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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

#71

Post by davidw »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #68
chrischen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err... actually, what happened to you happened because of faulty and inadequate surveillance. Had they had cameras in the places watching 24/7, they would have seen you DIDN'T do it. It was only because they didn't have surveillance that they had to rely on partial data. If you think about it, had surveillance been even less, and they relied on a random witness who said they saw a guy in a hoodie, and you happen to o…

I have a personal rule that I am forming, where if the approach to improve something, is to use that something in greater quantities, it is probably a bad thing. e.g. brute force, vendor specific stack, XML, C++, classes, templates, advertising and surveillance. Have you ever had the misfortune of watching reality TV? You do realise the power of selective editing. Sufficiently motivated camera operators can 'destroy…

From http://nokogiri.org/ :

"XML is like violence - if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it."

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#73

Post by damarquis »

nullc wrote: post #22
tonywebster wrote: post #9

The other problem is that state laws aren't keeping up with law enforcement technology. FOIA-similar laws in Minnesota meant that every ALPR-captured license plate was public information, which I requested to prove a point. I got back 2.1 million license plates (+ timestamp and coordinates) on a USB stick. Without strong policies and laws, this data is ripe for abuse -- domestic abuse victims and stalking where someo…

Yea, great so you complain about that and then they solve just that narrow case. Doing so reduces some fringe harassment risks, but actually makes the power inversion worse since then only a privileged minority has access to the data. In practice the stalking/harassment stuff isn't actually happening with any great frequency: The mentally ill people who would do this are generally not competent enough to go on a big…

You are comfortable relying on stalkers not being persistent enough to search a list, save some metadata, and use google maps?

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#74

Post by damarquis »

chrischen wrote: post #64
tonywebster wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite being in public -- and on public streets -- I think anytime the government is tracking where I go, it should require probable cause and a judge's signature. I believe ALPR circumvents the judicial system. I use my cellphone in public, but it's obvious that the government shouldn't be able to automatically log when and where I placed a call. I use my credit card in public, but the government shouldn't be able…

If you're walking around in public, the government has the right to follow you around. In fact, everyone has the right to follow you around. Having cameras and drones around just means they got better at doing it.

Of course anyone can follow you in public, the alternative would be impossible to enforce.

The problem is that the cost of getting that data could be made unacceptably low. For example, I think most people would object having their government uploaded their coordinates to a public website. The interesting question is what is the right tradeoff between transparency and cost.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#75

Post by chrischen »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #68
chrischen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err... actually, what happened to you happened because of faulty and inadequate surveillance. Had they had cameras in the places watching 24/7, they would have seen you DIDN'T do it. It was only because they didn't have surveillance that they had to rely on partial data. If you think about it, had surveillance been even less, and they relied on a random witness who said they saw a guy in a hoodie, and you happen to o…

I have a personal rule that I am forming, where if the approach to improve something, is to use that something in greater quantities, it is probably a bad thing. e.g. brute force, vendor specific stack, XML, C++, classes, templates, advertising and surveillance. Have you ever had the misfortune of watching reality TV? You do realise the power of selective editing. Sufficiently motivated camera operators can 'destroy…

I'm not saying more surveillance == better. I'm saying more surveillance would resolve that guy's specific problem, therefore his example is false.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#76

Post by eliasmacpherson »

chrischen wrote: post #75
eliasmacpherson wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a personal rule that I am forming, where if the approach to improve something, is to use that something in greater quantities, it is probably a bad thing. e.g. brute force, vendor specific stack, XML, C++, classes, templates, advertising and surveillance. Have you ever had the misfortune of watching reality TV? You do realise the power of selective editing. Sufficiently motivated camera operators can 'destroy…

I'm not saying more surveillance == better. I'm saying more surveillance would resolve that guy's specific problem, therefore his example is false.

I'm saying more surveillance == worse. And I'm saying that it would not necessarily resolve his specific problem. It would resolve the problem of whoever controls the footage.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#77

Post by coldtea »

A little off topic, but it will get to the point:

Remember some of the biggest issues? Exploitation (wars, colonialism, imperialism, no labour laws), racism (slavery, Jim Crow laws), overeaching government (McCarthyism, Hoover, bureaucracy, protestors shot at, , surveillance, etc), rampant private interests (banana republics, RIAA, patent law, militias shooting strikers, corporate espionage, buying legislation), religious nuttery, etc?

Those things are not solved by technology. If you're lucky, you might find some technology that can nullify one of those issues.

But in general technology is an enabler. It can help those perpatrating those things to do them 1000 times more efficiently and far scarier. Science too, is neutral. Nazi germany was choke full or good scientists -- and they are behind all messed up inventions anyway too, not just the good ones.

This, among other things, is such as case, of technology being an enabler for bad things. To really effect change you must change how people think about things -- and then, the laws.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#78

Post by coldtea »

uptown wrote: post #40
Daishiman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the point when they started asking about stuff you didn't know about I would have invoked my right to a lawyer.

...which now means you need to spend money to protect yourself against a situation where you've done nothing wrong.

Plus is some cases (and countries) they treat you worse, and take advantage of loop holes to delay you seeing a lawyer as much as they can, even like several days or so.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#79

Post by coldtea »

jlgreco wrote: post #4
stfu wrote: post #3

I always wondered on the legality of private license plate scanning. With just a bunch of people cooperating one could pretty much map out all the troop movement throughout the city.

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.

>Well the argument usually heard for the government doing it is "they've always been able to watch where you go in public".

The issue is that of technology being an enabler. Always being able to watch you (with some cost), and being able to watch everybody effortelsy and automatically, with instant retrieval is a game changer.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#80

Post by knowaveragejoe »

diminoten wrote: post #59
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, why didn't I think of that? We could all just be traveling entirely in private and this would be a non-issue.
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