I saw an ALPS vehicle a few months back in the parking lot of a local Wal-Mart (AZ). It was rolling slowly up and down the aisles searching for what at first I presumed was a parking spot closer to the front doors.
Closer inspection revealed it's true nature. Mounted on the trunk lid were four cameras, two on each side, angled slightly downward.
The vehicle was an old piece of sht Ford Crown Vic P71 with white doors, black body, black rims, rusted spotlight, and slightly visible police decal adhesive. The kind you purchase at government auction for $750. It looked like something Reevers would use as a daily driver.
Certainly not as classy as a Google Maps car, but apparently getting the job done because parked in the outer lot was a shiny-new, jet-black, "deluxe" companion tow truck with chrome rims and full stealthiness -- waiting for a hit.
As someone pointed out below, the entire purpose of license plates is to easily track and identify cars. There's no reason to require the outward display of a license plate otherwise. In fact, there's already a more accurate and up to date piece of information that isn't required to be displayed: your registration card.
I'd never seriously thought about this until reading this story, probably because they've been ubiquitous for decades and as a little kid I loved seeing the different state versions, but I'm surprised that I've never come across a serious discussion about the privacy implications and whether or not it's Constitutional (if it's been addressed, would love a pointer to the case). It doesn't seem like a huge logical leap from the idea of digital anonymity.
Those interested in this issue will definitely want to check out Grassland. It's basically a blockchain project to democratize video surveillance. http://grassland.network
"Grassland is a self-organizing , self-sustaining and self-correcting, anonymous network of AI software that quickly and cheaply turns any 2D video feed from any single-perspective camera into live 3D models and can organize data captured from millions of cameras around the world into a real-time, secure, global simulation. It lets humans view the world in a manner like the games SimCity® or Civilization®[1] and lets machines internalize, understand and interact intuitively with the real world."
Previous Hacker News discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19529921
A word of advice for those of you that live in the 19 states that don't require a front license: always back into parking spots to make it difficult or impossible to read your plates. There are other good reasons (like increased safety) for backing into parking spots and keeping your travel history private is just one of them.
To clarify: the DRN database contains 9B _scans_ of license plates, not scans of 9B license plates.
Privacy is dead because technology enables ubiquitous surveillance and economics and politics drive it to the limit.
I don't like it and I'm not advocating it, but the question of what a truly, deeply post-privacy society will be like is fascinating.
A very important question is whether or not the administrators of the system were subject to it as well.
This would be an interesting database to play with. Using the data here you could backtrack where all the customers in a business live and work. Or you could go forward and figure out where all the people in an area shop. You can do the same with google maps and Apple data but idk if that info would be accessible
Once I asked a company how they calculated the conversion rate of a billboard ad, I was told they got data from smart billboards reading car plates and linking them to people's online presence.
Is it legal to hide your car's license plate while the car is not in motion? Seems like a 'privacy shutter' that deploys when the car is turned off could be a useful feature.
A story of repo cars driving and scanning tags has been seen on HN first time many years ago. Meanwhile a buddy of mine works for a "secret" company that has cars driving around ten most criminal infested cities (such as Detroit) and mass-scanning people's faces behind mirror glass. A single car in a busy city is able to scan over 25,000 people daily. This info is later fed into the system and usual clients are Sheriff offices and bounty hunters. I wish someone like VICE did the story on it, but my buddy only showed me screen shoots, no company name, nothing.
In 2019 you cannot assume you have any sort of privacy once you leave your door step, literally.
Because of this problem, do we have recourse now to hide license plates until requested by law enforcement? Is there an opportunity for us to update (change) the old law?
Anyone else feel like paying for everything in cash again? This is so creepy, and it's nothing compared to the data cell phone companies and credit card companies have on you.
Another reason to take a bus ;)
Is it legal to build such systems? What if tomorrow someone will decide to replace the government with a private system like this? We've done something like that in the area of finance, with cryptocurrencies.
Repo men? they don't hire female affiliates ?
I think the scariest part of is in the first part of this; the collection of data was voluntarily crowdsourced by repo men all acting as independent actors. While right now there is still a centralized corporation that can be targeted to stop the practice, I can see a future where this stuff becomes decentralized in the same lieu as software piracy sites and their infrastructure is done today, maintained by "helpful" repomen/investigators that each have a pervasive interest in maintaining such a resource.