Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

notmyplate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 268 posts

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#191

Post by shiftpgdn »

londons_explore wrote: post #11
Rygian wrote: post #2

The gist of it: I can subscribe to location updates for any license plate that I want, without knowledge or consent from the owner of that car.

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 even close. Cars on a freeway are doing 10 to 100mph. To capture a plate on a moving car you need less than 1" of movement during the exposure time.

At 10mph a car is moving at 176 inches per second, and to be able to read the plate with less than 1" of movement you need a camera that has a shutter speed of 176th of a second, or rounded up at 1/200th . To capture at 100mph a vehicle is moving at 1760 inches per second. To read the plate you'll need a camera that can capture at 1760th of a second, or rounded up to 1/2000.

I don't know of any android phones that can capture both at 1/2000th and video on a second camera at the same time to know when to fire the first camera.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#192

Post by m463 »

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.

the next level would have to be - who searched and what did they search for?

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#193

Post by argiopetech »

schainks wrote: post #186
conradev wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow, this sounds very illegal in my state. I wonder if DRN even respects my state's laws about storing my personal information.

Is the location of your state-registered vehicle vehicle on publicly owned roads personal information in your state? Despite the phrasing, I'm honestly curious.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#194

Post by rootusrootus »

ioslipstream wrote: post #162
ameister14 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

BLM caused billions worth of damage over the course of the summer of love.

The Portland Business Alliance, which may not be an entirely unbiased source, put the dollar figure at 10s of millions for Portland, not billions.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#195

Post by rootusrootus »

mig39 wrote: post #130
TacticalCoder wrote: post #15

> Certain tollroad systems, such as France's Bip & Go télépéage, require a physical Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag to be present in the car for authentication purposes. Only if you want to pass the toll / "télépéage" without having to stop for paying "manually" (using a credit card of whatever). I've got one and now you can pass most tolls without stopping (but you need to slow down to about 30 km/h // 20…

I recently took a Spanish rental car to Portugal for more than a month. I registered the license plate number and a credit card on the Portuguese tolls website. I then used a bunch of toll highways that were "electronic only" and received the appropriate charges on my credit card a few days later. I think if you're going to set up a toll system in the future, then this is the tech you're going to use. Not RFID or tra…

> I think if you're going to set up a toll system in the future, then this is the tech you're going to use. Not RFID or transponders. Just read the license plate and charge the user.

In my experience any tolling system set up in the past decade is this way. No worries about transponders, they just have a bunch of cameras over the lanes and then send you a bill. Works even for out-of-state plates.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#196

Post by aierou »

anders_p wrote: post #147
hutzlibu wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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. Would disrupt a lot, but might end up with a honest society. Do you really want your health insurance company to know that you parked outside a doctor's office, who specializes in skin cancers? You just went for a check-up, but they might want to increase your payments or even cancel your coverage entirely. Then good luck finding another insurance provide…

Bad actors already have access to the data, right? Would it not be better to legalize/regulate it? I'm not convinced that we can put the genie back into the bottle.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#197

Post by Gys »

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.

For most boats this is optional, but still most boats have AIS [0] as part of their comms and have it enabled. There are also several websites (like [1]) where you can locate any boat (with AIS) in the world.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste... [1] https://www.marinetraffic.com/

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#198

Post by QuarterReptile »

milesvp wrote: post #140
conradev wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tape over lens and watch who comes out? I am very much not a lawyer.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#199

Post by pjleonhardt »

argiopetech wrote: post #193
schainks wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, this sounds very illegal in my state. I wonder if DRN even respects my state's laws about storing my personal information.

Is the location of your state-registered vehicle vehicle on publicly owned roads personal information in your state? Despite the phrasing, I'm honestly curious.

No, but likely his face biometrics are off he happens to have been captured in the video. So if they are keeping the raw video, not just the processed license plate output, they may fall under this jurisdiction.

Re: Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

#200

Post by someweirdperson »

cjrp wrote: post #126
pc86 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can probably count on one hand the number of people who care where a specific Cessna 172 is at any given point in time. What's contradictory about that?

In the UK, people who are annoyed by GA plane noise will look up the owner’s details (these are held in a mandatory, public database by the CAA, equivalent to the FAA) and contact them directly.

In Germany the aircraft registry is not public. But that's only a minor advantage. People who would need to look up my aircraft registration aren't usually interested when or where I'm flying. People who know me are interested. And they know anyway. Can't hide the license plate of my car from neighbors, can't hide the aircraft registration from family and friends.
Post reply on HN