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v3rgEz writes "Even as some police departments curtail their use of license plate scanning technology over privacy concerns, private companies have been amassing a much larger, almost completely unregulated database that pulls in billions of scans a year, marking the exact time and location of millions of vehicles across America. The database, which is often offered to law enforcement for free, is collected by repo and towing companies eager to tap easy revenue, while the database companies then resell that data, often for as little as $25 for a plate's complete recorded history."
what else is new
The life of a repo man is always intense.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Need to readproof better "curtail their sue of license plate"
It's what's for bre'fas'.
Yup, my SIL got picked off this way. Aparently there are cars that drive through neighborhood recording license plates, and when a license plate matches one that a repo man is looking for, the location is sent forward. She thought she was scot-free because she was living with her BF, but the car got towed anyway. Should have paid her bill...
Or are we all eventually going to end up in some "Orwellian 1984" kinda thing. i.e. Are we gonna have RFID's surgically plugged into us by police states .
Oh wait ...
I was talking with a bunch of folks recently, and I pointed out that consumer debt is relatively new. Sure there were layaway plans and credit with an individual store - your tab, but this huge industry that throws money out left and right to basically make us slaves.
I think many of our societies problems can go back to consumer debt: these invasions of privacy, college costs going through the roof, this treadmill of consumerism: cars, electronics, luxury goods.
All in all, things were a bit better when credit wasn't so easily available.
Before Henry Ford started financing his cars, folks had to have the cash; which made cars a luxury item. And most people had to take public transportation - which was viable because few people had cars. And of course, we wouldn't need all this oil if we didn't have so many cars.
When you sit down and think about it, consumer credit has really distorted our economy. We all have lost the need and desire to save.
The government can't afford to spy on us, but the corporations make money doing it. So they can afford to do it more.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Don't act like regulating it would change anything.. It never does.
Yes, the cameras on the highway and red light cameras, etc are not owned by the county or state. They are owned by private company's and they own the data. They turn over red light runner snapshots for a fee to the county etc.
Politician runs for office in district A. To meet the residency requirements he claims he lives in his Mom's spare room in District A. License plate scans reveal his car lives in District B - in the parking lot for his mistress's condo.
Or are we all eventually going to end up in some "Orwellian 1984" kinda thing. i.e. Are we gonna have RFID's surgically plugged into us by police states .
You are missing the point, its not the government, its private individuals doing the data acquisition.
Move the camera from the car to glasses, and have the private individual walking through a crowd recording faces, for some commercial reason, rather than driving around recording license plates. Now add private individuals acting as "video vigilantes" recording anything they think suspicious or wrong.
An Orwellian thing may occur simply through our lack of courtesy, a lack of respect for someone else's privacy. Government involvement may not be necessary.
The major problems I see with this is there is no oversight. How accurate are the readers? How accurate are the databases? What recourse is there when they make a mistake? That sort of thing. Without oversight there is vast potential for abuse. The various companies involved need to be licensed and regulated. There needs to be PCI-like compliance for their databases and equipment.
There are lots of other questions here. Parking lots are by and large on private property. These drivers with the scanners are utilizing the private property for profit. I mean, I can't just set up a booth in Walmart's parking lot and start selling stuff. I would need their permission, for starters, and they would probably want a lease, proof of insurance, etc, etc.
My worry is that my car will be mistaken for another car on a repo list and towed somewhere. Then it becomes a legal nighmare getting it back, with no prospect for compensation or damages.
Proverbs 21:19
Open sources scanner software that works with a cheap USB camera and license plate wiki - that stores every scanned tag with number and state data. How fast do you think it would take legislators to decide it was a bad idea and outlaw scanners? Probably a few seconds after one of their own gets asked some embarrassing questions. The best way to fight such privacy threats is to embrace and extend their use to those in power.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
This has been the case for YEARS.
All public records are available to the 'public'; which includes businesses. Tax collectors, driver's licenses, public controlled/regulated utilities, marriage records, property sales, civil and criminal court records (not bench sealed).
Member of my family was a repo man. Didn't even carry a cellphone, but he paid his $25/year to access electric bills. Easy money.
I've never heard or read of a repo man, though I do know what's a DMV or an interstate. I only know of software repos in linux distributions.
Is that about the place that your car is towed to upon request by the cops, and then you get to there and pay through the nose to get your car back?
I have no problem with a private individual or company doing this.
I have a big problem with the government, who has the ability to deprive me of my posessions, my freedom, and my life, being able to do this.
I wonder how else a private company can work with the government to get around restrictions placed on the government?
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
I don't think we need regulations that prohibit this kind of data collection by private companies or individuals (the government is a different story). Collecting data nonintrusively shouldn't be illegal, because such laws would have all sorts of nasty side effects.
Instead of restrictive regulations, we need legislation that empowers people to protect themselves from this kind of thing. For example, maybe the requirement to display a large identifying string of characters on vehicles should be rethought. We don't require people to wear identifying signs around their necks every time they venture out in the public. License plates just make this kind of data collection too easy.
If our society is unwilling to get rid of license plates entirely, perhaps we could go to electronic ones. Static plates could be replaced by electronic displays that automatically go blank when the car is parked.
Right now the playing field isn't level. Instead of leveling it by taking rights away, we should give people the ability to easily and legally protect themselves.
Or perhaps some out-of-the-box thinking would yield practical countermeasures that are already legal. Of course, then the challenge might be keeping those countermeasures from being outlawed.
publicly post the movements of all government officials, corporate executives, and police
of course our legislators would probably just make the law that says its illegal to post the movements of government officials, corporate executives, and the police
why am i being redirected to beta.slashdot.org when i keep requesting slashdot.org? if i wanted a website where everything is freakishly huge i would pull out my old crt monitor! what's slashdot's F'in problem?
I will be tracked everywhere all the time with these scanners
Most scanners are mounted on vehicles like parking ticket authorities and tow trucks. The drive up and down the street scanning parked vehicles. There is no way every vehicle will be scanned all the time.
What about stationary cameras?
Where would these tow companies place these stationary cameras and get a lot of coverage? Sure they could try to place them on every light pole but I doubt local authorities would approve. Sure they can scan as people come and go from a lot but if you don't want to be scanned don't use the lot.
I will be tracked everywhere I go
No, your license plate will be tracked when a scanning vehicle comes by or you use a lot that scans. The piece of information that the scanning company does not have is any information about the owner of the license plate. The information can be obtained but only for a few specific reasons. California for example, look at the "Permissible Use" section. I don't see "Because I want to sell tracking information" there as permissible use.
These databases will contain license plate numbers and not people's names.
It sounds like the person writing this, lives somewhere rather with rather unsavoury privacy legislation. I'm just glad that I don't live there.
If I'm accused of a crime and in criminal court can the government use this unverified, uncertified, unaudited, unregulated database to 'prove' my vehicle was somewhere or was not somewhere? There is a difference between a video ( which still can be faked) and a database simply saying my vehicle was seen somewhere without any substantiation or even reasonable-confidence. Here is MY database showing my vehicle was in my garage whenever *I* want it to be!!!
I know this is simply the stupidest, most trivial gripe anyone could make but I'm going to put it out just the same:
Back into parking spots ALWAYS. Do it for for safety. Do it for your car. Do it for convenience. Do it for 'the children.' And now, do it for privacy.
Many states do not require a license place in the front. I live in one of those states. For those who do, I'm sorry. Lobby for a change. Backing into your parking spots will reduce the likelihood that one of these scanners will record your car's location.
Backing in for safety is good to be sure the spot is clear when you enter it. You have to drive by the spot before backing in, so you know you aren't about to park in a spot occupied by a person, a motorcycle or one of those ridiculous smart cars. What's more, when you depart your parking spot, you will have the clearest possible view as you enter traffic because you don't have to back into a completely invisible and unknown situation. This also allows you to leave much more quickly since you can see where you are going. That's a great plus since quite often people are in a bigger hurry to leave than they are to arrive.
Backing in prevents people from hitting your car accidentally as you back out of parking spaces. Can you tell who is coming through that parking lane as you back out? I've seen too many cars hurt this way and it's tragic. And who has TIME to argue about it when you can just form a habit which prevents it all from happening in the first place?
Backing in means you get to leave going forward. It's not just safer, it's faster. The only potential inconvenience is access to one's trunk or rear storage area. That's probably the only exception to the rule I suppose. If you're planning to load something large, going in forward might be the best way, but it also leave you and your friends and family standing out in the parking lanes waiting for the next jerk-hole to come along and clip you needlessly.
And backing in means you have less risk of accidentally hurting a child. It's never a complete guarantee as kids just go everywhere, but can you say you did everything in your power if you aren't backing in and pulling out forward? It's when backing OUT kids are injured and killed more often. Those read-facing camera systems are really nice, especially for people who are unable to exercise full motion of their spine and neck. For for everyone else, there is no substitute for real eyes on the scene.
And now for privacy? Holy crap. Every day we learn there is yet another jerk-hole out there making money by recording and selling information about you. I wish for these people to die in a fire. They simply have no concept of what harm they are bringing to society. They just care about the dollars they can collect and spend on crap they don't need.
Seriously. Make a new habit if you don't do this already. BACK IN when parking. It's not hard. Just practice at it.
And here's the best mirror-hack of all time for backing in. Most cars these days have a passenger-side mirror and it's used to see cars which would otherwise be in a blind spot. But you don't need to see the sky with it -- just what's on the road. How about angling that mirror down a bit further so you can see more of the road. When backing into a parking spot, you will be able to see the lines of the parking spot on the other side and if you can still see the body panels of your car on that side, you can even achieve perfect alignment every time by checking if you are parallel to the line and how much room you have on the other side. There are thousand-dollar electronic sensors which serve this purpose but all anyone has to do is angle the passenger-side mirror down a little to get the same thing!!
Anyway. I hope someone actually reads this and gets something useful from it.
the one that claims monopoly on use of force. I'd rather repomen spy that government.
A better simile is a number of people spread out all over the place who take pictures of everyone and sort them by face. No single person is being followed therefore no stalking. The big difference is that most of the time pictures are not being taken. There is no way to know where is person has been between when the pictures are taken. License plate scanners are not everywhere.
How about some sort of shutter covering your license plate, which shuts or otherwise becomes opaque when the car is turned off? Would that be legal?
Government can afford to do scanning that doesn't make money.
Government can send people using deadly force after you.
Government can declare itself immune from the law if it makes a mistake.
It's much harder for non-governments to do any of the above.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
When are we going to realize? License plates infringe on our freedom to travel. Would you be willing to walk around with your name and address written on your jacket in big letters? No? Then why do we accept the same for our cars?
Abolish license plates.
Scanning license plates - by itself - isn't a big deal. The state governments are more than happy to sell you the registration information that goes with that license plate (and they'll sell you the drivers' license information too).
Make front license plates optional in every state
A Kinect and other sensors could be used to scan -everything- in public places. Eventually it will be possible to infer the health of politicians, the mood of CEO's, the anger level in police, and the amount of panic everyone feels in an economic recession. There are no laws at all about scanning people and anything else in public with sensors (except microphones and sometimes cameras). Add some machine learning and imagine the databases you could build and sell!
The poster didn't mentions private citizens. We're talking about corporations, and only in the USA are they considered the same thing.
"There's gonna be a meter
on your bed
that will disclose
what everybody knows"
- L. Cohen 1988
Do away with license plates.
It would be cool if we could track the trackers, and post their location on maps in real time; showing where they troll for cars, where they park at night, what donut stores they frequent. After all, the license plate trackers are plainly visible, anybody could see them and remember where and and when they did.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
What organization drives down every street and road in America six days a week?
That's right, the US Post Office. I wonder how much they'd have to raise their db access prices to be able to lower the cost of postage?
the scan itself might be the same as someone seeing you in public
keeping a database of all such scans however is more akin to stalkin someone (and becomes more so as the DB grows)
I do have legal recourse to stop someone stalking me, this is just an entirely new way of doing so
no he's saying that systematically and automtically collecting such observations in a nationwide database is not free speech, it's stalking.
and yes I do think this should be illegal (if it isn't already)
this is not 'taking a photo in public', this is stalking everybody through technological means, different beast entirely
I was talking with a bunch of folks recently, and I pointed out that consumer debt is relatively new. Sure there were layaway plans and credit with an individual store - your tab, but this huge industry that throws money out left and right to basically make us slaves. photocall barato photocall para bodas
If you back in at the University of Illinois at Chicago you get a $30 ticket.