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New Software Puts License Plate Scanners Into Citizens' Hands (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Automated license plate readers have become a serious point of contention between law enforcement and privacy-minded citizens. But the advance of technology might make it a moot point — with some open source software and a cheap webcam, anyone can now start cataloging the cars visiting their street. A two-man team developed OpenALPR and started distributing it for free, along with the source code. Law enforcement and the agencies that build their plate scanners have argued in favor of the legality of such data collection, so it's not like they can suddenly start cracking down on private citizens doing the same. "An enterprising person could even use a car-mounted camera and create a mobile plate hunting device along the lines of what many police agencies already use." Is this particular privacy fight one that's still winnable?
will be first in line to get this....and, knowing our local ones, they might do an 'Apple camp out'.
After watching police documentaries I often thought that surveillance of police station car parks would give you a good list of unmarked (and marked) police car VRNs. Couple that with static (entry points to housing estates, etc.) or vehicle mounted cameras and you have automated early warning of police in your area.
...when the first guy sets up right in front of the police station. Or better yet, in front of the officer having an affair's house.
If enough of us nerds have these and aggregate the data, we can see where the cops are going and make sure they are out and about doing their jobs. As the summary says, it cuts both ways. Start watching the watchers.
I was summoned to district court for an 8:00 AM hearing, and discovered - quite by accident - that the judge didn't bother to arrive until 10:00 AM. My lawyer mentioned that this was typical.
Everyone had to wait around and was forced to listen to some insipid video about drunk driving (irrelevant to my landlord/tenant purpose) for two hours over and over before the judge bothered to arrive.
I've often wondered how useful it would be to mount a trail camera behind the courthouse and log the judge's arrival times, and then make that information public. Say, 6 months of study.
I wonder how long it will be before someone modifies this software to automatically log the comings and goings of government servants to a public website.
I'd be interested to know if the people I'm paying (with my taxes) are putting in a full 40 hours.
This is not all that helpful or useful unless you can connect to the DMV databases that links the plate to the person.
Honestly it depends on how you look at it. You can make a bomb out of items in Walmart. If I started to argue that because you can do that, we shouldn't produce those items, it would be a moot point. Conversely if I started to argue we should all make bombs because it's inevitable, that too would be a moot point. The point is, don't mix those things to make a bomb, more simply, don't be a dick. This includes putting me on a watchlist because I just said, "I can make a bomb" and start watching me, trying to get me to do it. That is what the Constitution was trying to avoid in respecting people's privacy. You can make the case that anyone is potentially dangerous and we should just start treating each other like adults and realize that processing power is cheap and sensor technology has become high quality and also cheap. Source code for decent data processing is free, yet you need not slap the label, "Bad guy detector" on your setup because you will find in fear what you are looking for if you're paranoid enough.
...it's what government will do with the information. Private citizens shouldn't have an issue; but we should forbid police from having such technology/information. There's a lot that private citizens can and should be able to do that government should not; the few exception are things like weapons of mass destruction and the judicial system.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Yes, but firing them at people who haven't agreed to a game is not. Enjoy getting arrested and/or shot with real gun.
Let's start using LCD panels for plates. The number changes every 12 hours or so. Police could still use it to match it based on the date/time it was scanned, but makes scanning by private citizens useless. #maintainthestatusquo
Nah, why get all that fussed. Quite simply make it 'administratively illegal' and apply a fine for each and every incidence where substantive data capture and storage has occurred. Do it a few times who cares, do it a few hundreds times, a warning, do it a few thousands times, final warning and do it tens of thousands of times, no way that can be accidental, pay a fine per incidence. Same with any sane and sound privacy law. Seek to much and keep to much and when you get caught pay a fine per incidence, require a payment to the affected individuals and for repeat offenders mandate a custodial sentence.
Much like traffic offence you need to adjust punishments to real harm and according to the number of victims. So should M$ be prosecuted for Windows anal probe 10, especially when the forced elements of it into windows 7 without permission and forced upgrades to windows 10, of course, will corrupt governments do it, absolutely not because M$ is giving them a backdoor to allow it to continue to happen, not in every country.
To say that as a free person I no longer own my private self, is to say slavery is back and in full force and when it comes to your private self others, the elite, own it, up to and including direct physical sexual assault as witnessed at every American airport on a daily basis. Those are not air line passengers any more, they are slaves who are having their position in society, that of a slave with no right to a private physical self, reinforced. Keep in mind private jet, no search, not a slave,a member of the elite. Public transport, now that's for slaves who have no right to a private self, none at all, at an airport or in their own home.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Yet another nice thing about riding a bicycle: no license plate.
It all started when I decided to use my old mobile phone (android) as a dash cam in February this year. At first I wrote a single app to record video footage from the road. It can store on average up to 3 days of footage that can be then sent to my home server over WIFI when I park my car in front of my house. In April, however, I also added a plate recognition subsystem. It performs surprisingly well for such a cheap solution. Now I can tag plate numbers and assign notifications for specific tags. For example I receive a sound notification when I am passing my boss/friends/work colleagues. I also have a separate group for people who I have seen driving badly before. It generates a warning sound whenever the camera spots them. :-]
Not really but I think I could clean up the code and make it open source when I have some more time over Christmas.
They will ban it soon. They don't like things like conversations being recorded, especially political conversations where they lie because they lie all the time. I'm sure they're going places they shouldn't as well.
Technology - making it harder to be a twit.