principle at large and the scope at which it's applied.

> Are you an illegal immigrant or a human/drug/weapon trafficker that is under investigation using a specific vehicle to commit your crimes? Yes? Then don't go to the mall.

This is a reductive argument. When I talk about the scope above I'm talking about the impact it has on everyone.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#170

Post by jefurii »

walrus01 wrote: post #159
sverige wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is anyone in SV going to eat if private corporations can't track our every move? I mean, not everyone takes cab rides or rents private homes when they travel, but almost everyone uses the internet for something. And those people need to be tracked, or there's no money to be made.

> How is anyone in SV going to eat if private corporations can't track our every move? I work for an ISP and we do not track our customers. At all. We bill them and they receive a reliable service that performs as advertised. Maybe we could go back to the oldschool model of actually selling a product or service, delivering it to the customer, and keeping the customer happy?

Which ISP is this? (interested)
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