New Privacy Threat: Automated Vehicle Occupancy Detection

An anonymous reader writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation is warning against a new potential privacy threat: cameras that look inside cars and try to identify how many people are inside. This technology is a natural combination of simpler ones that have existed for years: basic object recognition software and road-side cameras (red light cameras, speeding cameras, license plate readers — you name it). Of course, we can extrapolate just a bit further, and point out that as soon as the cameras have high enough resolution, they can start running face recognition algorithms on the images, and determine the identities of a vehicle's occupants.

"The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), a government umbrella group that develops transportation and public safety initiatives across the San Diego County region, estimates that 15% of drivers in High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes aren't supposed to be there. After coming up short with earlier experimental projects, the agency is now testing a brand new technology to crack down on carpool-lane scofflaws on the I-15 freeway. ... In short: the technology is looking at your image, the image of the people you're with, your location, and your license plate. (SANDAG told CBS the systems will not be storing license plate data during the trial phase and the system will, at least for now, automatically redact images of drivers and passengers. Xerox's software, however, allows police the option of using a weaker form of redaction that can be reversed on request.)"

Comments

Burden of proof

[l2718]

Beyond the privacy problem, a key issue here is the problem of false positives. The system claims a 96% accuracy in detecting people in passenger seats, which is a huge error rate for sending people fines. A policeman can actually stop you and look in the car, which they have to do before writing a ticket.

The problem is that such fines are expensive to contest (you have to take time off work, show up to court etc). Many people will just pay. This is not a criminal prosecution situation where "presumption of innocence" in the legal sense is relevant, but the principle applies here too: you should hold the government to a high standard of proof here.

Re:Burden of proof

[silas_moeckel]

Passenger seat, how about the back seat. Last I checked if somebody has kids with them it's ok to use the lane. So this thing is not even close to accurate.

Re:Burden of proof

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently got a notice from Washington State that my car was in the carpool like without 2 passengers. Another driver reported me. The only problem is that we did have 2 people in the car. One was in the backseat. Any visual identification technique will not see most passengers in the rear seats. The letter threatened that if we were reported 3 times, they would forward our information to the State Patrol.

So now, if a human driving next to the car is too dumb to see passengers in the rear seat, how can a camera see it? Side facing Infrared?

Unfortunately anything beside physically accessing the vehicle to assess if there are 2, 3+ people would be a pretty good 4th Amendment issue. An automated system could not and should not be able to send you an infraction if they are not able to reasonably look into the vehicle from the outside and have 100% accuracy. Only a police officer standing next to your vehicle can do that. And they would need a reasonable suspicion that you were in violation of the law.

The police don't pull over most mini-vans and SUV's with mom's inside because they realize that most of the time they have are kiddle-poolers.

The other way to fix the issue is to change it from 2+ people, to 2+ licensed drivers. The true intent is to remove vehicles from the road, so let's start calling it out and get rid of the kiddie-poolers.

 

Re:Burden of proof

[R3d M3rcury]

Actually, that's one change I'd like to see--there has to be more than one licensed driver in the vehicle in order to use the carpool lane. You're not really removing a car from the road if the people you're transporting can't drive.

Money

[sycodon]

At first glance, all of these technologies are implemented solely for the purpose for bring in more money to the government.

But I'm sure I'm not being at all cynical enough and probably a bit of Tin Foil Hat theory wouldn't be inappropriate.

Re:Money

[TubeSteak]

At first glance, all of these technologies are implemented solely for the purpose for bring in more money to the government.

HOV lanes exist to encourage ride sharing and to reduce the traffic load during rush hour.
Ticketing cheaters serves that end and is not exclusively about monetary gain for the State

So yes, you are being cynical, though I wouldn't take off the tin foil hat.

Re:Money

[camperdave]

HOV lanes exist to encourage ride sharing and to reduce the traffic load during rush hour.

Yeah, that's what it says on the tin. In reality they just eat up a lane of traffic that could otherwise be used to alleviate rush hour congestion. It might be different if they actually ADDED HOV lanes instead of taking one of the normal lanes and rebranding it. After all, who's going to get into a car with a bunch of strangers, and not have a vehicle when they reach their destination?

Re:Money

[bluegutang]

In reality they just eat up a lane of traffic that could otherwise be used to alleviate rush hour congestion. It might be different if they actually ADDED HOV lanes instead of taking one of the normal lanes and rebranding it. After all, who's going to get into a car with a bunch of strangers, and not have a vehicle when they reach their destination?

That's why the more recent trend is to build HOT lanes, which can also be used by anyone willing to pay a toll (HOVs can use it for free). The toll is dynamically adjusted based on how congested the road is, so that the HOT lane always has a significant amount of traffic but is never congested.

This solves your problem, and also gives people a reason to carpool (no tolls) which maximizes the number of people able to use the road.

Re:Money

[Totenglocke]

And when has a government used increased power over it's citizens for good? Any government in history will do.

Re:Money

[Woeful Countenance]

No enforcement = no compliance.

"The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) ... estimates that 15% of drivers in High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes aren't supposed to be there."

Apparently there's 85% compliance even without this particular means of enforcement. Is possibly gaining another 15% worth the cost? (Where "cost" includes money, privacy, increased government, etc.)

But Xerox, on the other hand...

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

"SANDAG says the current test system is not storing license plate numbers" Well DUH, that's what the NSA's giant datacenter in Utah is for! SANDAG / Xerox may not be storing this, but no one said they aren't just passing along all this data to someone who will. And the FBI claimed Stingray never existed either...

Re:"That can be reversed on request"

[MightyYar]

So let me get this straight rich gits with chauffeurs get priority over everyone else because why, why the fuck, why?

Because "people being chauffeured around" represent such a small proportion of rush-hour traffic that basing a decision around this particular concern would be far more emotional than pragmatic.