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Comment by vmarsy | Hacker News Reader

"After all, drivers do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy over their publicly-visible plate number while driving down public roads."

Random people can see my license plate but they don't know who I am. Today only people who know my license plate AND happen to see it randomly know I'm there at this moment, which is a reasonable expectation of privacy for me.

Now if there was a website where you can query a partially complete trip history of any license plate completely void that privacy. Think about such a tool in the hands of a paparazzi for instance...

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You know the towtruck/repo industry currently compiles exactly this kind of dataset, and trades/sells it to each other? I have no doubt that well funded paparazzi already have access to exactly the tool you describe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/automobiles/28REPO.html?_r... http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/license-plate-data-not-jus... http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/43/4338.asp

So taking a photo of (or making a memory of having seen) doesn't violate your privacy, but publishing that information does?

I'm not criticizing you; just clarifying. These are tough questions.

I tend to think that if you're in the clear to document something (ie, it's in public), then you are in the clear to publish it.

Otherwise, we have a mess of free speech boundaries.

well, your dichotomy is fundamentally flawed imo. it's not "having information but keeping it private" vs. "having information and publishing it to the public".

the real issue is "a person who knows me well enough to know my license plate number can know my location at one point in time if they happen to be in the immediate area" vs. "all people who can find my license plate number can know my location at all points in time".

the dichotomy is "everyone in the checkout line can see what i'm buying" vs. "all people who know my first and last name can view my entire credit card transaction history".

I guess I don't see the distinction. If I see your license plate at the supermarket and post online that "license plate AAAAAA was seen at Whole Foods on December 6th", how is that qualitatively different from a license plate reader scanning your plate and storing that "license plate AAAAAA was at coordinates XX.XXXX, XX.XXXX at 2015-12-06?"

Unless you want to draw a line between information which is directly observed by people and information which is collected by machine, this seems like a difference of degree, not of kind.

Quantitative differences eventually become qualitative ones.

Nobody cares about any one particular data point being published; it's the collection of all of them that's revealing. See the "metadata" debate that's been going on for a year or two now.

I suspect that most folks would be willing to self-publish their checking account balance on one random day. But every day for a year, or their whole lives? Probably not. You have to marry me if you want to have that kind of information.

Quantity has a quality all its own.

As with most pieces of surveillance, it's that there's a cost difference.

To find out where I am, you'd currently need to have me tailed. The cost involved gives me a reasonable degree of privacy in my estimation. You'd need to have some kind of reasonable cause, and assets, and need to think there was something in monitoring my movements worth spending for.

If it costs you $5 to pull up a complete driving history, you can surveil 1,000 people for the same cost, and go for a fishing trip. See if anyone moderately wealthy has been in a bad part of town, etc

>I guess I don't see the distinction.

Do you see a distinction between me taking a photo of you by being out in public being my right and me using a special camera to pick up photons emitted by your body and not blocked by your clothing and creating an image from these?

Do you see a distinction between me being able to look into your window from the public sidewalk and me using infrared technology to map out everything you do in the house?

What if I invent a camera that can take a photo of a letter and reveal all the contents inside in easily readable detail, without needing to touch the letter. By you grabbing a letter out of your mailbox, you are letting me see the outside of it, so if this camera can capture the content is there any significant difference?

A photo of you in public does not violate your privacy. It has been ruled, time and time again, that the image you present is public and anyone can take a picture of it.

BUT, technology allows me to capture far more than the visible spectrum. Give your clothes probably don't consist of lead plates, part of the photos I can detect are from your body and not your clothes. So using this information, and some recoloring algorithms, I can likely create a decent image of your underlying body.

Applying technology allows for more information to be withdrawn from situations where previously that information wasn't available. But due to the need for advanced technology to pick up on the information, most people do not even realize they are leaking it. (Take private conversation being recorded at a distance by viewing vibrations in objects near where the conversation is happening.)

Our technology has outpaced our moral/philosophical reasoning and the gap keeps growing.

Sorry for the long reply, no worries I don't take it as a critic. It's actually more like what amagumori said: the dichotomy is "everyone in the checkout line can see what i'm buying" vs. "all people who know my first and last name can view my entire credit card transaction history".

If you see my license plate in the street today, I wouldn't care at all. I wouldn't be fine if you published that information in a "where is everybody right now" wiki. From that wiki a stalker would have it really easy to ruin my life; a burglar could break in at the good moment; an employer could know I visited their concurrent, probably for an interview; I go to this church/mosque/synagogue/... : now you know my religion;the neighborhood association could see I have 'too many' (for their standard) friends (or AirBnB customers?) visiting; marketers could see I go often to store X,Y, on vacation to Z, that I'm more of a Fast food Mc lover than a BK, ...

Also: So taking a photo of (or making a memory of having seen) doesn't violate your privacy . For many Europeans countries it does violate the privacy, if that photo has no public information purpose. For instance: http://uk.practicallaw.com/7-573-6346

or any one with an ax to grind with a political figure. You manage to jeopardize a senator or two's privacy (and more importantly, security of them and their family) and you'll see legislation protecting everyone from this kind of technology tomorrow.

Protection already exists. Police, judges, or other VIPs can have their info blanked out with the first level checks at the DMV.

If only the rules were applied equally...

Why should I not get the same level of privacy?

I believe in some jurisdictions you can if you have a verifiable justification like death threats or stalkers. Other than that I don't think you'd be able to.

Yeah, you'll find senators and their families become exempt from displaying licence plates...

Just FYI, you can pull an address from a license plate for about 40 dollars. We're all driving around with our addresses on our cars, there's no way to avoid that.

Err, how? That's (afaik) a very privileged ability for law enforcement. I should not be able to get your home location or name from just your number plate

I've used a service called docusearch. I believe it's a network of private investigators across the US. You have to select from a few "permissible purposes". I've used it two or three times to pull plates of people dealing drugs on my street. I used the "Motor Vehicle Safety" category for these. I live right on a county line, so it helps me direct my calls to the appropriate police department, also, I like to know who these people are in case something worse ever happens.

Really depends on what country you're in. Where I live people can look up a plate for free online.

In fact I've just done that with my car and it works. Has my name and address. The only gate is a captcha.

Can I ask you what country you live in? No problem if you'd prefer not to disclose of course.

Switzerland.

You can actually look up random people's numbers, because all the plates are two letters for the Canton, plus a number starting at 1. So for instance "ZG 888" is a valid plate, as is "ZH 12345"

Sweden too. Well, you fill in the reg number and a fax number online, and they fax the owners information to you. Of coure there are online services that will give you a fax number and receive ten or so free faxes for you.

I wonder if an extremely range-limited RFID plate with a challenge-response system that only local LEAs can read (modulo leaks, of course) would be better. We'd lose the ability for people reporting a crime to say "plate XYZ on green car at location A just did Q illegal thing", but maybe "green car at location A just did Q illegal thing" would be good enough.

It's hard to have an extremely ranged limited RFID plate when only half the range is determined by the RFID chip itself -- a sufficiently large antenna on the receiver can increase the range. Granted a passport that's supposed to readable from centimeters away will probably never be read a couple hundred meters away, but a license plate that can be read from a few meters away could be made readable from a hundred meters away.

Though I guess a smarter RFID plate could use latency to decide if a reader was "close enough", but that would make reliable reads harder since it would require several round trips.

Passport RFID reading demonstrated from 217 feet at BlackHat 2010 with just $2500 worth of eBay gear: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guy...

The guy reckons 2 miles is theoretically possible with HAM radio-operator-legal transmit power (1.5kW) and the right antennas.

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