I don't know if you could ever collect this data and never have foreign entities or NSA moles infiltrate into it by sending their agents to work at that company and steal the data whenever they want. But I can see how this would be good at fighting crime but also a completely and absolute destruction of privacy.
We need politicians that actually care about Americans and their rights but no one who cares is dumb enough to want to go into politics, which is the sad thing.
It was the repossession companies that deployed them first. The police, as a general rule, are about 10 years behind on technology almost everywhere, so when new stuff drops, it's actually profit driven industries that deploy it.
Our company cut deals with several large business in the area, like malls, and we deployed the cameras at the entrances to their lots. If a car on the "hot list" pulled in, we'd get an alert, then dispatch a truck to go collect the vehicle.
technically we have one, the Fourth Amendment, but SCOTUS defanged it completely, years ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/25/switzerland-vo...
And then of course all the texas plates. No, it isn't just visitors from texas. Texas has a cool loophole where there is no registration information on the plate, it is on a little sticker on the dashboard. As such, there are a dozen plus cars that have been regulars in my neighborhood for years with texas plates, with some several years old sticker on their dashboard.
It is kind of surprising that they don't get hit with a huge ticket for failing to register their car after 20 days. Some even park on the street quite brazenly. But maybe that shows how these systems are, today at least, very poorly connected between states. I've even seen a car being sold locally where the owner openly admits it was never registered or smogged, and they used it as their local neighborhood runabout just rolling the dice that they would not get pulled over. Just an aspect of the driving culture.
Police can still use them to identify the vehicle, and verify registration, but mass surveillance and repo companies can't use them to track vehicles for more than a day OR to identify vehicles.
https://digitalfreedomfund.org/case-studies/collection-and-m... (dutch, sorry)
https://anprcameras.nl/ (a partial list, oh and there's mobile "stations" doing it too)
At one point they were very proud of having developed an algorithm to go much further than just license plate reading: "trajectory control". By placing ANPR cameras on every road and checking the traffic, they could not just detect when your license plate drove by a camera, but locate the vehicle down to a few meters at all times. This algorithm is now also used for traffic indicators, speeding fines, ...
They also identify the vehicle (to check if you've paid correctly, and to give fines relating to vehicle type). They check how many people are in the car (there's a tax advantage for cars that never carry more than 2 people). And I'm sure this is not a full list.
Oh and in case you're wondering about the GPDR: every EU state, as well as a looong list of international organizations (from the UK tax service to Interpol) have the right to grant permanent and transitive exceptions to the GPDR to anyone they want. The license plates are collected and processed by a private company. A blanket GPDR exception has been granted to them. They have other business deals involving the license plate data.
The Netherlands is also doing face recognition in the public space, by the way. In a very similar way. The very thing the GPDR was explicitly "created to prevent", or so the story goes. It was even put into the GPDR law that without the GPDR face recognition would become commonplace. Well, GPDR passed, and it is commonplace. At airports + a lot of train stations + a number of locations in big cities. About 1.3% of all arrests in the Netherlands were made on the basis of face recognition cameras in 2023.
https://algoritmes.overheid.nl/en/algoritme/oorg10264/354332...
The only solution I see is to stop massive data collection no matter who does it. This is probably not going to happen so we will most likely end up with a surveillance society much worse than what "1984" described. And some day an authoritarian will use the data to its full extent.
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Seriously, though, I think the Karens out there want E-bike licensed just so cops can keep hassling brown people even when they're not driving clapped out old Toyotas.
If you don't like mass surveillance, you have to ban private companies doing it too. If you're okay with it, do it in-house. You still need to ban private companies doing it.
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Source: https://legalclarity.org/are-license-plate-flipper-devices-i...
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Remove the demand and the activity will dry up.
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Personally I don't have a huge problem with 1A being broad enough to including recording literally everything in public and meticulously cataloging and following everyone, but only if the rest of the amendments are read in the same broad and literal manner. Meaning I can own nukes, I don't have to display a plate, the 10th amendment would stop the feds from outlawing intrastate weed, etc. What it looks like what happens is the feds cherry pick interpretations of the bill of rights to trump up their powers and then give the least charitable interpretations to the plebs.
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"The Great Firewall (GFW; simplified Chinese: 防火长城; traditional Chinese: 防火長城; pinyin: Fánghuǒ Chángchéng) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically" [1].
(I don't think they mean a Chinese wall [2].)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall#Alternative_terms
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Only America loves having unaccountable private companies collect data but hate it when the accountable government does.
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So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.
It's like having a wrist band to an event. You're not required to attend the event, but if you do attend it, you're required to wear the wrist band.
So what people are really reacting to is the government using technical means to change the terms of that social contract without our input.
Same thing with Flock. People do the whole civic engagement thing and cities still sign contracts anyways.
A lot of people wouldn’t even be opposed if the whole thing was on a ballot measure. It becomes a problem when the government decides they no longer need consent of the governed.
Also,
> So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.
You paid for a bit of the infrastructure being driven on just by being a tax payer.
Yet you can have a license without owning a car. They don't issue you a plate to use. So the plate is clearly for something else, mainly I think, to indicate that you've paid the appropriate registration fees on the vehicle. The plates are tied to a vehicle to prevent the obvious "plate swapping" attack that people would use against this regime.
> roof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure
Actually those are gas and sales taxes, are they not?
> you're required to wear the wrist band.
The wrist band need not have a unique identifier readable from several feet away emblazoned on it in order to function.
But the 4th amendment is a right, that applies even when engaging in a "privilege." See also the fact police can't just willy nilly check your driver license while engaging in a "privilege."
>So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.
False.
Plates are required even on my own privately owned publicly accessible road, and a large portion of my trips happen on publicly available but 100% privately owned roads with 0 taxes to maintain them (in fact, I maintain a lot of the roads in my community myself because they are all private). In fact some of those roads, I 100% own and maintain, and yet since I legally can't bar anyone from driving on it the law in my state (AZ) requires a displayed plate (even for me).
>It's like having a wrist band to an event. You're not required to attend the event, but if you do attend it, you're required to wear the wrist band.
It's like citing me for not having a wrist band on my own owned road easement, which is the law in my state. There is no property right you are attempting to assert under which that makes sense. I can go about 90% of the way to "town" on privately owned roads in which none of the owners care if I have a "wrist band" yet the state can still cite me for not having it.
US is certainly not known for it's public transportation and walkable cities.
Typically also they don't even bother with looking at your registration unless the sticker is way out of date
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And once they've got a real license plate for the vehicle, all the historical information for that vehicle fingerprint's activities are now linked.
Like I alternate between hitch/no hitch/bike rack, add/remove roof rack (it hurts mileage and is easy to swap), swap between my summer and winter rims+tires, and rotating through a set of magnetic bumper stickers would be trivial.
Flock has two obligations. Sell equipment to police. Avoid freaking the public out.
Their statements are almost certainly not reliable.
In California, isn't this just a normal person buying a new car? If bought from a dealership lot, a new car will run on temporary paper plates for several weeks until the permanent registration and new plate is processed. You see this all the time in CA, because CA buys a lot of new cars. There are even circumstances a used car will roll of the dealer lot with paper plates pending processing.
It used to be easy to search for terms like “tires” and find what were clearly counterfeiting rings.
Although, this does get enforced in some places, at least. I remember on Parking Wars, PPA ticketed or maybe impounded a car that had an out of state expired registration.
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From a taxpayer perspective, it's such a waste to have multiple agencies doing their own unconstitutional surveillance. Why have two Ministries of Love when one would do? :)
Is there overlap? Sure. But the amount of disinformation on the website about the FBI vs the NSA is comical. If anything, when people say “NSA” they really mean “CIA” and just don’t understand the difference.
In the same way that the CIA doesn't sell cocaine.
I'm sure they "mostly" focus externally but that doesn't mean they're not still doing a hell of a lot domestically.
And that's right now. They don't currently own the infra. If you think they're going to be better behaved once they do, you're delusional.
We should only allow its use if the cases solved is likely more than the cases caused.
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I think it's so they can identify the car owner quickly and easily and hold them liable for any law violations or damage. And of courese, at least partially (or ostensibly) for revenue generation and taxation purposes (though if that's all it was for, just using the VIN would make more sense IMHO, which is why I suspect it's more for the former).
It doesn’t matter whether the road in front of my house is owned by the federal government, state, county, city, or Bob, I and everyone else is allowed to drive on it, so it’s a public road.
Garrett has explicitly said he'd prefer a false positive to a false negative (very dystopian, no?) given his goal of "zero crime, powered by Brawndo, I mean Flock".
On the whole, no big deal.
Always makes me smile when I hear it across a parking lot.
This sets off my spidey senses in the same way that "social contract", "law abiding citizen" and other turns of phrase like that do.
>Having laws that only some people follow
It's not like these people are all part of the system and protected from consequences. They're just saying fuggit consequences be damned. Be happy that some have the balls to tell the system to shove it. You can choose to be one of them any time you want.
Regardless, the cops harass the shit out of people who "look sketchy" because your bullshit license plate or whatever pretext is what gets you the foot in the door to the felony BS.
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The FBI is the boogeyman everyone around these parts wants the NSA to be. The NSA has the skillset, they just don't use it like that, domestically.
That was my point. Carry on. I don't mind if you agree or not.
There is a debate the bulk of NSA's leadership has been wholly uninterested in having over what they do with regards to acquiring and parsing U.S. persons' private communications, instead preferring to use word-games and rhetorical sleight-of-hand.
Everything I've seen about the NSA domestic collection debate and publishings and statements from officials have boiled down to:
*The NSA taps communication sources they know with absolute certainty contains an enormous amount of U.S. persons' information because these sources also contain non-U.S. persons communications. An effort is made to remove U.S. persons' information from this programmatically but this step frequently leaves an enormous amount leftover. Despite this - the NSA intentionally parses these private communications - that include that of of millions of U.S. citizens - in bulk. That it isn't their intent or mission to specifically acquire and parse U.S. persons' communications are not germane considerations. Actions matter more than words.
*The NSA justifies this by dint of "it's okay, everyone! We trust ourselves to never do anything bad with your information! We never meant to acquire it! But we did. And we will keep acquiring more of your info 'incidentally' as your privacy is something we are willing to sacrifice in our efforts to acquire foreign intelligence."
*The NSA shares an enormous amount of U.S. persons' private communications with other intelligence agencies to include the FBI. Again - that it was not the NSA's intent nor mission to acquire the information to begin with is not relevant when they, nevertheless, keep getting the information!
I’m telling you there is a lot you don’t know. I do not care if you accept that or not. Your sources are not my sources.
No I can’t prove it to you. Obviously you are free to believe whatever you want. Your sources are career politicians and the media. Mine… are not.
You are doing the equivalent of telling me to ignore all of those sources - to include the FISA court - and to trust you - random-person-on-Hacker-News-alluding-to-working-for-the-NSA.
If you are correct and everything else - to include the FISA court - are wrong - then that begs the question of why they would all publicly make material misrepresentations about the NSA's acquisition of U.S. persons' information.
Shall I assume that the NSA no longer collects information if one-end of a communication is foreign and the other American?
Or what of Americans that use VPNs even if the exit node is within the U.S.?
What of "incidentally" collected information (collected without a probable-cause warrant) on U.S. citizens' communication contained evidence of a crime?
What about Americans living on the coasts whose information may end up crossing a fiber line going overseas and then back again even if the source and destination are U.S. citizens? Are their communications acquired?
Don't you all still share unminimized data (to include what U.S. person data was not filtered out at the time of initial acquisition) with the CIA, FBI, and NCTC - agencies with their own rules on how long they get to retain U.S. persons' information they acquired from NSA-sourced data.
The 2023 PCLOB report on FISA Section 702 (see page 78) maintains that agents and analysts at the NSA and the three agencies they share raw data with typically do not affirmatively purge U.S. persons' information that has been incidentally collected that is not immediately recognized as having foreign intelligence or criminality information. Out of the possibility that the information might later-on be interpreted as being relevant to their agency mission, instead the information is generally kept until it ages out. Depending on an agency's individual procedures they may be retained for 5 years. Or 15 years. Or indefinitely.
I'm to understand it used to be a real significant problem for analysts to spy on U.S. citizens indirectly by looking up a foreign national the U.S. citizen was known to be communicating with.
I could keep going on, but I'd like to think I made my point.
Your agency's mission statement is not a shield to hide behind. Your actions are what matter. And a legal Rube Goldberg machine that results in an enormous amount of U.S. persons information being acquired by the NSA (and, by association, the FBI and CIA and NCTC) does not engender confidence that the agency actually gives a damn about the privacy of U.S. citizens.
That seems like a statement that needs backed up by sources.
Presumably there'd be no point in having procedures in querying for U.S. persons communications if they didn't have the information to begin with.