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More Americans are using fake license plates

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Re: More Americans are using fake license plates

#111

Post by gorbypark »

kragen wrote: post #71

until about 20 years ago license plates were a reasonable compromise between privacy and accountability: they didn't have your name on them, and looking you up from the number could only be done by the police, who would only do it when it seemed important, and then only if someone made a note of the plate they couldn't, for example, make a list of everyone who was parked near a protest, and then search a database to…

I believe we need to move to e ink (or similar tech) based licence plates. The numbers would change every few minutes but still would be cryptographically tied to an owner if you both have a time stamp and a proper decryption key. The idea would be that if you had the proper authorization (police, DMV, etc) and a time stamp you could see the owner of a vehicle, but it would hinder 3rd party private alpr dragnet systems. It wouldn’t change much for entities like police, but it could put in place a system of accountability (ie: decryption rules set at the state level instead of local level, etc)

Re: More Americans are using fake license plates

#112

Post by midoridensha »

dagw wrote: post #104
watwut wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, source? There is very much political "out of control crime" narrative from certain players, but fairly often it has zero to do with reality. But, the fear got some innocent door ringers killed already, so if the fear goes up, we might get there.

To be fair, the person you're replying to did specify "some parts" of the US. While you are correct the homicide is clearly down across the US, compared to the peaks in the 90s, there are also places where it is creeping back to 90s levels. Philadelphia and Chicago are two 'random' cities I just checked the statistics for and their murder rates are either at or close to the rates in 90s, and way up from the rates in…

I'm guessing the rates are up in the cities, and down in the rural areas. And there's a good reason for this: there's fewer and fewer people in the rural areas and small towns, and the ones there are getting old. All the younger people are in the cities, and murders aren't normally committed by retired people.

Re: More Americans are using fake license plates

#113

Post by jb1991 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #63
jb1991 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps depends on your definition of “violent crime“ or what you are including. Armed robbery, for example, is a violent crime, and SF is in the top 20 cities in the US for that crime.

Well if you put your SF hat on, that's not a violent crime, because no one is harmed but evil businesses, which is actually good.

Armed robbery includes the act of robbing somebody walking down the street.

Re: More Americans are using fake license plates

#114

Post by midoridensha »

trgn wrote: post #83
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #2

I’m not an old person, but I know I’m going to sound like a curmudgeon saying this. I think it’s just moral decay. I can’t think of any other meaningful reason. In Phoenix, which I consider the national capitol of bad drivers, in the span of less than 10 years, I’ve noticed a staggering number of people in the metro area who just blatantly run red lights now. Sometimes seconds after they’ve turned. It’s straight up r…

I've noticed the same shift. Drivers are worse now than 10-15 years ago. Drivers are more aggressive (tailgating, rolling stops, speeding, ...), more sociopathic (tinted windows, louder pipes, larger vehicles, fake license plates,...), more negligent (bald tires, texting-and-driving, bumpers ripped off jagged metal sticking out, ...). Another data point. Dashcams are on the rise, and they are truly the indicator tech…

>In City of God, St Augustine blames the fall of Rome on the christians in the city ignoring the depravity of the pagans.

Christians for centuries were the people that burned people at the stake for believing the wrong religion, or even the wrong version of Christianity. They're far from "righteous".

What did the pagans do wrong? They seemed to be pretty decent overall, by the standards of the time: they even had a holiday, Saturnalia (that the Christians co-opted), where the masters served the slaves and people shared gifts. Slaves could even save money and buy their freedom in Roman society. Under Christianity, slaves were brutally beaten and murdered on plantations and could never be free; Christians even happily fought a brutal war to keep slavery intact when the Europeans had long since banned the practice.

Re: More Americans are using fake license plates

#115

Post by bigger_inside »

woodruffw wrote: post #66
heyjonboy wrote: post #18

Many of the subjects of Streetsblog's "criminal mischief" (defaced or obscured plates) are vehicles displaying NYPD parking permits. This problem won't get solved until someone besides the police is tasked with fixing it, at least in NYC.

This is the crux of it: NYC's finest make up a disproportionate fraction of license plate forgery and defacement cases. Enforcement cannot occur, because to enforce these laws would be to ticket and fine their own (or their owns' families).

old insight though: some of the best anti-police-advice comes from cops, to their families and kids. They know what the police actually have access to, and what they actually do with it, and they have no patience for that happening to THEM and their families. but of course, they have that convenient citizen/criminal distinction cutout thought process to view the world through, which makes it okay to subject "unknown others" to it, who are "criminals" if they come into the purview of police and thus deserve this.

Re: More Americans are using fake license plates

#117

Post by alwayslikethis »

flangola7 wrote: post #81
kragen wrote: post #71

until about 20 years ago license plates were a reasonable compromise between privacy and accountability: they didn't have your name on them, and looking you up from the number could only be done by the police, who would only do it when it seemed important, and then only if someone made a note of the plate they couldn't, for example, make a list of everyone who was parked near a protest, and then search a database to…

Newer systems don't even need a license plate, they learn the overall appearance of the car.

I would think the best way to counteract this is to use computer vision systems to detect cameras and shine lasers or bright point sources of light at them.

Re: More Americans are using fake license plates

#118

Post by WheatMillington »

throwaway68911 wrote: post #52
WheatMillington wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA is the richest country in the world by a long way. How exactly is it suddenly becoming a 3rd world nation? I see this kind of hand wringing often from Americans, and I find it puzzling.

[flagged]

I agree the crime situation is a problem, but what has that to do with 3rd world status?

Re: More Americans are using fake license plates

#119

Post by HoppyHaus »

flangola7 wrote: post #82
WheatMillington wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People are murdering less than a few decades ago Check your stats, this is quickly becoming outdated. Murder rates are back up where they were in the 90's in many parts of the USA.

Source?

You can use CDC WONDER[1] and the FBI's statistics[2] to check it. In terms of homicide, in raw numbers we are at 90s levels, but per-capita it's significantly down.

1) https://wonder.cdc.gov/Deaths-by-Underlying-Cause.html 2) https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/

Re: More Americans are using fake license plates

#120

Post by prepend »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #117
flangola7 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newer systems don't even need a license plate, they learn the overall appearance of the car.

I would think the best way to counteract this is to use computer vision systems to detect cameras and shine lasers or bright point sources of light at them.

That seems like a mention in William Gibson’s next book- a dash mounted laser that tracks traffic cameras and targets a beam to block the recording as the car moves.
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