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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

#131

Post by spiderice »

hutzlibu wrote: post #51
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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." If really everyone would participate, I would give it a try. Would disrupt a lot, but might end up with a honest society. But in reality, if you have money, you can circumvent tracking, in varius ways. I beli…

> If really everyone would participate, I would give it a try

This isn't something you get to just temporality "try". Once it's a thing, it will always be a thing. No way is the government letting that one slip through their fingers.

Also, I'm envisioning a world where people are getting their retinas altered minority report style to avoid this.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#132

Post by londons_explore »

n4r9 wrote: post #121
londons_explore wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How much power do you need to be continuously running video/snapshots, OCR software, and comms? How expensive a solar panel is needed to generate that power, will it work overnight and through the winter, and will it also be theft-resistant? What's the cost of petrol for driving 4+ hours per day? How will you get coverage in parts of the country that aren't near your home/office?

About 1.2 watts to capture+process 1 frame/second - thats how much my current phone uses, and I suspect a cheaper platform will be more power efficient. You'd use a 5 watt solar panel (costing $4) in the southern USA, and a 10 watt panel (costing $9) in the northern USA. You would aim to rarely have spare power - in winter, you just drop the frame rate and the comms interval.

With more engineering effort, you can probably dramatically reduce power usage, for example by discarding parts of the frame that cars never drive through, which should allow extending the hardwares lifespan as batteries age and solar panels get covered in dust.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#133

Post by ameister14 »

ioslipstream wrote: post #89
KoftaBob wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Several cities in the US were firebombed nightly for months in 2020. What? What is this referring to?

Portland, amongst others.

How many people died in the Portland firebombings? How much property was destroyed? Are we talking Dresden or Kobe levels? Because when you say 'firebombing nightly for months', that's what I think of.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#134

Post by the_sleaze9 »

ioslipstream wrote: post #90
r2_pilot wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the general tone of the rest of the comment, it's likely they're referring to actions taken adjacent to the Black Lives Matter protests which were depicted in some news media as being like a war zone. Oddly, none of the cities today look like, I don't know, Ukraine. But some people will make mountains from molehills.

But they were mostly peaceful mountains. Right?

You seem to be strangely emotionally invested in this issue. Did you witness these events yourself?

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#135

Post by londons_explore »

dagw wrote: post #60
londons_explore wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will place and maintain road cameras for $50/yr, including data connectivity for plates. Minimum 1,000 cameras. 75% uptime/scan rate guarantee.

What does your SLA look like? Do I get to pick the roads? And when do I get my $50k back when you fail to deliver?

SLA: 75% of the cars that pass will be captured. The 25% covers equipment failure/theft/service outage/etc. This applies to the whole set, not per camera.

We mutually agree the roads - but it's unlikely I'll disagree unless you want to place four cameras per country worldwide to maximize logistics difficulties.

Half upfront, half when the service has been operating 3 months. Full refund if SLA not met. If you can show you're very solvent, you can pay in arrears instead.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#136

Post by Olphs »

daoist_shaman wrote: post #109

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.

Yes technically, as long as you know the license plates, but how often do those vehicles park in a commercial places like that? I don't think they do often enough for this kind of tracking to be useful

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#137

Post by mig39 »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #80
kleiba wrote: post #7

As long as privacy is not a granted right that enables you to sue offenders, there's not much you can do. The EU has at least started to realize the issue but giving the speed of technology vs. the pace of administration, it might be a losing battle.

The use of dash cams is effectively illegal in Austria on privacy grounds: https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/152064/are-dash-c...

Supposed to be illegal in Portugal too. But I've been using different dashcams in Portugal for 6 or 7 years now, and nobody's ever commented on them.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#138

Post by arethuza »

n4r9 wrote: post #121
londons_explore wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How much power do you need to be continuously running video/snapshots, OCR software, and comms? How expensive a solar panel is needed to generate that power, will it work overnight and through the winter, and will it also be theft-resistant? What's the cost of petrol for driving 4+ hours per day? How will you get coverage in parts of the country that aren't near your home/office?

There is a fairly new automated weather station at the side of the road not far from where I live here in Scotland - the solar cells are actually quite large - I'd guess about 0.50m by 1m. The whole setup is also pretty substantial probably to cope with the fact that supporting solar panels in a windy location requires a fair bit of strength!

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#139

Post by hunterb123 »

acdha wrote: post #64
hunterb123 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bike is a great mode of transportation when you don't need to carry anything heavy, bulky, passengers etc. and when weather permits. It's not a replacement for a vehicle, nor will it ever be.

> A bike is a great mode of transportation when you don't need to carry anything heavy, bulky, passengers etc. and when weather permits. My family uses our cargo bikes as our primary mode of transportation year round. It turns out that children were allowed to leave the house prior to the invention of cars and continue to be capable of wearing jackets in the winter. Many even like the snow. The key thing to understan…

I don't really disagree with your points, but your usecase is nowhere near the norm where I live or how I live.

I'm perfectly fine with city dwellers having more bikes (if they so choose), whatever helps the traffic and parking in the cities.

My point still stands that in no way is a bike a replacement for all the utilities of a vehicle, whether you're offloading that by renting, borrowing, etc.

I'll drive my vehicle, you can ride your bike. The power of choice! No conflict needed.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#140

Post by milesvp »

conradev wrote: post #40
londons_explore wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something you could do anyway with a network of $50 android phones mounted on bridges over freeways. But this way you don't have to pay for the cameras - someone else has done it for you.

Not sure why this is being downvoted, it is an actual thing: “Several companies operate independent, non-law enforcement ALPR databases, contracting with drivers to put cameras on private vehicles to collect the information.” https://www.eff.org/pages/automated-license-plate-readers-al... Motherboard did a deeper dive on one of them: “DRN is a private surveillance system crowdsourced by hundreds of repo men who have…

To further this, I know someone who was a public defender a decade ago in the US. They would regularly try to get intersection camera footage to attempt to prove their clients not guilty. Often it was impossible to track down who owned the cameras, or even if they were municiple or private. I imagine this has only gotten worse as cameras have gotten cheaper.
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