License Plate Tracking for the Average Citizen

Wired News is reporting that big-brother license plate tracking systems may soon be available to the average citizen. Privacy advocates, however, worry that personal information and associated movement could be used inappropriately by marketing companies. From the article: "Bucholz, who designed some of the first mobile license plate reading, or LPR, equipment, gave a presentation at the 2006 National Institute of Justice conference here last week laying out a vision of the future in which LPR does everything from helping insurance companies find missing cars to letting retail chains chart customer migrations. It could also let a nosy citizen with enough cash find out if the mayor is having an affair, he says."

Comments

Big brother here we come!

[IntelliAdmin]

Wow. This is really big brother. Essentially they put these on top of cop cars an the thing just starts searching 360 for license plates and drops them in the system. The trick would be to have enough police cars fitted with them to give back good data. Also it would not help track the car if it were in someone's garage.

Good Excerpt from the article:

LPR cameras, which are usually around the size of a can of tomato sauce, can be mounted on police cruisers and powered by cigarette lighters. As the car moves, the camera bounces infrared light off other vehicles' license plates. The camera reads the plates and feeds them to a laptop in real time, where information from an FBI or local database can tell an officer if the car is hot. Some systems can read up to 60 plates per second, and they work at highway speeds and acute angles.

Free Windows Admin Tools

Re:Big brother here we come!

[Jordan Catalano]

In other news, sales of IR-blocking plastic films skyrocket.

Buy one, get a tin-foil hat free.

Re:Big brother here we come!

[dr_dank]

LPR cameras, which are usually around the size of a can of tomato sauce, can be mounted on police cruisers and powered by cigarette lighters

With a mental image of a cop wielding a jar of Ragu while his partner shovels in Bic lighters to keep it going, I have hard time taking this seriously.

Re:Big brother here we come!

[CreatureComfort]

Yeah, this is great. Now I'll be able to track down the information on that little mf'r that cut me off on the freeway this morning and key his car. Hey, and how about that hot blonde number I saw at the red light? I'm sure she wouldn't mind me showing up at her home or job and hitting on her. And if she turns me down, well, I know where she lives. I know, let's reverse this and make it real time! Then I can track where the owners of a house are while I "browse" through their belongings, and get warning when they get within 5 miles.

Isn't this fun? I bet I could come up with great uses for this tech all day long.

Re:Big brother here we come!

[SydShamino]

The following is SARCASTIC JEST meant to show how this can be abused:

"Dude, I'm just gonna wire this up outside of the local adult video store, and post a real-time list of people who visit, with their name and address. I could probably make this a for-profit service, where folks sign up their spouses' tags and I message them when they visit. Or I can link it to public official records, and snap a photo or video if a politician's car shows up."

Warning warning warning!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your license plate number is currently being broadcast TO THE WORLD!

Punch the monkey to find out how to protect yourself.

Neat trick

[Junior J. Junior III]

I had no idea LPR had such capabilities. Let's see HP JetDirect do this!

Now if only someone can code an extension that will tell me where I left my car keys...

This is damned good stuff

[A nonymous Coward]

I love this kind of stuff. Right now, power to snoop is in the hands of the rich and powerful. If the mayor of Dallas gets a bug up his butt about a neighbor he doesn't like, or a competing politician bothers him enough, he has a lot more resources at his control than the neighbor or opponent. But when things like this become available to the average joe, there's will be a lot more people interested in where the mayor's car goes than the other way round.

Same with public cameras. Once we get cameras all over the place, whether controlled by private citizens, or whether public cameras which everyone can see instead of just the cops, a lot more ordinary joes will be observing the rich and powerful than vice versa.

The Colt revolver was the great equalizer of the 1800s, making the average person just as deadly as those who had the time to practice swordsmanship. Computer cameras like these license plate readers and public webcams will be the great equalizer of the 2000s. I relish the equalization of power these will bring.

And it gets worse.

[khasim]

All it would take is for someone to start offering info on license plates for price. Buy a couple of these and just cruise around, collecting plates and GPS coordinates (with a date/time stamp).

See a cute girl in a bar? Just get her plate number when she leaves. The cough up the cash and you can find where her car is normally seen. Like where she lives and where she works.

You know, I'd rather take my chances that my car won't be recovered (most of them are stolen for "joy rides" anyway and the most of the rest are chopped) or that someone without insurance will crash into me.

And yes, once the technology is available, SOMEONE will sell the info it gathers.

Not the point

[A nonymous Coward]

The point of TFA is that these are becoming cheap enough to allow ordinary people to set them up, not just the cops.

I want this stuff made available to the general public. I don't want it to be the private data of the cops, or the politicians who control the cops. I want everybody to be able to snoop on those politicians just as they snoop on the people they want to control.