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National Car Tracking System Proposed For US
bl968 writes "The Newspaper is reporting that the leading private traffic enforcement camera vendors are seeking to establish a national vehicle tracking system in the United States using existing red-light and speed enforcement cameras. The system would utilize Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to track vehicles passing surveillance cameras operated by these companies. If there are cameras positioned correctly the company will enable images and video to be taken of the driver and passengers. The nice thing in their view is that absolutely no warrants are needed. To gain public acceptance, the surveillance program is being initially sold as an aid for police looking to solve Amber Alert cases and locate stolen cars."
Here's some food for thought:
The coils of wire embedded in the pavement, which are used to monitor freeway traffic and to control traffic lights, could detect the type of car that is passing over by the waveform it produces at the sensor. With some clever signal processing you could distinguish roughly the shape and size of the vehicle.
These sensors are everywhere - you might pass a hundred of them in a day. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to then see that if you could gather data from enough of these sensors, you could track a particular vehicle over the course of many miles. Combine this data with the camera images and you can also identify that vehicle.
Even for good ideas I'm against them when they try to play the "it's for the children" emotional card. If the idea isn't good enough to stand on it's own then it's not worth it period.
On a more serious note, I wonder if IR camera jammers work on these cameras, and if use of them doesn't trip 'concealment' alerts since it doesn't prevent any person from seeing the plate. An LED array around the plate is certainly easier to remotely control and not as suspicious looking. Might be time to actually build one of those like I've been planning...
A hero is someone who knows when to run away. I am a hero. -Trent the Uncatchable
Here in california we already have the Amber alert system tied into those highway warning signs and I see about 1 Amber alert every month or two.
Hell, amber alerts are just a bunch of fear-mongering bullshit. The number of children kidnapped each year who actually end up dead or 'permanently' missing is roughly 100 and has been for decades - the amber alert nonsense hasn't dented that statistic. All the others are either custody fights gone extra-legal or runaways, in each case the child is not in any immediate danger that would justify spamming the entire state.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Let me relate an incident that happened to me regarding DUI. If you do not like my language you are free to edit it out, however, I refuse to call a sonofabitch a gentleman of questionable heritage.
I used to drive tractor trailer over the road. I was so self-employed when the Federal DOT passed their new regulation regarding enforcement and investigation of such, despite the fact that in all the accident investigations involving big trucks, whether at fault or not, the commercial driver was subjected to tox and alcohol screens to determine his condition of sobriety and/or impairment at the time of the accident had returned result of far less than 1% of impaired commercial drivers.
I entered Utah at the border between it and Wyoming on I-80. Just across the line is a weigh and inspection station for Utah, almost directly across the highway from the same thing on the Wyoming side.
After being weighed and passed for legal weight I was flagged for inspection and pulled over to the side off the scale. I gathered my log book, my bills of lading, my permit and license books, my Commercial Drivers License and my medical certificate and entered the station house.
Upon getting inside, I said to the trooper on duty, "I don't know what you need, but I brought it all, what do you want to look at first?"
He replied, "I don't need any of that I pulled you in for a random alcohol screen."
I said, "What?"
He said, "You were number 17, I have four numbers I must pull in to screen for alcohol."
I asked him, "Did I do something on my approach to make you think I had been drinking?" He answered,"No."
"Well did I stagger or walk in any manner during the 100 yards walking back here to make you think I had been drinking?" He answered, "No."
"Well then, do you smell any alcohol on me now, or do you have any reason to believe I am drinking?" He answered, "No, I don't understand why you are so upset if you have nothing to hide."
I then asked him, " You really don't understand why I am upset that I must prove to you I haven't committed a crime you have no right or reason to suspect me of?"
He again stated, "I just don't understand why you are so upset if you have nothing to hide."
I said, "Are you really so stupid that you don't understand the reason I am angry that I must prove my innocence, though you have no reason to suspect me?"
He said, "Look, this is my job and I have to do it and if you didn't have anything to hide you shouldn't be upset."
I asked, "Do you really believe that?"
He said that he did.
That was three times I asked, three times the dumb sonofabitch indicated he had no concept of liberty or law. Three is all I will give anybody, and sometimes not that.
I said, "Ok, if you really mean that, take off your pants and your underwear."
He looked incredulous, then asked, "Are you crazy?"
I replied, "No sir, I am not. Take off your pants and underwear, we are going to examine your penis for blood and fecal matter to determine if you have been molesting small boys."
That sonofabitch went through the roof, ranting and screaming and telling me I had no right to accuse him of such a thing. I think he would have shot me if he had had the guts and thought he could get rid of the body before anybody happened along.
I calmly replied, "It's random, I have no reason to suspect you, but now you must prove you have not been sodomizing young boys. After all, if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be upset. What do you have to hide? Isn't that what you told me three times that you believed?"
He was sputtering and yelling at me and soooo red in the face, I thought I might get lucky and the no good sonofabitch would die from a stroke. He screamed at me, "That's entirely different!"
I told him, "The only thing different is now we are talking about you proving something I have no right to suspect you of. Evidently you didn't believe all that shit you told me, about nothing to hide s
Exactly. This is a horrifying privacy invasion, particularly given that it is trivial to create a similar system that doesn't have any of those flaws.
A modest counterproposal: build a database of all stolen vehicles and all vehicles listed in an amber alert. Set up computer systems on each camera with the appropriate detection and set them to log vehicle plate information that is listed in the stolen vehicle/amber alert database permanently and to store all vehicle information in temporary storage that is overwritten when it is more than three hours old. Provide a programming interface that tells each device to check its temporary storage buffer for a single plate upon request and use this when a new amber alert or stolen car is added to the database.
This does two things: it solves the problem of amber alerts and stolen vehicles as defined and goes one step farther by providing a reasonable buffer time during which if an amber alert is called or a car is stolen, prior records can be searched for the vehicle in question (and only the vehicle in question).
Include strict laws that absolutely prohibit any extension of the temporary buffer period beyond 3 hours and prohibit any publication, distribution, or transmission of the data stored in the temporary buffer except for a list of detection events for a single plate as queried through the aforementioned interface. Include strict laws that provide criminal liability for knowingly adding a plate to the suspect vehicle database that does not belong to a stolen vehicle or a vehicle listed in an amber alert or other A.P.B.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
So, how long before someone puts an electromagnet on the bottom of their car connected to a circuit that generates a random power output? Better yet, they hide the whole thing inside their muffler or gas tank so the whole thing would be hidden.
If this system is matching on some magnetic profile, you could end up making your magnetic signature look just like some other cars signature.
Just imagine if the system thinks car X goes by sensor A at 9:00 and then sensor B at 9:01 and those sensors are 10 miles apart. Suddenly car X owner gets a speeding ticket in the mail.
Or what if someone driving along has a device under their car that consists of a grinding wheel that is feed by a magazine of rare earth magnets. I would imagine coating the ground with very magnetic powder would probably screw the system up, not to mention what it would do to the cars behind it as a fine dusting of magnetic powder goes into their engine.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Anyone ever think of attaching one of these to a Police Commissioner's or (if you really have balls) a Congressman's car and setting up a public website to share the data in real time?
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.