Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy
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Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy
#2states including Maine, New Jersey, and Virginia have limited the use of ALPRs, and New Hampshire has banned them outright.
Good to know, and just another reason to live in NH :)
Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy
#3The battle for privacy is already lost. David Brin's approach is what is remaining. THE TRANSPARENT SOCIETY.
Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy
#4The battle for privacy is already lost. David Brin's approach is what is remaining. THE TRANSPARENT SOCIETY.
It would certainly be useful to have all elite interactions (not the content) available in real-time to link with a revision controlled legal system. I.e. you could follow particular clauses in laws back to particular legislators, even in the early drafting process, and then see who they or their staff were talking to at that time (and potentially demand the content of those communications). But I believe the Bush administration used a private/party email system to stop their communications coming under the current Whitehouse rules. So any such system would have to include everything, a kind of lifelogging for anyone during their period in government.
I am sure they will object to this with the usual arguments about security implications and executive right. Amusingly citizens could reply "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear".
Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy
#5In the Toronto, Ontario area, ALPRs were built into the 407 Electronic Toll Route to accompany the RFID readers. This eliminated the need for toll booths entirely, because the license plate reader could be used to find the car's registration and send a bill.
Of course, there are slightly different semantics here -- the ALPRs in the 407 are stationary (mounted at every on-ramp and off-ramp), and you can choose to avoid them by simply using other roads running in parallel to the toll road.
However, this tech is at least a decade old (the 407 was first opened in 1997). It seems odd to me that people are up in arms about the tech now, especially since you can build a rudimentary ALPR with just a webcam and the right image processing algorithms.
Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy
#6In the Toronto, Ontario area, ALPRs were built into the 407 Electronic Toll Route to accompany the RFID readers. This eliminated the need for toll booths entirely, because the license plate reader could be used to find the car's registration and send a bill. Of course, there are slightly different semantics here -- the ALPRs in the 407 are stationary (mounted at every on-ramp and off-ramp), and you can choose to avoi…
> It seems odd to me that people are up in arms about the tech now, especially since you can build a rudimentary ALPR with just a webcam and the right image processing algorithms.
That is precisely why people are up in arms. What was once rare is now ubiquitous. When every police car has an ANPR capable of reading 60+ plates per minute and is feeding plate numbers plus timestamps and gps coordinates into a backend database with poorly defined access controls the potential for abuse skyrockets.
Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy
#7But we should not so readily give up the very freedoms that terrorists seek to destroy.
The freedom to not have your license plate OCR'd? Is that what it's all about? Putting that in there is jingoistic and appealing to the same emotions that the other side abuses.
Pervasive, often incidental monitoring (e.g. the growing proliferation of electronic toll roads) is absolutely inevitable. Cameras are everywhere. Recording costs close to nothing. Capacity is endless. Processing and OCR is achieved with negligible power on tiny, low-cost devices. Imagine what tomorrow will be like?
Reactions that involve essentially trying to pretend that technology doesn't exist or can be suppressed will never and have never worked.
Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy
#8But we should not so readily give up the very freedoms that terrorists seek to destroy. The freedom to not have your license plate OCR'd? Is that what it's all about? Putting that in there is jingoistic and appealing to the same emotions that the other side abuses. Pervasive, often incidental monitoring (e.g. the growing proliferation of electronic toll roads) is absolutely inevitable. Cameras are everywhere. Recordi…
I think it should be embraced... but transparent. Let me see when someone has looked up those details, let me view all my own records. Only then can the balance of power shift ever so slightly back towards regular people.
Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy
#9But we should not so readily give up the very freedoms that terrorists seek to destroy. The freedom to not have your license plate OCR'd? Is that what it's all about? Putting that in there is jingoistic and appealing to the same emotions that the other side abuses. Pervasive, often incidental monitoring (e.g. the growing proliferation of electronic toll roads) is absolutely inevitable. Cameras are everywhere. Recordi…
Intentionally building a database whose sold purpose is to track tens of millions of mostly-innocent people as they go about their business for years on end is a bad idea.
Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy
#10But we should not so readily give up the very freedoms that terrorists seek to destroy. The freedom to not have your license plate OCR'd? Is that what it's all about? Putting that in there is jingoistic and appealing to the same emotions that the other side abuses. Pervasive, often incidental monitoring (e.g. the growing proliferation of electronic toll roads) is absolutely inevitable. Cameras are everywhere. Recordi…
It sounds like they aren't trying to suppress the technology, just pushing for better rules around data retention.