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ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

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Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#181

Post by tedunangst »

refurb wrote: post #179
tptacek wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that doesn't follow at all.

Ok, maybe I'm misunderstanding. Problem: engineers working on things like license plate scanning Your solution: engineers should be ethical My comment: engineers can be ethical and still do things like license plate scanning Your comment: you agree From my vantage point it doesn't look like your recommendation changes anything.

Problem: engineers who think license plate scanners are unethical but build them anyway because "I'm not actually the person pulling the trigger".

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#182

Post by TomMarius »

arca_vorago wrote: post #170
TomMarius wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what is this supposed to mean. Yeah the US are huge and sparsely populated. The EU has almost 200 million bigger population.

>Yeah the US are huge and sparsely populated. Mostly you just answered the question. The primary factor is that the US just simply doesn't have the same public transportation infrastructure the EU has, not even close. I could travel just about anywhere in the EU without ever getting in a car... that's impossible in the US.

It's easier to build a train network in a sparsely populated space.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#183

Post by phil21 »

pg314 wrote: post #123
b6 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The insane gun ownership in this country could be a benefit. I'm sorry, it's hard not to be a little snarky here. Yes, the guys who wrote the original rules for the country considered gun ownership so essential that they placed it second only to the freedom of expression. I don't like guns, but they represent a failsafe that we hopefully never have to use.

> the guys who wrote the original rules for the country considered gun ownership so essential that they placed it second only to the freedom of expression. That is an appeal to authority. Those guys were not handed down the word of god from heaven. They wrote down what they thought was best at the time. They were not infallible (see the amendments), what they wrote down was not unambiguous (or the supreme court would…

> That is an appeal to authority.

Isn't that kind of required if we are to live under rule of law? There must be an end-all authority, and in this land it tends to be the constitution and it's assorted related documents.

I have no problem with that appeal to authority. It may be the sole legitimate time to use it.

The rules were written down and hard to change precisely because of threads like this. If parts need to be updated, there is a mechanism to do so. Therefore, appealing to the Constitution as the ultimate authority of the land sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

Perfect? Of course not. But the founding fathers certainly were prescient about the whole "slippery slope" slow erosion of rights - the entire last 100 years (at least) has been a story of the slow erosion of personal liberty. I imagine that would have gone much faster without such hard to change "final rules" of the land.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#184

Post by pavel_lishin »

DrScump wrote: post #28
pavel_lishin wrote: post #16

Is it possible to fight back by poisoning the data? Is it legal to set up a display by the roadside that shows randomly generated license plates, filling their automated cameras with garbage data? Or is their data collection smart enough to recognize a non-car, either technologically or by filtering everything through a Turk-like equivalent?

It would be ideal if you chose the fake plate numbers from the population of actual plate numbers used by corporate plate-tracking vehicles, just in case one encounters its "namesake" -- you might trigger some highly entertaining edge condition. ("Um, wait, that's... me! WTF?")

Maybe, but that would be incredibly easy to filter out.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#185

Post by arca_vorago »

TomMarius wrote: post #182
arca_vorago wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yeah the US are huge and sparsely populated. Mostly you just answered the question. The primary factor is that the US just simply doesn't have the same public transportation infrastructure the EU has, not even close. I could travel just about anywhere in the EU without ever getting in a car... that's impossible in the US.

It's easier to build a train network in a sparsely populated space.

We are't talking about hypotheticals, we are talking about what is current, now. You are moving the goal posts...

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#186

Post by EADGBE »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #37

One of my clients does license plate reading and tracking. They have hundreds of tiny customers, and a handful of VERY LARGER customers, so I can say with 100% certainty, there are hundreds of agencies across the USA already doing this. For fun, I tracked my rental car from Georgia to Texas after a vacation a few months back to see how often I hit one of my client's customer's cameras. It was a lot. I saw myself hit…

It never really bothered me that police cars contained these cameras.

But for some weird reason civilian cars carrying these cameras (and collecting and re-selling my plate information) really infuriates me.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#187

Post by dang »

ams6110 wrote: post #19
maxxxxx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure a lot of people working on this stuff think they are doing something to secure their country and this is the ethical thing to do.

For that matter (and not to equate the two) people working in concentration camps thought they were serving their country and doing the right thing also. The point is we cannot rely on the ethics of the people doing it to stop it.

Please don't do this here.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#188

Post by bradbatt »

doikor wrote: post #113
MAGZine wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Saskatchewan, Canada, they no longer require yearly insurance stickers on plates because the information is automatically checked by plate scanners on cop cars (to the best of my knowledge). The officer will still require proof of registration when pulled over.

We've had this since 1997 for car tax stickers in Finland when they decided it was easier to just install a computer in every cop car that has the db. Same db also has info on insurance and inspections and also the check has been recently made automatic on the camera when previously the officer had to manually enter the plate. I wouldn't be surprised if the data about the scans goes the other way too. Proof of regist…

> Driving a car isn't a right but a privilege so I'm on with this.

The right to privacy IS a right and NOT a privilege.

So I'm not down with this.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#189

Post by AnthonyMouse »

JBlue42 wrote: post #87
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One is that without immigration, the population of the US would decrease based on birth / death rates. If the population of the US decreases, social security and other social programs become insolvent. In other words, our social programs are based off the current working generation paying for the current retired generation, and has since their inception. Which is a fine argument for granting citizenship to skilled…

Won't those unskilled workers return if there is no work, just like we've had seasonal migration of farm workers in the past? Farm automation will probably take care of a lot of those jobs.

> Won't those unskilled workers return if there is no work, just like we've had seasonal migration of farm workers in the past?

It isn't that there are zero jobs, it's that there are more workers than jobs. Add even more workers and some of the new workers will get some of the jobs.

And they could get a disproportionate share of the jobs by being willing to work for less money. Which compounds the problem, by both reducing wages for the entire class (increasing the consumption of need-based services) and reducing the government's tax receipts from each lower-paid worker's social security and other taxes.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#190

Post by tehlike »

averagewall wrote: post #112
ActsJuvenile wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am feeling pessimistic man. We had a few decades of privacy and human rights progress post World Wars. But with Terrorism on the rise there is no way for privacy or human rights to make a comeback. We will see increasingly clever ways to water down laws we already have in place.

The UK caught a Scotland airport attempted bomber using number plate recognition as he tried to flee on the motorway. So it can do some use.

certainly, but at what cost?

When autonomous cars become ubiquitous, this will increase even to places currently outside of reach.

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