Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Privacy

License Plate Readers Are Creating a US-Wide Database of More Than Just Cars (wired.com) 79

Posted by EditorDavid from the I'll-be-seeing-you dept.
Wired reports on "AI-powered cameras mounted on cars and trucks, initially designed to capture license plates, but which are now photographing political lawn signs outside private homes, individuals wearing T-shirts with text, and vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers — all while recordi00ng the precise locations of these observations..."

The detailed photographs all surfaced in search results produced by the systems of DRN Data, a license-plate-recognition (LPR) company owned by Motorola Solutions. The LPR system can be used by private investigators, repossession agents, and insurance companies; a related Motorola business, called Vigilant, gives cops access to the same LPR data. However, files shared with WIRED by artist Julia Weist, who is documenting restricted datasets as part of her work, show how those with access to the LPR system can search for common phrases or names, such as those of politicians, and be served with photographs where the search term is present, even if it is not displayed on license plates... Beyond highlighting the far-reaching nature of LPR technology, which has collected billions of images of license plates, the research also shows how people's personal political views and their homes can be recorded into vast databases that can be queried.

"It really reveals the extent to which surveillance is happening on a mass scale in the quiet streets of America," says Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. "That surveillance is not limited just to license plates, but also to a lot of other potentially very revealing information about people."

DRN, in a statement issued to WIRED, said it complies with "all applicable laws and regulations...." Over more than a decade, DRN has amassed more than 15 billion "vehicle sightings" across the United States, and it claims in its marketing materials that it amasses more than 250 million sightings per month. Images in DRN's commercial database are shared with police using its Vigilant system, but images captured by law enforcement are not shared back into the wider database. The system is partly fueled by DRN "affiliates" who install cameras in their vehicles, such as repossession trucks, and capture license plates as they drive around. Each vehicle can have up to four cameras attached to it, capturing images in all angles. These affiliates earn monthly bonuses and can also receive free cameras and search credits...

"License plate recognition (LPR) technology supports public safety and community services, from helping to find abducted children and stolen vehicles to automating toll collection and lowering insurance premiums by mitigating insurance fraud," Jeremiah Wheeler, the president of DRN, says in a statement... Wheeler did not respond to WIRED's questions about whether there are limits on what can be searched in license plate databases, why images of homes with lawn signs but no vehicles in sight appeared in search results, or if filters are used to reduce such images.
Privacy experts shared their reactions with Wired
  • "Perhaps [people] want to express themselves in their communities, to their neighbors, but they don't necessarily want to be logged into a nationwide database that's accessible to police authorities." — Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union
  • "When government or private companies promote license plate readers, they make it sound like the technology is only looking for lawbreakers or people suspected of stealing a car or involved in an amber alert, but that's just not how the technology works. The technology collects everyone's data and stores that data often for immense periods of time." — Dave Maass, an EFF director of investigations
  • "The way that the country is set up was to protect citizens from government overreach, but there's not a lot put in place to protect us from private actors who are engaged in business meant to make money." — Nicole McConlogue, associate law professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law (who has researched license-plate-surveillance systems)

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.


License Plate Readers Are Creating a US-Wide Database of More Than Just Cars More | Reply

License Plate Readers Are Creating a US-Wide Database of More Than Just Cars

Comments Filter:

  • Precisely (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ihavesaxwithcollies ( 10441708 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @08:57PM (#64842873)

    "The way that the country is set up was to protect citizens from government overreach, but there's not a lot put in place to protect us from private actors who are engaged in business meant to make money." — Nicole McConlogue, associate law professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law (who has researched license-plate-surveillance systems)

    My exact argument the last time this came up.

    • Yep. The slipper slope that could turn us into England. We are a nation of people's indoctrinated on the premise that only criminals are arrested, even if that statement out loud seems absurd to us. The average citizen of the US learns the way the world works in small pieces through television drama and will double, even triple down that its all true if that belief is tested.

      Until they get caught up in it, in which case, welcome to the inside.

      • helping find abducted children,reproductive rights (Score:5, Informative)

        by will4 ( 7250692 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @11:31PM (#64843173)

        Be skeptical of the 'benefits' of this type of technology especially when it claims to be 'find abducted children', 'find senior citizens who drove off and got lost', 'find stolen cars' and other appeals.

        Wired showing its politics

        1) "In data she shared with WIRED, a search for “Planned Parenthood,” for instance, returned stickers on cars, on bumpers, and in windows, both for and against the reproductive health services organization."
        2) the search tools could be misused when there is increasing political violence and divisiveness in society.
        3) While not linked to license plate data, one law enforcement official in Ohio recently said people should “write down” the addresses of people who display yard signs supporting Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, exemplifying how a searchable database of citizens’ political affiliations could be abused.
        4) From the prolicense plate reader company - “License plate recognition (LPR) technology supports public safety and community services, from helping to find abducted children and stolen vehicles to automating toll collection and lowering insurance premiums by mitigating insurance fraud,” Jeremiah Wheeler, the president of DRN
        5) CCTV cameras are being equipped with AI to monitor people’s movements and even detect their emotions.
        -
        UK Post Office - Fujitsu Horizon Scandal -
        An example of technology being wrong and over 1000 persons put on trial, and 900 convicted.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        "Horizon, an accounting software system developed by Fujitsu. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 subpostmasters were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting based on faulty Horizon data, with about 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Other subpostmasters were prosecuted but not convicted, forced to cover shortfalls caused by Horizon with their own money, or had their contracts terminated."

        • Simply,

          1) there is a federal database of anyone who donated to a presidential campaign, congressional campaign, senate campaign, etc.
          2) the voting database has a record of which party primary you voted in (identify your party) and when you voted in what elections.

          From those two identifying which party a person's house leans towards and how active the person is in politics, etc.....

      • Wanna know what's really scary? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Malay2bowman ( 10422660 ) on Sunday October 06, 2024 @12:43AM (#64843317)
        That people assume with certainty that the same government will still be in power 10 years from now. They don't think that a new fascist/authoritarian government could be running things, either coming from an external invasion or (much more likely in the US at least) from within. And now the new overlords have a nicely compiled, ready made list so it saves them a lot of time figuring out who needs to be sent to the concentration camps.

    • Every citizen is part of the government and shares the responsibility. It just happens that there are a few elected to execute the will of the people.

      If you see it that way then every citizen falls under the constitution, not only the elected officials and government employees.

      The way that the anti-abortion movement acts is similar to how Stasi acted in East Germany where every citizen spied on each other.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Malc ( 1751 )

        We don't have direct democracy, we have representative democracy. The government is the party with the largest majority. The other representatives in parliament are not in the government. At least that's how it works here.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          Now a days, when someone says democracy, they mean representative democracy.
          In a Westminster Parliamentary system, it's more accurate to say which ever party has the confidence of Parliament or Legislature forms government. Usually the one with a majority but here a couple of elections ago the party with the largest number of seats had the Throne Speech voted down and the 2nd place party with support from the 3rd place party formed government. The election happening here in a couple of weeks may well see in

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Teun ( 17872 )
          Hillary would disagree, after all she won the popular vote against Trump.
          However they differ, the US and UK systems are not exactly good examples of democracy.
          B.t.w, the country where I live the government is controlled by the elected parliament.
    • Say if someone did this locally, went around and took photos of everyone's cars. Then made it searchable, would this be considered harassment if someone asked them to stop? Maybe someone should make an opt out mechanism and if the companies continue to photograph property of individuals who requested they stop, that would be considered harassment?

    • To be fair, it's not doing great against the "government overreach" thing either.

  • Remind me (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @08:57PM (#64842875)

    ... people's personal political views ...

    Remind me again, the USA has free speech and the right to association. The East German Stassi would be jealous of this spy-ware.

    ... only looking for ...

    This is the same as demanding 'good' guys have back-doors to communication systems. While the obvious flaw is, bad guys can open doors too. The dangerous flaw is, the government uses the equipment to commit crimes.

    • The East German Stassi would be jealous of this spy-ware.

      Yes, they would. Technology has always been an arms race. The Stassi would be jealous of much of our current technology, from smartphones to USB sticks to SD cards.

      All technology can be used both for good, and for evil. Thankfully, we do not have a law enforcement system that abuses people like the East Germans did. Instead, we have a steadily declining crime rate (with the exception of a spike that came with the pandemic). As a result of widespread adoption of body cameras, police who break the law are *le

      • Thankfully, we do not have a law enforcement system that abuses people

        Not for lack of trying: https://theportager.com/reside... [theportager.com]

        Note that he later said he was "maybe misinterpreted."

        • It's true, you will always be able to find cases where some police officer or department acts inappropriately. But this is not the norm. If you think the US police department is corrupt, it's only because you haven't experienced living in a place where *every* officer is on the take, or has a political agenda. This is not that kind of place.

      • ... system that abuses people ...

        New York police shooting people [cnn.com] for your safety.

        • I don't deny that abuse occurs. It's not possible for any government to be completely free of abuse. But in relative terms, the US police system stands out. If you try to bribe a police officer, you are far more likely to be arrested, than get off Scott free. That alone makes it superior to many police departments around the world. By contrast, the US police force is pretty squeaky clean.

      • We also donâ(TM)t have the socialist government of East Germany. At this point the corporations have access to some data which someone would need to abuse, you then also need the government in place. There is no way to stop someone from recording stuff in public, there is a way to reduce government intrusion in our life. Right now all this seems to have been enabled by government overreach by mandating personalized license plates and the sole purpose of the license plate is to fine you for breaking non

    • There has been no right of association in the US since the 1950s. I am caffeine deficient at the moment. Am I misreading, is that supposed to be sarcastic?

      • ... no right of association in the US ...

        There is a freedom of association specified in the 1st and 14th amendment. It exists only if the US government hasn't black-listed such associations. That is, the US government can criminalize groups and associations. Examples are outlawing the Communist Party and laws burdening worker's associations, AKA unions. So no, it is not a right. Of course, the war on terror did much damage to the freedom of association, returning the country to a 'red'-under-the-bed mentality. Once Bush Jr left office, the p

  • Bumper stickers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @09:12PM (#64842913)

    Always wait to put on the bumper stickers until after the election.

  • Computer Vision 101 Homework Assignment (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PleaseThink ( 8207110 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @09:17PM (#64842925)

    why images of homes with lawn signs but no vehicles in sight appeared in search results

    That's an easy question. Their computer vision algorithms are simply looking for text within rectangles.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

      True. However, I think the more implied question is why don't the regulations require that their algorithms can only look for and store information that is only from license plates and their attached vehicle? They could easily set up the algorithms to only detect the specific rectangles and layouts of each various state's license plates. Would probably save them quite a bit of storage space. Following that, why don't the regulations then require everything outside of what is definitely a license plate on a

      • Why regulate them at all? Just remove the problem (the license plate and government regulation) and the problem disappears.

        • Maybe 20 years ago getting rid of lcense plates would've been a big help, but nowadays it would only be a short term help.

          There was a study like a decade ago using a 10 year ago regular computer and cell phone camera. They took off the UV/IR filters off of some of the cameras. But they were able to quickly and accurately fingerprint cars. Eben if they look to human eyes as clean and identical, they aren't. The UV/IR can see the random differences in paint application and wear on the vehicle. Combining t

  • A national database of license plate numbers whose assignees want them printed on T-shirts, yard signs, bumper stickers, so they appear all over the country.

    We have the opportunity to largely destroy the usefulness of this data through concerted mass action. If it's not a government-owned project, and the numbers aren't actually license plates, what prevents people from displaying numbers all over the country to get sucked into these readers?

    One could even foresee an e-ink display on cars that would display

    • For this kind of thing to work, you'd have to get people to buy into this concept on a large scale.

      Most of us actually *want* police to be able to use plate scanners to find criminals. We certainly don't want to diminish their ability to do this!

      So good luck with your plan. I'm not in.

      • Re:I'd like to see a project to pollute this data (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jddj ( 1085169 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @11:54PM (#64843233) Journal

        I'm not convinced that "most of us" want warrantless surveillance of all of our movements, unconstitutional by other means.

        This is an extralegal form of surveillance, and it deserves to be destroyed. We have constitutional protections for good reason, and the cops/FBI/office of the POTUS shouldn't get to ignore them just because they can afford to buy the info from private business.

        It's not like those organizations have typically been beyond reporach.

        • Re:I'd like to see a project to pollute this data (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Sunday October 06, 2024 @08:42AM (#64843645) Homepage

          The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that warrants are not required for surveillance that happens *in public." https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com] Privacy is only an expectation...in private places.

          • But there's a key difference between surveiling A residence with A camera for A suspected criminal activity, and surveiling ALL of us EVERYWHERE, ALL the time, for NO particular suspected criminal activity.

            Warrants don't even apply here because the aggregation of data is being done by businesses.

            So if government will not protect us from mass surveillance (since they're using "other means" to avoid constitutional questions), I suggest "other means" of blotting this out: intentionally polluting the data.

            • I don't see how your "difference" poses a problem.

              My house has a doorbell camera, as do many of my neighbors. If an incident were to happen in our neighborhood, most of us would gladly turn over to police whatever footage we happened to get, upon request, no warrant needed. We cooperate with the police because we believe they are primarily there to help keep the peace.

              This in no way infringes on anyone's constitutional rights. If you come near or in my house, YOU do not have an expectation of privacy, but *

        • It merely automates what police officers have been able to do manually since license plates were first required on automobiles.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jddj ( 1085169 )

            Except that you'd need special police officers that did nothing but write down license plates all day, all night, at every moment.

            There are too many plates collected at too many locations for this to be "what police officers do manually".

            How is it that there's not the same outrage as at the government collecting massive databases of your phone calls, emails, envelope scans, etc.?

      • I don't much care if the police catch criminals. They're probably not going to get much punishment anyway. They're certainly not likely to get the punishment they deserve. So why bother?

  • Yet it doesnâ(TM)t detect anti-abortion, bumper stickers? How curious!

  • We're fucked (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @11:04PM (#64843113)

    We need a law banning the use of data more than 10 years old for any purpose other than non violent felony crime. A metadata or log purging law may be a good idea too. No company should be allowed to retain metadata logs, without properly anonymizing it, more than 10 years old. That doesn't mean a website like Facebook or slashdot has to delete 10 year old comments, but they should delete who accessed something or what IP address was used to make the comment. Basically log file deletion. Also, any activity more than 10 years old should not be usable to persecute anyone UNLESS it's for a violent felony or theft of more than say a $50k or something like that. So if my neighbor caught me on camera smoking weed or something I don't want that shit used against me when I'm running for county dog catcher 5 years from now.

    • *non violent felony crime prosecution.

    • No, what we need is a law banning the collection of this data to begin with.

      Why? Because there is always going to be some info broker (incorporated or not) who claims that the data used was only 9 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds old at the time, and thus completely legal for them to have by one second. Also, they can simply change the timestamp on the data to make it compliant. (It is their database after all.)

      The government putting a "it's legal only up to a certain date" requiremen

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

      Why?

      What is the purpose of deleting 10 year old metadata?

      That would do *nothing* about the the photo of you smoking weed.

      Nor should it.

  • The rest of the world have been saying this for a long time, America need a law like GDPR, but no, Americans won't let anything get in the way of for-profit companies making more profits.

  • The usual and fully expected mission creep... (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday October 06, 2024 @12:05AM (#64843245)

    That is why you want to stop the surveillance-fascists early on, i.e. when they still pretend this is about protecting children or some other lie that sounds good.

  • They tell us "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the terrorists?!" and "Help stop children" and each time we trust that they won't engage in mission creep despite that is exactly what happened each time before.

  • don't (Score:5, Funny)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Sunday October 06, 2024 @02:22AM (#64843373)
    Thankfully, I have a "do not track" bumper sticker on my car so I am immune to this.

  • Even the license data is too much (Score:3)

    by barakn ( 641218 ) on Sunday October 06, 2024 @03:03AM (#64843383)

    A trove of license plate data from vehicles that had nothing to do with crimes still contains data of people doing embarrassing things. The judge visiting his mistress, the anti-abortion politician whose daughter's license plate is spotted at Planned Parenthood. Each of these could potentially be blackmailed, perhaps by low-level criminals, but but also by state-level actors like China, creating a silent army of compromised individuals working from within to twist things to China's will. And we all know how well companies protect data.

  • Typo?
  • Seems like Google beat them to the punch, they started photographing everything long ago. Why are we suddenly worried since this is an established pattern?

  • Genies and bottles (Score:3)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Sunday October 06, 2024 @08:35AM (#64843635) Journal

    Even children have internet connected video camera in their pockets ... and have for quite a few years now. And just how long ago was Google Maps snapping pics of your lawn sign?

    I'm not saying that it is good, just saying that it is the case.

    Maybe just not persecuting people for their beliefs and speech might be a more accessible point to attack this from.

  • ...as an "only one side" problem.

    "...vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers..." because of course this tech couldn't and wouldn't ever be used to surveil things like anti-abortion, religious, or Gadsden flag stickers, right?

    Let's be clear: the companies doing this will sell this data to anyone. And long before Cambridge Analytica was cancelled for daring to help the Great Orange Satan, the Obama-Biden campaign was lauded for its cutting-edge, internet based analytics determining political lean

  • says 456EBK3'); DROP TABLE LicensePlates;--

Slashdot Top Deals

"I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest." -- Alexandre Dumas (fils)

Close