The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers

amanaplanacanal

My local town runs their own license plate readers for red light and speed cameras. Not sure how the feds could get access to those.

baggachipz

I had already assumed that they were using Flock data for exactly this. I guess paying to speed the nationwide rollout makes it official and will free them from pesky courts and human rights.

scholarnet-AI

I believe technology is great but we must regulate to assure personal privacy is maintained.

asdff

In socal people might not even use license plates at all. Some people mask them with a towel or something like that. Some run paper dealership plates which I guess don't need to have any license number on them at all, just the dealer logo. Others just take them off and drive. I've seen plates that were sanded clean and with different numbers stuck on them that don't match then indented numbers. 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.

NoMoreNicksLeft

Does anyone sell am eInk display that's 12"x6"? Doesn't have to be color, though bonus points for that...

reenorap

It's probably never going to happen because neither party cares about protecting Americans rights, but we need to have some sort of law that creates a Chinese firewall between these mass surveillance data and the government, or whoever else. 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.

LocalH

If they do, doesn't that make the companies running those readers agents of the state during the collaboration?

charcircuit

This information can be critical for understanding the movement of vehicles and can benefit law enforcement giving them more evidence and knowledge to work off of. As long as these systems are accurate and not being maliciously tampered with it keeps everyone accountable to their actions.

Zigurd

Not that it will help for long distance travel, but if I was running strategy for the big E-bike cartel, I couldn't think of a better meme to promote than the surveillance state getting a chubby about ALPRs. 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.

psadauskas

This will never change until we pass laws that make personal data a liability instead of an asset.

martinbfine

Another AI click bait article. Fake news. And a conspiracy theory.

tintor

How about digital license plates? That change the code displayed daily. Not unlike authenticator phone apps. 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.

vjvjvjvjghv

People are usually afraid of government surveillance but I suspected already a long time ago that all the data that's being collected by private firms will eventually be used by government and companies. Basically we have been building and continue building an infrastructure that Hitler or Stalin would have been envious of. And as we have seen in the last year, companies will fall in line quickly with whoever is in power as long as the profits keep flowing. 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.

goshx

What are the odds of Elon already providing this kind of service through Teslas?