National Car Tracking System Proposed For US

bl968 writes "The Newspaper is reporting that the leading private traffic enforcement camera vendors are seeking to establish a national vehicle tracking system in the United States using existing red-light and speed enforcement cameras. The system would utilize Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to track vehicles passing surveillance cameras operated by these companies. If there are cameras positioned correctly the company will enable images and video to be taken of the driver and passengers. The nice thing in their view is that absolutely no warrants are needed. To gain public acceptance, the surveillance program is being initially sold as an aid for police looking to solve Amber Alert cases and locate stolen cars."

Inductive sensors

Here's some food for thought:

The coils of wire embedded in the pavement, which are used to monitor freeway traffic and to control traffic lights, could detect the type of car that is passing over by the waveform it produces at the sensor. With some clever signal processing you could distinguish roughly the shape and size of the vehicle.

These sensors are everywhere - you might pass a hundred of them in a day. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to then see that if you could gather data from enough of these sensors, you could track a particular vehicle over the course of many miles. Combine this data with the camera images and you can also identify that vehicle.

Re:Inductive sensors

How would it tell my Civic from the millions of other Civics?

Re:Inductive sensors

This is my Civic.

There are many like it, but this one is MINE.

Re:Inductive sensors

I guess they could require you to attach some kind of placard to the back of your car with a unique combination of numbers and letters on it....

I dunno though, the logistics of doing that kind of thing on a large scale are pretty limiting.

Re:Inductive sensors

It's easier to just put RFID chips in license plates and install sensors on the side of the road. They will do this eventually.

That will eventually give rise to tinfoil body kits.

I'm all for it

I cannot possibly foresee a way that this could be turned against the public in some horrific Orwellian fashion.

Re:I'm all for it

"To gain public acceptance, the surveillance program is being initially sold as an aid for police looking to solve Amber Alert cases and locate stolen cars."

Here in california we already have the Amber alert system tied into those highway warning signs and I see about 1 Amber alert every month or two. What percentage of cars on the streets are stolen? Not a whole hell of a lot either way, so we're going to rape everybody's privacy and invite abuse of sweeping power just for anomalies? It's not like this database will prevent a nuclear attack!

Here's an obligatory horror story from TFA:

In the past, police databases have been used to intimidate innocent motorists. An Edmonton, Canada police sergeant, for example, found himself outraged after he read columnist Kerry Diotte criticize his city's photo radar operation in the Edmonton Sun newspaper. The sergeant looked up Diotte's personal information, and, without the assistance of electronic scanners, ordered his subordinates to "be on the lookout" for Diotte's BMW. Eventually a team of officers followed Diotte to a local bar where they hoped to trap the journalist and accuse him of driving under the influence of alcohol. Diotte took a cab home and the officers' plan was exposed after tapes of radio traffic were leaked to the press. Police later cleared themselves of any serious wrong-doing following an extensive investigation.

I'm going to build motorized, retractable cover for my front license plate if this system is implimented. Fuck that.

Re:I'm all for it

I'm going to build motorized, retractable cover for my front license plate if this system is implimented. Fuck that.

Jeeze, if you're going to buck the system, why not go all the way and fuck up the system? Don't just hide your plate. Make it work for you.

Take a ride past your local police parking lot, and jot down two or three license plate numbers. Then use a good quality laser printer and make yourself some copies of those "plates". With luck they'll never notice they're effectively tracking themselves

Or heck, just copy ANY plate(s). Randomly switch them around. The system will think cars are vanishing and reappearing all over the place. Or maybe you'll get even luckier, and it will snap a shot of two of the same plates at the same time, and cause a referential integrity error in the system, crashing it.

The minute the implement random manual spot checks by humans to ensure the integrity of the data, slap a Goatse on your plate. You should burn out the employees pretty quickly with that one.

Whatever you do, be creative. The more you can clog the system with crap, the lower their cost:profit^H^H^H public safety ratio goes down. Make it hit a critical point, and the system will be abandoned.

Re:I'm all for it

Not a whole hell of a lot either way, so we're going to rape everybody's privacy and invite abuse of sweeping power just for anomalies?

That has been the justification behind every major piece of "security theater" installed since 9/11. Some sort of random, one-off attack happens and you have this momentous knee-jerk reaction as entire industries are created or transformed in order top deal with this "new grave danger".

Just look at all the hassle we have to go through at the airports because some British nutjob tried to blow up a home-made shoe bomb. Or all the 3 oz container rules because of some rumor that you could assemble a chemical bomb from component parts in an airliner's lavatory.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but with all of the lobbying that goes on at the state and federal level, combined with what companies are able to get away with these days, it's not surprising our liberties are given away for new, lucrative profit creating endeavors.

Re:I'm all for it

Allowed? They do it anyway [washingtonpost.com].

Why Am I Not Surprised

Why does it come as absolutely no surprise that they will sell a way to track your movements with "think of the children"?

DHS' real agenda

Now the agenda of the DHS should be clear for everyone. It isn't about catching terrorists, its about tracking every citizen. Most of their money goes to putting up cameras in cities across the US, big and small and putting up "fusion" centers which track everything.

Call me crazy or whatever you want. It isn't hard to verify everything I said via google.

Dude,

Where's everybody's car?

This is America

Don't expect to see this go anywhere, not for a long time at least.

On this side of the pond.

To my friends in the UK, I'm so terribly sorry. I'm assuming you will have this technology installed and in full swing by next Tuesday.

How handy!

TFA:

Police later cleared themselves of any serious wrong-doing following an extensive investigation.

I just love this quote so much, for so many reasons.

It should be

A huge red flag when commercial entities want to enforce laws. But that's what happens when the Governments start outsourcing.

Re:It should be

They don' really want to enforce laws.

Commercial entities want to create a business opportunity selling and maintaining these systems with possibility of further extension of the technology to other aspects of life.

The Government wants to keep track of its citizens, because the Government is scared of its citizens. The government also wants to justify taking more taxes from its citizens to buy these expensive technologies and to create new forms of government for regulation of such tech and the new laws that will come with it.

Nobody cares about 'enforcing laws' and besides, if they wanted to enforce laws they should have started with enforcing of the Constitution first.

One layer of indirection

When my wife and I were in another state, we were using her car, I was driving, and I got photographed running a red light. They sent a citation to my wife, complete with a copy of the photo clearly showing me driving. They demanded that she either pay or give the name and address of the person who was driving. My wife - who is a lawyer - told them that that her husband was driving, and then refused to give name or address. She informed them that is is a protected relationship, that is, you cannot be compelled to testify against your spouse. They gave up on it.

So register your car under your wife's name, and hers under your name. Don't have a wife? Pay your attourney to register it for you. Attourney/client relationship is privleged also.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

"You do not examine legislation in light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." -- Lyndon B. Johnson

Seriously, how do these people live with themselves, knowing what they are doing.

Think of the income^Wtickets

Your car was determined to be at point 1 at time alpha and point 2 at time beta. 1 and 2 or the same road with a speed limit.

(D2-D1)/(beta-alpha) - speed_limit = excess_speed

As the owner of the automobile this ticket has been sent to you under law HTA2009-01 and you are responsible for payment. A picture from point beta is attached for your reference should you not have been driving at the time you can contact the driver and make arrangements for them to reimburse them for your expense.

Note of this excess speed has been forwarded to your insurance company. Should the automated face recognition software have matched the photo against your drivers license you will also have been assigned appropriate demerits.

If an extreme hazard was detected in the amount of observed speed we trust that an officer has already contacted you about this issue.

Easily fixed

The vidicon tube is long gone, all these cameras are solid sate which means they are sensitive to near infrared. Conveniently enough, the exact same type produced by LEDs.

It should be possible to create a high brightness license plate frame which will overload the camera and just leave a very white rectangle where the plate should be in the photo.

Still, private companies should not be in the business of enforcing laws or tracking citizens. Private companies do not answer to the public and are not regulated in the same way a police officer is.

We can put this on Scottsdale, Arizona and greed

About 60-70% of AZ residents are welcoming the highway speed cameras with open arms - thanks to Governor Napolitano whoring the state out to Redflex to balance her budget. (The tickets taken by the cameras will not count against insurance points - it's only a fine. Once you pay your "tax", it's forgotten.

If you speak out against the system, you're branded a speeder, GTA wannabe, and told to, "Just slow DOWN!", or, "Stop breaking the law!" They don't get that it's all about money (and now outright spying).

Hell, even if the people rose up against the system and stopped this tracking, what's to stop the NSA from doing it under the table with the same system, all in the name of safety?

I single-handedly hold Scottsdale, Arizona and its town council for bringing this system to the entire nation. If they'd had their heads pulled out and not put the system up on the Loop 101, it wouldn't have gained any traction to go state-wide, and now nationwide. Thanks, guys... I hope you enjoyed that paltry revenue stream while introducing Big Brother to us. Damn, I hate Scottsdale more than ever now...

It looks like the tin foil crowd got this system 100% right, and the sad thing is that nobody will be educated enough about what's going on to care.

Re:public space

It is public, until all of that data is aggregated in some unknown and unavailable-to-the-general-public database.

Do you mind having someone email you a turn-by-turn itinerary for every single place you went, how fast you drove, where you stopped, how long you stopped, and so on... from your front door in the morning until you come home at night, in your email every day? Do you have any major problem with that?

This isn't about "seeing" you in public, it's about TRACKING your movements in public. Run that through some beta software to track "suspicious" activity, or appear in more than one place that a "known terrorist" was seen (fast food joint and then the carwash? Now you're a "person of interest").

The implications of this are so massive it is unbelievable.

Re:public space

Exactly. This is a horrifying privacy invasion, particularly given that it is trivial to create a similar system that doesn't have any of those flaws.

A modest counterproposal: build a database of all stolen vehicles and all vehicles listed in an amber alert. Set up computer systems on each camera with the appropriate detection and set them to log vehicle plate information that is listed in the stolen vehicle/amber alert database permanently and to store all vehicle information in temporary storage that is overwritten when it is more than three hours old. Provide a programming interface that tells each device to check its temporary storage buffer for a single plate upon request and use this when a new amber alert or stolen car is added to the database.

This does two things: it solves the problem of amber alerts and stolen vehicles as defined and goes one step farther by providing a reasonable buffer time during which if an amber alert is called or a car is stolen, prior records can be searched for the vehicle in question (and only the vehicle in question).

Include strict laws that absolutely prohibit any extension of the temporary buffer period beyond 3 hours and prohibit any publication, distribution, or transmission of the data stored in the temporary buffer except for a list of detection events for a single plate as queried through the aforementioned interface. Include strict laws that provide criminal liability for knowingly adding a plate to the suspect vehicle database that does not belong to a stolen vehicle or a vehicle listed in an amber alert or other A.P.B.

Re:This shouldn't be a problem

Let me relate an incident that happened to me regarding DUI. If you do not like my language you are free to edit it out, however, I refuse to call a sonofabitch a gentleman of questionable heritage.

I used to drive tractor trailer over the road. I was so self-employed when the Federal DOT passed their new regulation regarding enforcement and investigation of such, despite the fact that in all the accident investigations involving big trucks, whether at fault or not, the commercial driver was subjected to tox and alcohol screens to determine his condition of sobriety and/or impairment at the time of the accident had returned result of far less than 1% of impaired commercial drivers.

I entered Utah at the border between it and Wyoming on I-80. Just across the line is a weigh and inspection station for Utah, almost directly across the highway from the same thing on the Wyoming side.

After being weighed and passed for legal weight I was flagged for inspection and pulled over to the side off the scale. I gathered my log book, my bills of lading, my permit and license books, my Commercial Drivers License and my medical certificate and entered the station house.

Upon getting inside, I said to the trooper on duty, "I don't know what you need, but I brought it all, what do you want to look at first?"

He replied, "I don't need any of that I pulled you in for a random alcohol screen."

I said, "What?"

He said, "You were number 17, I have four numbers I must pull in to screen for alcohol."

I asked him, "Did I do something on my approach to make you think I had been drinking?" He answered,"No."

"Well did I stagger or walk in any manner during the 100 yards walking back here to make you think I had been drinking?" He answered, "No."

"Well then, do you smell any alcohol on me now, or do you have any reason to believe I am drinking?" He answered, "No, I don't understand why you are so upset if you have nothing to hide."

I then asked him, " You really don't understand why I am upset that I must prove to you I haven't committed a crime you have no right or reason to suspect me of?"

He again stated, "I just don't understand why you are so upset if you have nothing to hide."

I said, "Are you really so stupid that you don't understand the reason I am angry that I must prove my innocence, though you have no reason to suspect me?"

He said, "Look, this is my job and I have to do it and if you didn't have anything to hide you shouldn't be upset."

I asked, "Do you really believe that?"

He said that he did.

That was three times I asked, three times the dumb sonofabitch indicated he had no concept of liberty or law. Three is all I will give anybody, and sometimes not that.

I said, "Ok, if you really mean that, take off your pants and your underwear."

He looked incredulous, then asked, "Are you crazy?"

I replied, "No sir, I am not. Take off your pants and underwear, we are going to examine your penis for blood and fecal matter to determine if you have been molesting small boys."

That sonofabitch went through the roof, ranting and screaming and telling me I had no right to accuse him of such a thing. I think he would have shot me if he had had the guts and thought he could get rid of the body before anybody happened along.

I calmly replied, "It's random, I have no reason to suspect you, but now you must prove you have not been sodomizing young boys. After all, if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be upset. What do you have to hide? Isn't that what you told me three times that you believed?"

He was sputtering and yelling at me and soooo red in the face, I thought I might get lucky and the no good sonofabitch would die from a stroke. He screamed at me, "That's entirely different!"

I told him, "The only thing different is now we are talking about you proving something I have no right to suspect you of. Evidently you didn't believe all that shit you told me, about nothing to hide s