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A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo industry

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Re: A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo industry

#31

Post by gnerd »

iamsalman wrote: post #8
r0h1n wrote: post #6

I'm curious - how exactly would one refute the following argument put forth by data brokers and repo agents? > But Digital Recognition and other so-called “data brokers” who collect plate scans are fighting Hecht’s bill, arguing that repo agents are not invading privacy when they scan a ­license plate, which is available for all to see. The data brokers do not disclose the owner of the plates, they point out, though…

Come to think of it -- humans can't memorize all the number plates they see. Machines can. It's the "recording" of these images (though there for everyone to see) which takes us into the gray area.

I don't know. People are unlikely to remember the license plate (unless it strikes an obvious pattern) but a person who was so inclined could write numbers down manually and store them indefinitely a bit like a CPU with no storage mechanism simply would hold the data in volatile memory... unless we plug in a hard drive.

Re: A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo industry

#33

Post by walid »

jmnicolas wrote: post #20

I think the first commenter on the site said it all : "the systematic exploitation of private personal information by corporations and government is the modus operandi of a surveillance / police state. Already this is being abused for corporate espionage, political benefit, and a host of criminal enterprises. The manufactured pretext that all these erosions of privacy are ok because "we found bad guys" has been the s…

Although I'm very much miffed by the excessive surveillance of every country these days I don't find this to be the same. Companies and organizations do have the right to check up on people's activities in some manner. If your car wasn't paid for and it belongs to the bank now, I think the bank has the right to know where it is to repossess it. I think this is one of the ugly truths of reality rather than a matter of abusive behavior.

Re: A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo industry

#34

Post by TeMPOraL »

mseebach wrote: post #12
chiph wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, the problem most people don't recognize with this, is the database keeps a history of where the car has been seen. This history is ripe data for divorce attorneys who can use it to show that assignations at motels took place. Already, mapping technology can cause marital problems - I had a neighbor who split up because the Google car photographed a motorcycle in their driveway that wasn't the husbands.

> Already, mapping technology can cause marital problems No, affairs can cause marital problems. Technology just makes it easier to get caught This is not a vindication of the technology in question, but it can't be blamed for everything. I can't help but think that cheating business travellers had it a lot easier before the advent of ubiquitous, near-free mobile long distance telephony made it easier for spouses to…

I see this as a general trend of misattributing problems to technology that are actually caused by one's own behaviour.

Lying to people is a bad idea; some people mistakenly believe that they can lie freely without others knowing, and then cry foul when new technologies threaten that belief.

Everything we do, everything we say, has consequences that spread through the great web of causation; technology only allows us to look at this web faster and in more detail, and thus spot more inconsistencies in our model (i.e. lies). It's not the fault of technology if you lied and got caught.

Re: A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo industry

#35

Post by natch »

mseebach wrote: post #12
chiph wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, the problem most people don't recognize with this, is the database keeps a history of where the car has been seen. This history is ripe data for divorce attorneys who can use it to show that assignations at motels took place. Already, mapping technology can cause marital problems - I had a neighbor who split up because the Google car photographed a motorcycle in their driveway that wasn't the husbands.

> Already, mapping technology can cause marital problems No, affairs can cause marital problems. Technology just makes it easier to get caught This is not a vindication of the technology in question, but it can't be blamed for everything. I can't help but think that cheating business travellers had it a lot easier before the advent of ubiquitous, near-free mobile long distance telephony made it easier for spouses to…

It wasn't clear that there was an affair happening.

Re: A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo industry

#36

Post by talmand »

hrjet wrote: post #30
crypt1d wrote: post #13

I really, really want to say that I think this technology is a bad idea. But I don't. I don't think that the technology is the problem here, as Digital Recognition said they are not _technically_ invading privacy since the license plates are available for everyone to see. And if you outlaw it, whats stopping a few crooks organizing their own underground data collection and selling the stuff on a black market? Rather,…

> I'd prefer to see a different way of "licensing" cars. How about an LCD screen that shows a captcha image of the license number? The captcha image can be regenerated after a set interval, for example, a day. Edit: This would have the benefit that humans can still read it, but making it difficult for OCR.

Well, consider that a government agency would still have to keep a database of what captcha tags were assigned to you on any given day at any given time, then it wouldn't be difficult to tie the two together. At that point you don't need to decipher the captcha, just compare pixels.

Re: A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo industry

#37

Post by gnerd »

berberous wrote: post #21
r0h1n wrote: post #6

I'm curious - how exactly would one refute the following argument put forth by data brokers and repo agents? > But Digital Recognition and other so-called “data brokers” who collect plate scans are fighting Hecht’s bill, arguing that repo agents are not invading privacy when they scan a ­license plate, which is available for all to see. The data brokers do not disclose the owner of the plates, they point out, though…

The scan of the license plan is not really the issue, it's the collecting of the scan, tagging it with GPS, and aggregating the scan into large, permanent databases that can be accessed by both government and private corporations. If all you do is scan a plate and display "car payments past due", or discard the scan if the car is not wanted, it's not all that different from a human looking for a car. But these folks…

I think the real interesting thing about this isn't any of these questions but really, much like with the internet, when does an IP become a person (or in this example, when does a license plate become a person)?

Is there a legal distinction? As I understood it, the reason you don't lose points on your license if you get caught by a speed camera in an automated fashion, is because technically, legally, they have to prove it was you in the car (but to charge a fine, they just have to prove it was your car and it violated a traffic law).

So if you think of it in that context, then how can I be sure it was you at all for those "sensitive" situations? If I can't be sure it was you, and the information was public (where you had no expectation of privacy in the first place), then is that information as protected as say, your medical records? (No really, I'm asking).

Re: A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo industry

#38

Post by talmand »

ctdonath wrote: post #18

Is this discussion any different than the one we had a couple decades ago when credit/debit cards went from occasional use to primary currency? There was huge outcry about how everyone would be tracked, how every purchase you made could be aggregated and monitored and tracked and sold and leveraged, how personal problems could arise when a spouse or lawyer saw inappropriate purchases on bank card records, etc etc. To…

While true, I would imagine it is much easier for a good number of people to go cash only to avoid that, as opposed to never driving a car again.

Then when face recognition kicks in, never going out in public. Might be an opportunity in there somewhere for selling comfortable face masks.

Re: A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo industry

#39

Post by cinquemb »

ctdonath wrote: post #18

Is this discussion any different than the one we had a couple decades ago when credit/debit cards went from occasional use to primary currency? There was huge outcry about how everyone would be tracked, how every purchase you made could be aggregated and monitored and tracked and sold and leveraged, how personal problems could arise when a spouse or lawyer saw inappropriate purchases on bank card records, etc etc. To…

>I still think the killer app for Google Glass type products is face & license-plate recognition, aggregating data and pulling it up for you a la augmented reality all the time. The devices & services would be cheap unto free by companies accumulating that data.

I've thought about this a lot (because my startup wants to move into this space in a year or so, depends on the progression of wearables like glass) and have drawn the conclusion that the reason the facebooks and googles of the world while being technically capable of executing such an idea, they might see as even trying to do such (based on them basically creating walled gardens around information of which one needs to create an identity to access) would amount to a public flogging of them and maybe no clear way to monetize such capabilities now (just look at foursquare stumbling along trying to do such, and that's without facial recog).

But as you note, the technology is here, it's only a matter of time before someone can adopt such and gain usage by the masses. I personally think that the data collected from such if made publicly available, will make the the outcry over surveillance state moot since such capabilities are slowly creeping their way to the masses… I can only imagine the outcry from the church when the printing press started to take hold in its abilities to spread information to the masses…

Re: A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo industry

#40

Post by jmnicolas »

walid wrote: post #33
jmnicolas wrote: post #20

I think the first commenter on the site said it all : "the systematic exploitation of private personal information by corporations and government is the modus operandi of a surveillance / police state. Already this is being abused for corporate espionage, political benefit, and a host of criminal enterprises. The manufactured pretext that all these erosions of privacy are ok because "we found bad guys" has been the s…

Although I'm very much miffed by the excessive surveillance of every country these days I don't find this to be the same. Companies and organizations do have the right to check up on people's activities in some manner. If your car wasn't paid for and it belongs to the bank now, I think the bank has the right to know where it is to repossess it. I think this is one of the ugly truths of reality rather than a matter of…

Did you read the article ? They register the plates of everybody not just the offenders.
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