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Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

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Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#51

Post by bigiain »

mikeyouse wrote: post #12
jlgreco wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the argument usually heard for the government doing it is "they've always been able to watch where you go in public" . I suspect that somehow would not fly if it were reversed. It's an interesting idea. Thanks to smartphones, the people have more cameras than their governments. The governments however have more targets.

An interesting app idea would be to have a distributed palantir-like system that specifically targets Ambulances, Police Cars, City vehicles, etc. OCR a license plate or other identifying tag on it, geo-tag, etc. Given a decent proportion of people using the app, you could probably map out the location of most of the active government vehicles in a city. With the time-series data, you could add some analytics and pro…

I wonder how close the russian dash-cam eco-system is to making that come true?

Inexpensive but ubiquitous and "always on" cameras, with a little bit of OpenCV smarts built in (or perhaps with a RaspberryPi-grade computer hanging off them) could probably manage a pretty good implementation of this.

If you could somehow roll this out as part of some innocuous looking project (off the cuff idea - approach a taxicab company, tell them you want to put camera's on each cab - so you feed each driver back information about nearby traffic density/speeds and approximate counts of people standing on sidewalks correlated with the number of other cabs around. Slip in ALPR without mentioning it, and a whitelist of marked and unmarked police car licence plates. Sell access to the real-time police location data to high-speed courier services, boy-racers, and drug cartels.)

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#52

Post by Wingman4l7 »

achillean wrote: post #17

In case anybody's interested, these license plate scanners can be publicly found on the Internet: http://www.shodanhq.com/search?q=atz+executive And this is how the web interface for such a system looks like: http://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/security/2013/05/01/...

That SHODAN search link doesn't return any results...

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#53

Post by eksith »

diminoten wrote: post #39
whyenot wrote: post #31

CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION ARTICLE 1 DECLARATION OF RIGHTS SECTION 1. All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and *privacy.* I've often wondered if the right to privacy in California's constitution actually means anything. I guess it doe…

What's private about your public movements?

Anonymity != Privacy.

If you're in a crowd, by definition, you're not expected to have privacy, however you are allowed anonymity by virtue of being in a crowd. If you're in a cafe, you're naturally not afforded privacy, however you are still anonymous unless spotted by someone who recognizes you. If you lean over to tell something to this person, that conversation (despite being in public) is still private.

Your public information still afforded you anonymity in a sea of data however since we now know it can conveniently be assembled into a dossier, it's being used to destroy your anonymity which, believe it or not, used to be taken for granted.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#54

Post by diminoten »

eksith wrote: post #53
diminoten wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's private about your public movements?

Anonymity != Privacy. If you're in a crowd, by definition, you're not expected to have privacy, however you are allowed anonymity by virtue of being in a crowd. If you're in a cafe, you're naturally not afforded privacy, however you are still anonymous unless spotted by someone who recognizes you. If you lean over to tell something to this person, that conversation (despite being in public) is still private. Your pub…

> however you are allowed anonymity by virtue of being in a crowd.

That's not true at all. Anonymity is the state of personally identifiable information being unknown. That's exactly what your license plate is, and it's displayed on the back (and front sometimes) of your car. You have never been anonymous while driving.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#55

Post by eksith »

diminoten wrote: post #54
eksith wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anonymity != Privacy. If you're in a crowd, by definition, you're not expected to have privacy, however you are allowed anonymity by virtue of being in a crowd. If you're in a cafe, you're naturally not afforded privacy, however you are still anonymous unless spotted by someone who recognizes you. If you lean over to tell something to this person, that conversation (despite being in public) is still private. Your pub…

> however you are allowed anonymity by virtue of being in a crowd. That's not true at all. Anonymity is the state of personally identifiable information being unknown. That's exactly what your license plate is, and it's displayed on the back (and front sometimes) of your car. You have never been anonymous while driving.

Completely false.

Your license plate is the equivalent of a online pseudonym linked to a database. Common users aren't able to browse this database, however if someone's keeping a tally of the appearances of said license plate (the equivalent of a search engine), then they can infer a whole lot of information that goes beyond the scope of the purpose of license plates. That is the real problem here. You are anonymous in the crowd or should be as far as other ordinary people are concerned and that's clearly not what's happening.

Incidentally, you should stop using the same username for everything.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#56

Post by deutsch »

I'm not a cryptography guy, but do you think it would be possible to come up with a technical solution which has these properties: - License plate numbers are immediately encrypted at scan - A judges possess some sort of encryption key - Upon obtaining some sort of warrant, judge grants police specific encryption key - Key can only be used to decrypt certain kinds of data - say, only decrypts license plates in a certain geographical area or around a certain time

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#57

Post by codex »

cortesoft wrote: post #25

I have a personal experience with the harm that ubiquitous recording of location data can bring, even when you don't do anything wrong. When I was in college, I was called to the police station and accused of breaking a glass door in the dorms. I knew NOTHING about this. I told the police I knew nothing about the event, but they continued to press me. They asked me details about where I was that night (many weeks pri…

The same issue already exists in more limited form with fingerprints. Often random prints are found near the scene of a crime. That's not proof, however--just cause for questioning. If the police didn't question potential suspects they wouldn't be very good at their job, but I'm sorry it freaked you out.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#58

Post by diminoten »

eksith wrote: post #55
diminoten wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> however you are allowed anonymity by virtue of being in a crowd. That's not true at all. Anonymity is the state of personally identifiable information being unknown. That's exactly what your license plate is, and it's displayed on the back (and front sometimes) of your car. You have never been anonymous while driving.

Completely false. Your license plate is the equivalent of a online pseudonym linked to a database. Common users aren't able to browse this database, however if someone's keeping a tally of the appearances of said license plate (the equivalent of a search engine), then they can infer a whole lot of information that goes beyond the scope of the purpose of license plates. That is the real problem here. You are anonymous…

Your license plate is a unique identifier for your car, not you. It is not like an online pseudonym in that cars are often shared by others, whereas a pseudonym is a false name, generally (with exceptions) reserved for individuals. To claim they're equivalent is therefore not true. You are not anonymous in a crowd (I can take a picture of you and identify you later, your identity is tied to your face), nor should you be (if people where anonymous all the time, personal responsibility would go out the window - there is a time and a place for anonymity and privacy, driving around on public roads is not one of them).

And why should I stop putting my name on things? I'm the one who did them, after all. Besides, if I were at all concerned that what I was saying would land me in trouble, I'd create a new face. I'm not against privacy, I just don't think you have any when you're in public.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#59

Post by diminoten »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #45
diminoten wrote: post #38

Can someone explain why your public movements should now be private? And when someone brings up the "pseudo-anonymity of the crowd", can you accompany that with a legal precedent for such a claim? Who actually came up with the "I'm acting privately in public" thing in the first place?

Yeah. If you don't like the prospect that some random person can know the intimate details of your , you might as well just abstain from the services and institutions that make anything remotely like a modern standard of living possible. It's a fair tradeoff.

If you don't like above said prospect, then maybe you should do those things in private instead of in public.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#60

Post by anigbrowl »

bigiain wrote: post #50
rayiner wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think as a practical matter, expecting police to stay stuck in the 20th century is futile. The public will never strongly oppose that kind of technology when they themselves are wearing google glass everywhere. The fear of this sort of thing depends on being suspicious and wary of the police, and people aren't. My wife thinks I'm crazy when I rant about cops, but as a practical matter she has no reason to be skepti…

This is why I'm seriously of the opinion that surveillance data should be regulated somewhat along the lines of HIPPA or PCI rules. Storing a weeks worth of traffic camera data and allowing to be misused should result in a demotion, a small fine, and a personal civil liability towards people who've been affected by the misuse. Signing off on storing years worth of ALPR/surveillance-camera records and having _that_ mi…

I agree, and think the US suffers from not having this codified in law as it is in the EU.
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