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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?
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Plate scanning systems are just a fast way to do what repo folks have been doing for years.
But if too many uses for registration plates are found people with less to lose will just start making their own plates. Some of those people presumably have experience in the field anyway ;)
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
Yes, it is perfectly normal to pay more for a service than it costs to do it yourself. The money saved is invested as time and effort, which is what you compensate the service provider for providing. This is basic to the US society, and quite a few others as well. It confuses me that you are obviously educated enough to compose English sentences yet somehow missed a fact that even 10 year olds understand.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
The use of public information and technology to catch deadbeats and lawbreakers is not a bad thing.
How about other "bad" people? My new Bar Watcher service will tell you if your loved one is at one of 30 local area bars. For only $10 a search we'll give you time, location, and duration. For an annual subscription of only $100 we'll send you a text message every time we see your loved ones car (or one of his friends cars) at the local bars. Sign up now! *
We also have our gamblers search! Same service, for all the local Casinos!
*(service not available for elected officials, law enforcement officers, or judges by state law)
AccountKiller
From a legal standpoint there is nothing wrong with this.
Well, its about damn time that the legal standpoint changed. Technology has changed and the laws need to catch up. At one point we didn't even have license plates, the law changed because there was a need for something like them and at the time the balance of pros versus cons tilted towards the pro side. New technology has changed that balance towards the con side and the law needs to change with it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
From a legal standpoint there is nothing wrong with this.
There isn't? I think we need some actual legal advice here.
The use of vehicles and tag scanners just makes it faster.
Which is problematic in itself.
All it does is allows more organizations access to the same database of vehicle locations.
Even more of a problem. Data is power in the modern world, and any time power is concentrated sufficiently it becomes a liability. You need look no further than Experian, Equifax and Transunion to realize just how dangerous this can be. Hell, a couple of credit cards I've owned since the Internet went public have suffered security breaches, and I got hit with several thousand dollars in charges. They took them off ... and then six months later put them back after an investigation proved that I'd activated a new account from a phone number and address in a country that I've never visited much less lived in. I had to pay my attorney to adjust their attitude. Consequently, it won't matter much to the victim of a crime (or government abuse) facilitated by this database. They're still screwed.
We need to take a very different approach to data aggregation in general. You shouldn't get to collect squat about us unless you can prove you need it. If you don't, you don't store it. The fact that it makes a civil servant's job easier is not, in and of itself, sufficient reason to permit this kind of activity. That's especially true when the private sector gets involved. I'll give you an example: in my state, they're putting in red light cams everywhere (not quite as bad as London, maybe, but they're trying hard.) These cameras are used to "enhance revenue" (political-speak for "issue lots more tickets for stuff that was never ticketed before and often isn't illegal anyway.") That's bad enough, but in many towns the companies that build them are given a direct percentage of the take. The more cameras they put in, the more money they make (ha, talk about corporatism at work) and the data they collect is often sold to other companies for additional profit. I see this plate-scanning effort going exactly the same way.
Regulation means nothing. If that information has been collected, and somebody wants it bad enough, believe me it will be made available. That's just life in the big city. The best solution is not to collect it at all. And furthermore, even if no-one tries to acquire a public records database through "legitimate" means, there are plenty of illegitimate ways once it's online. I've been down that road, and I don't trust government or the private sector to be willing or able to protect my information. It's not theirs, it's mine, and both government and the private sector have demonstrated (repeatedly) that they cannot be trusted to provide adequate security. Apparently, securing personal information is just not cost effective.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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.
she was canadian
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
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.
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.
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!