Repo Men Scan Billions of License Plates -- For the Government (washingtonpost.com) 239
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.
so how do you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:2)
so what legal tricks can be deployed?
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Find some road tar and stick it on the plate to change a letter or number.
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while I do admire the idea, it is illegal to do that.
looking for a complete legal solution that would work
9 time out of 10
and while road tar seems like a great idea, I bet it would
be only 5 out of 10 times
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Do what Steve Jobs did and buy a new car every 90 days so you can exploit the loophole of not having to have a numberplate.
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AND insurance. DMV here will not even touch the title swap/registration paper work unless you have proof of insurance. So you need to get the VIN# and add the car to your insurance BEFORE you purchase/own the car.
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Here for a new car the dealer submits the state paper work which requires proof of insurance. You get a 30 day paper temp tag. The real plate gets mailed to the dealership from the state. The dealer calls you when the plate arrives. The state DMV offices are the only ones with piles of new plates here.
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Good luck for any cop that figures it out. I'll take your bet.
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Is it legal to have bumper stickers that look like licence plates?
Put 2 lookalike out-of-state plates on either side of the genuine plate.
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Ding Ding Ding, we might have a winner.
but the data is still collected in bulk
your concept is sound because you can label the side plates as no-plate ( which I believe police still use ) and that's how it's entered into the system
that's going to fuck up someone's database LOL
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https://xkcd.com/327/ [xkcd.com]
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Could backfire:
A man whose car bore personalized license plates reading 'NO PLATE' received notices for thousands of unpaid parking tickets.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch... [snopes.com]
Re:so how doS you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:1)
Well there's Steve Jobs trick, he'd buy a new car and drive it without plates, and after a few weeks when the plates were ready for the car he'd sell back the car and buy a new car without plates and repeat.
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Do New Mexico and Delaware still have LLC registrations where you don't have to list the owner or is isn't released by public record? That would be my first option. Even an LLC in your own state will make it take an extra database join to match you up.
Just sell the vehicle to the LLC and create a rental contract for $1 allowing you to have full use of the vehicle and authority over all repairs. Insurance might go up if they think you're using it for business purposes though.
Not really much of a trick (Score:2)
Car cover. That is it. Anything else (like faking a digit on the plate) is probably illegal.
Also of course, a garage... though if I were them cruising parking garages would be standard practice.
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Don't operate deadly machinery in public.
Or join an auto club and drive a different car every day.
There was a time when most people could buy a gallon of milk without carrying any government ID. Since then we've reconfigured our cities around the car so we have to drive everywhere and always be ready to show our driver licenses, all in the name of freedom. Ironic, isn't it?
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You're obligated to ensure your car has a legible license plate with a registration, in some states as soon as you take it on a public road. And as soon as you do that, *anyone* may photograph, capture, database-store, and database-match that number, and sell any resulting information. Nothing you can do about that under US state or federal law.
The whole purpose of the law pertaining to license plates is to make sure
Re: so how do you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:3, Insightful)
Note that they scan and capture every plate they see, regardless of its status. Entered into the database is time, location and picture of the plate.
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Note that they scan and capture every plate they see, regardless of its status.
3. Don't live in a neighborhood with a lot of deadbeats.
Notice that you can accomplish 1, 2 & 3 just by choosing not to be poor.
Re: so how do you prevent from scanning your plat (Score:2, Insightful)
You know that they are only doing high risk neighbourhoods at the moment. The more their industry grows, the more they will cover. Eventually every inch of road will be monitored by either LeO scanning for crims, repo guys like this, or bail bondsmen.
Between the various private agents operating public functions, we will soon be in the era of total pervasive surveillance.
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What if we implemented Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics from the 1950's into the systems?
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Good luck with that. When you're done, try getting the carbon units to follow the Decalogue.
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"Notice that you can accomplish 1, 2 & 3 just by choosing not to be poor."
Maybe, but very few people choose to be poor.
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OR you have a decent job that has caused you to think you can have a life of supreme luxury, ending up with bills on REALLY expensive things rather than duct-taped-together rust buckets?
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License plates are meant to be seen by design...
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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?
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As many other posters may point out. it's bulk data collection.
So back to the basic question. How do I prevent myself from
being scanned while out on the road and being placed into this database.
all while doing it legally
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You can't; it's like asking how you can drive an invisible car. Any car parked on the side of the road can be scanning the plates of every car going by.
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Re:so how do you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:5, Interesting)
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Nobody said the solutions would be cheap, convenient, or easy.
That said, you could look into using Lyft/Uber/taxis/etc.
Re: so how do you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not to mention, in a few years facial recognition will be widespread, and it won't help to take public transportation.
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Why does it always have to be serial numbers, though? I want parallel numbers!
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I do however have experience with the other side, being stopped by police asking what I'm doing for walking around certain parts of the Bronx late at night. Had a friend there in a bad neighborhood (an actual friend, I wasn't doing anything illegal), and was stopped more than once in between her apartment and the subway station.
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You don't understand how stopping someone because they don't match the predominant skin color in the area is profiling? "Profiling" doesn't exclusively refer to one race.
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https://whyy.org/segments/blac... [whyy.org]
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0... [nytimes.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
https://www.bitchmedia.org/art... [bitchmedia.org]
and on and on and on, just from the first page of my links search. I'll leave finding the hundreds of stories about white people stopped in black "drug areas" as an exercise, it's not much harder to find as many as you want to know it's a problem too.
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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.
Re: so how do you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:1)
Burka for men will make sense.
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That, or clown make-up.
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Because people taking pictures with a cell phone is totally the same thing as an automated tracking system plugged into a massive location database on anyone who drives.
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Unfortunately in the eyes of the law that's probably true.
Our lawmakers and representatives have no idea what is going on, and are so ill-equipped to deal with the problem we'll probably never see a proper resolution.
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If only we were so lucky - our public officials are bought, cowed, or were team players to start with (CIA director Bush getting to the White House). One noticeable case of this is Al Franken, who went from aggressively questioning an FBI stooge on how roving wiretaps could possibly be legal under the 4th Amendment, to being a supporter of warrantless wiretapping.
Re:so how do you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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The copyright is for the photograph, not the items being photographed. Photographers often ask for permission out of politeness not necessity.
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Re: so how do you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:2)
While the joke isn't lost on me, it misses the point. Your home address is already known from several other databases. The risk here is more in identifying your travel patterns. If you're being scanned often enough in "public," logic can identify that you must be at home when you're not found somewhere else.
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Just park sideways.
Duh.
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Re:so how do you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:5, Interesting)
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yep, so keeping a private life is not easy to do,
that's why I am asking
Re:so how do you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:5, Insightful)
yep, so keeping a private life is not easy to do,
that's why I am asking [about protection from ALPR privacy invasion]
Buy an ALPR unit yourself and situate it covertly by the parking lot entrance/ramp for your city's/State's Capitol/City Administration building(s) and/or Federal buildings, record their plates and build a database, and publish it online.
People, especially people in power, don't typically care about invasions of privacy by big data until it's *their* privacy being compromised.
Make it personal for those in power if you want something done about it.
Strat
Re: so how do you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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While I do like your idea,
it requires amazingly deep pockets just because of the legal defense fund,
once you wake up a sleeping elephant, it takes a lot to bring it back to sleep.
I wonder what would happen if the concept was applied to the local law enforcement, I think it would be a more violent reaction.
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I wonder what would happen if the concept was applied to the local law enforcement, I think it would be a more violent reaction.
Check out some of the "photography is not a crime" (PINAC) videos on YT. I imagine the reactions would be quite similar. Note that he doesn't have deep pockets. Just a regular dude.
Strat
Re:so how do you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:4, Insightful)
You are welcome to try. You should however be aware that the rules that apply to the populace do not necessarily apply to the Ruling Elite, and that you might incur life-altering consequeces for acting... Unwisely. Just saying. Take it as friendly advice. Those are difficult times, the economy being what it is, people should be mindful of their places.
Although that may be true, what price would you pay and what risks would you be willing to take to fight for the freedom and personal privacy of yourself and everyone else including those you care most for? Make no mistake, this is the start of monitoring, tracking, storing, and analyzing the movements of every vehicle and person which is Big Brother writ far larger, and ends up at a place far more dangerous than anything in "1984".
Strat
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Difficult times indeed! Even us purveyors of shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this time.
Re:so how do you prevent from scanning your plate (Score:5, Insightful)
Some quotes from the article:
The company's goal is to capture every plate in Ohio and use that information to reveal patterns. A plate shot outside an apartment at 5 a.m. tells you that's probably where the driver spends the night, no matter their listed home address. So when a repo order comes in for a car, the agent already knows where to look.
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.
Which would indicate every plate scanned ends up in a database. Regardless whether it's on some "wanted" list. And that data is passed on, used for purposes other than what it was gathered for.
That seems like an enormous invasion of privacy. How it's even possible that is legal, is beyond me. In the European Union such shit wouldn't fly (I think). Well perhaps except in police state the UK that is...
Not to mention there's no need for a plate scan to ever leave the scanning vehicle. Not even for a lookup in a "wanted" list: such lists are relatively small, a copy could easily be kept onboard the scanning vehicle, a scanned plate compared against, no match? Forget that plate immediately, only record/upload hits.
Shooting pics in public with -perhaps- some recognisable faces in it, is one thing. But keeping tabs on everyone that passes by is an enormous invasion of privacy - public place or not. That should be illegal unless there's a very pressing need for it. And even then only done with the recording aspect kept to the minimum necessary.
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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. Honest
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Yeah, with their compulsory ID cards. None of that in France, Germany, Belgium...
Oh wait. It's the other way round, and you're a fat moron.
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Nope. No ID card necessary to buy an apartment in the UK.
No ID card necessary to get a hotel room in the UK.
I know, I've done both.
Not sure about renting an apartment, haven't tried that. Certainly didn't need an ID card to rent a single room in a shared house though.
So unless you are homeless, it's papers please.
Maybe we're talking about a different UK. I'm referring to the British Isles, which one are you thinking of?
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Which would indicate every plate scanned ends up in a database. Regardless whether it's on some "wanted" list. And that data is passed on, used for purposes other than what it was gathered for.
That seems like an enormous invasion of privacy.
Yes, it is a terrible invasion of privacy. But it is performed by private companies; you can do it, too (I inquired). Or go through a PI to get access to the database---info is not sold to us plebs).
The problem in the US with this is that it is an industry that arose suddenly (started data-aggregating suddenly). Them selling to law enforcement is bad enough. Law enforcement then relying upon unverified data, that was obtained through a short-circuit of the 4th amendment, bought from a private, 3rd-party
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Except stalking is illegal. Taking pictures in public locations is not. Not sure how you managed to conflate the two.
So you're saying stalking an individual can be prosecuted, but mass stalking is perfectly okay. Got it.
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Currently? Yes. That's what the law says.
Change the law, and change this unfortunate reality.
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Wow, what an idiot you are. You don't know jack shit.
You're the douchebag idiot that the claimed doing moving around in public is perfectly legal. You failed to make any distinguishing principle.
So if a company has enough information on a person based on all the pictures they collect from multiple locations, on a constant basis, and can track me everywhere I go and pull enough information together, regardless of how collected, to produce a profile, how is that different from stalking.
Fucking morons like y
I just bought a car (Score:3)
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Managing your own finances is a basic skill that people should learn.
If your kid can't work out how to cross town without a car of her own then she's fucked for life. You wont be there to throw money at the problem for the next 80 years.
If I can't afford a 1 year old low mileage car then I'll buy a 5 year old high mileage car or a fucking bicycle. If I can afford a 1 year old low mileage car through a loan, then have a change in circumstances that means I can't repay the loan, I'll negotiate with the loan c
You can't manage what you don't have (Score:2)
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I'm curious, did you stop for breath while typing that? Must've been hard not to drown on the phlegm and spittle that spewed out with the words.
Financial self control has fuck all to do with social or wealth inequality. Almost nobody is in actual poverty, and there are plenty of safety nets for those that are - even in the US.
Nobody is set up to fail. The US, Europe and vast tracts of the rest of the world put substantial resources into assuring that people get a good education and the basic skills needed t
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Two tricks come to mind:
1) Pay your bills.
2) Don't take loans on things you can't afford.
2a) Don't take loans at all, save cash and buy low mileage 3 yr old cars.
Spotted on a bumper sticker:
Easiest way to get back on your feet? Miss two car payments.
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2a) Don't take loans at all, save cash and buy low mileage 3 yr old cars.
It's a mystery to me why many more people don't follow this simple rule.
:)
(Of course if no one bought new there'd be no low-mileage three-year-old cars for the rest of us
How long until scanner-hammers start showing up? (Score:1)
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Some device that masks your license plate number from the scanner.
ANPR Circumvention [wikipedia.org].
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Everything is on the side of the wealthy.
In different words, in a free market, if you do things for your fellow human beings that they find useful, lots of good things come your way.
Corporate Stalking. (Score:1)
Interesting idea. Opposite of stalking (Score:3)
That's an interesting idea. Looking at stalking statutes, this wouldn't be covered. As example statute:
Sec. 42.072. STALKING. (a) A person commits an offense if the person, on more than one occasion and pursuant to the same scheme or course of conduct that is directed specifically at another person, knowingly engages in conduct that [long list of harassment etc]
Stalking is a repeated pattern of behavior fixated on a specific individual. This is the opposite - trying to see as many cars as possible, with
Though the Feds are prohibited from collecting ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... this data, there's nothing from stopping them from buying it from private companies that do their dirty work for them.
Spirit of the law, schmirit of the law.
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What is for sale on the open market is never mentioned.
Maybe I'm missing something (Score:2)
So they're giving the government a big database of pictures of license plates and cars. Something they already have when they issued the plate. I just skimmed through the summary but I didn't see anything about tying a person, time, or location as info they are selling. Just that they have these scanners to try to find passing my already defaulted cars.
I just don't see the business model of selling the states info they already have, not that that doesn't mean the state won't buy it anyway.
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then you did not read near the end,
they knew a specific car with a specific plate at a specific location had a high probability of being at that location.
one company collects the data
another sells it back
most likely they have something like a peering agreement.
Not just repo trucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Even more pervasive, since garbage trucks drive by each and every residential address, every week.
Use this to Dox Politicians (Score:2)
This tech is cheap enough now. Someone should able to pay people to mount cameras on their cars and busy homes, feeding into a central database. Then they could run a web site charging for database queries. Journalists are going to know the cars of politicians so I bet they'd find such a thing very useful. Not to mention foreign spies (if they haven't already hacked the existing systems). It's going to take something like this to focus minds more on privacy issues in the US. Are there any current US laws ag
Pity the poor repo men (Score:2)
"For repo companies, one worry is whether they are producing information that others are monetizing"
That's their ONLY worry
Search Limits for the Government? (Score:3)
The technology presents interesting questions for search and seizure law in the U.S. Currently, in Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court is considering a case where warrantless cell phone tower data for over four months is an illegal search. Scotusblog has a page (the transcript is available as audio or video as the "Tr." or "Aud." under the "Argument" heading).
The key to Carpenter is that earlier cases held that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in the metadata about a phone call since the phone company had it. The problem in this case is how much there was -- basically protracted surveillance via cell towers. Even though your license plate is in plain view on streets, perhaps the government cannot engage in protracted surveillance of it without a warrant.
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The more you drive the dumber you are.
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Thanks, now I'm jonesing for that movie
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Etch it into your brain.
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Yet, that data doesn't seem to be used for enforcement, since we still have tens of millions of people living in the US illegally.
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You don't have to have a plate on a vehicle unless it is moving on a public road. Either cover the plate when you park it in you driveway or build a James Bond license rotating plate.
Tell that to people who get tickets for their car parked in their driveway.