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Repo Men Scan Billions of License Plates -- For the Government (washingtonpost.com)
The Washington Post notes the billions of license plate scans coming from modern repo men "able to use big data to find targets" -- including one who drives "a beat-up Ford Crown Victoria sedan."
It had four small cameras mounted on the trunk and a laptop bolted to the dash. The high-speed cameras captured every passing license plate. The computer contained a growing list of hundreds of thousands of vehicles with seriously late loans. The system could spot a repossession in an instant. Even better, it could keep tabs on a car long before the loan went bad... Repo agents are the unpopular foot soldiers in the nation's $1.2 trillion auto loan market... they are the closest most people come to a faceless, sophisticated financial system that can upend their lives...
Derek Lewis works for Relentless Recovery, the largest repo company in Ohio and its busiest collector of license plate scans. Last year, the company repossessed more than 25,500 vehicles -- including tractor trailers and riding lawn mowers. Business has more than doubled since 2014, the company said. Even with the rising deployment of remote engine cutoffs and GPS locators in cars, repo agencies remain dominant. Relentless scanned 28 million license plates last year, a demonstration of its recent, heavy push into technology. It now has more than 40 camera-equipped vehicles, mostly spotter cars. Agents are finding repos they never would have a few years ago. The company's goal is to capture every plate in Ohio and use that information to reveal patterns... "It's kind of scary, but it's amazing," said Alana Ferrante, chief executive of Relentless.
Repo agents are responsible for the majority of the billions of license plate scans produced nationwide. But they don't control the information. Most of that data is owned by Digital Recognition Network (DRN), a Fort Worth company that is the largest provider of license-plate-recognition systems. And DRN sells the information to insurance companies, private investigators -- even other repo agents. DRN is a sister company to Vigilant Solutions, which provides the plate scans to law enforcement, including police and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Both companies declined to respond to questions about their operations... For repo companies, one worry is whether they are producing information that others are monetizing.
Derek Lewis works for Relentless Recovery, the largest repo company in Ohio and its busiest collector of license plate scans. Last year, the company repossessed more than 25,500 vehicles -- including tractor trailers and riding lawn mowers. Business has more than doubled since 2014, the company said. Even with the rising deployment of remote engine cutoffs and GPS locators in cars, repo agencies remain dominant. Relentless scanned 28 million license plates last year, a demonstration of its recent, heavy push into technology. It now has more than 40 camera-equipped vehicles, mostly spotter cars. Agents are finding repos they never would have a few years ago. The company's goal is to capture every plate in Ohio and use that information to reveal patterns... "It's kind of scary, but it's amazing," said Alana Ferrante, chief executive of Relentless.
Repo agents are responsible for the majority of the billions of license plate scans produced nationwide. But they don't control the information. Most of that data is owned by Digital Recognition Network (DRN), a Fort Worth company that is the largest provider of license-plate-recognition systems. And DRN sells the information to insurance companies, private investigators -- even other repo agents. DRN is a sister company to Vigilant Solutions, which provides the plate scans to law enforcement, including police and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Both companies declined to respond to questions about their operations... For repo companies, one worry is whether they are producing information that others are monetizing.
That sounds suspiciously like the "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" argument. The fact is, we now live in a 24x7 surveilance police state, with the corporate bloodsuckers monetizing the raw data wherever possible.
You obviously have a very narrow view of the world and are trying to apply your own reality to others even when its not applicable. In my city for instance you could not lead any sort of productive life without a car. The city is sprawling and public transport is spotty at best. If you moved to the ideal location it might be possible, but how are you supposed to get the money to afford that move?
While you make a good point *now*, in the near future the same is likely to apply to walking when facial recognition systems are all over the place.
A lot of places the police consider walking around late at night suspicious enough to stop and ask for ID, and you should know how these things go by now, if you refuse they'll come up with some 'articulated suspicion', especially in the half of states with stop-and-identify laws, that will force you to ID yourself. Anyone who says there's no 'papers, please' is likely privilege enough to e.g. never had to be walking around suburbs at night, or in an area where they have the wrong skin color (black in a white area, *and* white in a black area-- the blacks are committing some crime, and the white guys are buying drugs, until you satisfy the bigot with a badge otherwise).
You know, as much as I hate all this invasion of privacy, the thing that really gets me is how many crimes go unsolved. At least in my State, it's the norm that murders in cities don't get solved. That is, unless you do it in a public place with witnesses. When people talk about the quote of trading a bit of freedom for temporary security, I feel that it's really out of place. Virtually never are we getting the slightest bit of temporary security.
It's the same with all the data tracking for ads. Honestly, that's a great example of the point. Even if all the data tracking did do a good job figuring out my interests, it wouldn't show me ads for stuff I want. After all, I already know what my interests are and can usually find out with the internet related things and hence the stuff I want. No, the motive is to offer me things I don't really want to convince me I really want it. I mean, why else would they be offering it if they've got such a well targeted AI?
The point, of course, is that the point of the Police State isn't to do a better job policing. It isn't even to oppress people. It's honestly just to have the power to fuck with people. That's the most base amusement megalomaniacs have. Not to crush them. Not to elevate them. But to have toy soldiers and manipulate them into doing what you want without ever breathing a word of your orders to them. Convince them they want to do it, and they will fight to the death to do your bidding without lifting a fist against you.
In the US at least, you can absolutely take photographs that include private property from a public place. You can't do it in such a way as to violate an actual reasonable expectation of privacy or to photo something you normally couldn't see (e.g., a long zoom through a bedroom window), but if something would be ordinarily visible from public space, it can be photographed. Copyright has nothing to do with it; the copyright belongs to the photographer. A car in a driveway is not reasonably expected to be in private, since anyone walking or driving by could see it.
The eyes can't trespass. If it's something you could see, you can photograph it. Ask Barbara Streisand about trying to stop photography.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
That doesn't mean they were meant to be scanned and stored complete with date, time, and location, in ever growing databases. They were ment to be able to find whoever is responsible for the car at need, not "in case we might need it someday". Certainly they weren't ment to become parts of large datasets that end up being re-sold and re-diced by a growing gaggle of companies and governments.
There is a subtle difference in there somewhere, but where?
Better yet, scan entrances to a CIA operation and cross-check your data with employment records to find the people registered for unrelated jobs: those are your spies.
I'm not suggesting to expose spies or compromise national security or any criminal investigations. I'm simply suggesting that these sorts of invasions of privacy might get more attention if important people actually had a personal stake in protecting personal privacy because of bringing home the fact to them that their power does not insulate them.
After all, as they like to tell us, ALPR doesn't require any special permissions and is not illegal because if you're in public anyone can photograph/video you and/or your vehicle without your permission and they can do anything with that data including storing it in a database and using algorithms on it and posting it to the internet. Goose-gander.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.