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Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

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Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#101

Post by Ajedi32 »

pc86 wrote: post #71
someweirdperson wrote: post #32

Finally. Publish it all. Tracking of every vehicle, visible for everyone. It has been that way with aircraft for a long time. Pilots, however, are such a minority that noone really cares. Now that everyone is impacted, regulation might get updated (or someone might spend the time to identify existing regulation that prohibits this), and that would extend to other vehicles than those with wheels.

It's not even that pilots are a minority and that's why no one cares. It's that most air travel is commercial, and nobody cares if someone can see where exact UAL123 is at this moment. Nobody feels bad for some millionaire's private jet getting tracked, nobody feels bad for some expensive charter plane with $15k tickets getting tracked, and the only thing left is small GA aircraft, which nobody care about at all. The…

> the only thing left is small GA aircraft, which nobody care about at all

Why does nobody care about those? Is it because they're a minority? Seems like you might be contradicting yourself?

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#102

Post by ezfe »

izacus wrote: post #5
vishnugupta wrote: post #4

At this point I’m carrying so many electronic devices with me or at home that I’ve give up on going out of my way to prevent getting tracked. My best effort is to trust Apple doesn’t sell me out.

What does Apple have to do with it here? The apps on your Apple device are exfiltrating data left and right every day - including parking apps which are the topic of this post. Megacorporations aren't going to save you from this one. Actually creating regulation that will define where you're data is allowed to go (and stay) might.

Apple has all the data at full precision. The few apps that are selling my data get the scraps of a Wi-Fi SSID here or there, and an IP address every once in a while.

This is how Apple comes into it.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#103

Post by acdha »

ioslipstream wrote: post #94
acdha wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're doing something dressy, you need that shower anyway unless you're never spending more than a couple of minutes outside — or you dress appropriately for the weather and it's not an issue. Florida is also an interesting example given that it's both the southernmost point of the continental United States and at significant risk of catastrophic damages from the climate change caused in no small part by driving…

Quoted post unavailable.

Let me simplify it for you: scientists have been concerned about global warming since the early 20th century. In the 1970s the prevailing concern was warming but a couple of papers hypothesized that cooling might be possible under certain circumstances, but that was disproven before 1980. The predictions of warming made over the last 40 years have been increasingly precise, too.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-cl...

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/06/how-well-have-climat...

https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/ipccs-climate-projec...

Unfortunately, the reason you’re Just Asking Questions™ about science which has been settled since the Carter administration is because the fossil fuel industry also knew the science was accurate, and their internal researchers supported it, so they started pouring money into spreading denial and securing political allies to help prevent actions which would harm their business interests:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#104

Post by londons_explore »

arethuza wrote: post #77
doublerabbit wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within the UK, 4G sim cards and data are cheap. Android phone with tether capabilities, Raspberry Pi with solar and a webcam. Or even better to save all that faff, root a phone, run the drivers plate OCR software using the phones camera, stick to a gantry and send results via text message. You wouldn't even need live updates, pull the latest data at midnight each day. Text is cheap.

I suspect the computing and communication parts of a project like this are by far the easiest bits. Weatherproofing the camera and solar panels, getting permission to get them installed, actually installing them (working at heights over busy roads) and then maintaining them would be pretty expensive. You might also have to pay rent to whoever owns gantries, and what about locations where there aren't any existing gan…

You wouldn't get permission. Just walk with a phone+solar panel in a weatherproof box. Either use magnets or zip ties to tie to the the pedestrian rail of a bridge overlooking a freeway. Done.

I would likely order some chinaphone motherboards only - for example[1] - without the screen+case+accessories you save ~50% on the retail price. They're then not valuable enough to be worth stealing either.

If it's a small road with no bridges, tie to a lamp post instead.

You need to be able to install 3 per hour to make the finances work out - 10 mins driving, and 10 mins installing, and repeat.

If the city catches you, it's only a littering penalty. They likely wouldn't care.

[1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003892325502.html

Breakeven is 1 year average residency - that has to include failure, end-of-life, theft, and removal by the city.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#105

Post by daoist_shaman »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #34
someweirdperson wrote: post #32

Finally. Publish it all. Tracking of every vehicle, visible for everyone. It has been that way with aircraft for a long time. Pilots, however, are such a minority that noone really cares. Now that everyone is impacted, regulation might get updated (or someone might spend the time to identify existing regulation that prohibits this), and that would extend to other vehicles than those with wheels.

yep! There are so many people thinking "I did nothing wrong, who cares if I get tracked".... publish it all, and then have all the neighbours have access to that, the wife can see when you left the bar, your boss can see when you left, etc... only then will people be aware that it's not ok to do that. There are also laws (not sure if accepted yet) that all cars should have remote shutdowns/blocks.. for "security reas…

Yeah, this will be normalized in about a year after some low budget government and corporate gaslighting.

People are already complicit with keeping a device in their pocket that passively tracks their location.

Tracking people on camera and making them okay with it is the logical next chapter in this privacy erosion saga.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#106

Post by arethuza »

londons_explore wrote: post #104
arethuza wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the computing and communication parts of a project like this are by far the easiest bits. Weatherproofing the camera and solar panels, getting permission to get them installed, actually installing them (working at heights over busy roads) and then maintaining them would be pretty expensive. You might also have to pay rent to whoever owns gantries, and what about locations where there aren't any existing gan…

You wouldn't get permission. Just walk with a phone+solar panel in a weatherproof box. Either use magnets or zip ties to tie to the the pedestrian rail of a bridge overlooking a freeway. Done. I would likely order some chinaphone motherboards only - for example[1] - without the screen+case+accessories you save ~50% on the retail price. They're then not valuable enough to be worth stealing either. If it's a small road…

Anything placed in a location which has easy accessed to pedestrians is going to get stolen and vandalised - particularly once people realise what they are.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#107

Post by acdha »

dylan604 wrote: post #97
acdha wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're doing something dressy, you need that shower anyway unless you're never spending more than a couple of minutes outside — or you dress appropriately for the weather and it's not an issue. Florida is also an interesting example given that it's both the southernmost point of the continental United States and at significant risk of catastrophic damages from the climate change caused in no small part by driving…

>Florida is also an interesting example oooh, now do Texas. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Southern California or, flip it. Do any of the states bordering Canada during winter.

I grew up in Southern California. You can bike year round, except for a couple of days a year when you have severe rain (which also floods a lot of roads) or wildfires. The primary reason people don’t are that the roads are unsafe by design and opposition to dense housing has pushed people into unsustainable lifestyles.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#108

Post by tremon »

andrepd wrote: post #95
988747 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only works for short trips. No one rides a bicycle if they have to go to another town, 50 miles away. Also, do not mention: "you can take your bicycle on a train" - if you need to use the train then again you are dependent on public service and traceable.

> It only works for short trips. No one rides a bicycle if they have to go to another town, 50 miles away. 1. Ride your bike into a train 2. Wait 20 minutes 3. Roll out of the train and ride into your destination See, it isn't that hard. What part of this process requires you to be tracked? You don't need any ID to purchase train tickets.

> You don't need any ID to purchase train tickets.

The Netherlands would like a word ;)

Most people here have a public transport pass in their own name, linked to their bank account.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#109

Post by daoist_shaman »

Theoretically, could this same principle be borrowed by the open source community… to create a database that tracks and updates the location of police, government, military, and high status individual vehicles?

I’m thinking of a decentralized, Web3, IPFS-like distributed database, but instead of file storage, it’s real-time geolocation with OSM on the backend.

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