Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

mchap.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 248 posts

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#31

Post by brotherjerky »

jimmaswell wrote: post #28
btrettel wrote: post #13

Would be nice to use the same skills to help reduce cars illegally parked in the bike lane. Identify areas which cyclists commonly complain about that (e.g., to the city) and encourage them to put up better signs?

Could also signal the area is starved for parking, so the lane should be removed and bicyclists should just ride in the road for those stretches. Small inconvenience to the bicyclists who still get to use the road, big win for the drivers.

It's not a small inconvenience for cyclists, it's a large decrease in safety

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#32

Post by mehrdadn »

ecnahc515 wrote: post #16
mehrdadn wrote: post #9

This is awesome. Question though: how is producing license plate data like this not a disallowed privacy invasion? It seems like you could totally track who's parking where and potentially do nasty stuff, if you know (say) someone well-off whom you don't like and who doesn't seem to mind getting tickets on a regular basis.

The TL;DR is: "any criminal records is public information". Fundamentally, even if it's very minor, it's public information until expunged, cleared, or sealed. I think most people are generally fine with this, it's only really a problem if you consistently are committing offenses.

This is not criminal though?

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#33

Post by paxy »

acct1771 wrote: post #8
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have these hobbies!

I'm kind of on a negative streak these days, so forgive me, reader, but...why in god's green earth aren't these the government's hobbies?!

Because it goes completely against the interests of local governments. You will be amazed to see how large a portion of your city and police department's budgets are from fines.

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#35

Post by [deleted] »

dannyw wrote: post #26
bpchaps wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was free. I've never had to pay for any information coming from an Illinois FOIA request.

Have you thought about distributing the data, for accessibility and reproducibility? As well as save the taxpayers a little bit of dough in case someone else wants to request the same data. edit: my bad, didn't see it at the end

[deleted]

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#36

Post by mehrdadn »

bpchaps wrote: post #21
mehrdadn wrote: post #9

This is awesome. Question though: how is producing license plate data like this not a disallowed privacy invasion? It seems like you could totally track who's parking where and potentially do nasty stuff, if you know (say) someone well-off whom you don't like and who doesn't seem to mind getting tickets on a regular basis.

Thanks! I thought so to until recently and was honestly kind of surprised they actually gave it to me. They rejected giving license plate info at first, but they've given it out in other, similar, FOIA requests. Specifically in FOIA's statute, it says: (c-5) "Private information" means unique identifiers, including a person's social security number, driver's license number, employee identification number, biometric i…

That is scary, thanks for sharing. And for those here who don't seem to be worried about the safety aspect, note that this means any corporation with a lot of your personal info (insurance, Equifax, etc.) could just submit a FOIA request to get the license plate number of anyone in Illinois (and likely other states) who's parked anywhere illegally, whether intentionally or accidentally... and then strike a deal to gather license plate scanning data to track where you go and what you do. Heck, I wonder if this sort of thing is already happening and we just don't know about it.

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#37

Post by Rick-Butler »

ReverseCold wrote: post #34
bpchaps wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should be better now. Let me know if it persists!

Nope, still a Google 404 page.

Consider putting the site behind Cloudflare or similar content cache provider maybe?

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#38

Post by kasey_junk »

mehrdadn wrote: post #36
bpchaps wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I thought so to until recently and was honestly kind of surprised they actually gave it to me. They rejected giving license plate info at first, but they've given it out in other, similar, FOIA requests. Specifically in FOIA's statute, it says: (c-5) "Private information" means unique identifiers, including a person's social security number, driver's license number, employee identification number, biometric i…

That is scary, thanks for sharing. And for those here who don't seem to be worried about the safety aspect, note that this means any corporation with a lot of your personal info (insurance, Equifax, etc.) could just submit a FOIA request to get the license plate number of anyone in Illinois (and likely other states) who's parked anywhere illegally, whether intentionally or accidentally... and then strike a deal to ga…

I think, because he glossed over it in the post, that you are underestimating how much work Matt does to get the data & how much the governments he works with try to hinder & redact it.

In some cases that is a very good thing. In other cases it’s just them trying to obfuscate and block transparency.

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#40

Post by btrettel »

jimmaswell wrote: post #28
btrettel wrote: post #13

Would be nice to use the same skills to help reduce cars illegally parked in the bike lane. Identify areas which cyclists commonly complain about that (e.g., to the city) and encourage them to put up better signs?

Could also signal the area is starved for parking, so the lane should be removed and bicyclists should just ride in the road for those stretches. Small inconvenience to the bicyclists who still get to use the road, big win for the drivers.

In my experience (Austin, TX), drivers usually park in the bike lane for convenience, not because parking is unavailable. I talk to many drivers who park in the bike lane about why they didn't park 100 feet away not in the bike lane (which is available and free) and the typical answers are that they didn't know parking in the bike lane was illegal (despite the signs) or that they didn't want to walk (even though it's rarely a long walk to legal parking where I ride).

I can recall a discussion with someone on here about how parking in the bike lane in San Francisco is usually caused by a lack of options. That might be true, but I think most US cities are a lot closer to Austin than SF.

Post reply on HN