SFMTA publishes list of names with license plates | Hacker News Reader

SFMTA publishes list of names with license plates

sfmta.com

33 pointsaxoltl16 comments

Wow. Didn't think it could be real, but sure enough my girlfriend's old plate is listed. That's pretty disgusting, SFMTA.

Edit

We just went through the process to claim the $125 through "surveygizmo.com". At the end it says "A customer service representative will review your information and respond to you within 21 days. If a refund is identified a check will be processed within 30 days"

I wonder if anything interesting comes up if you correlate this data with the license plate camera data that Oakland released (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10642139).

Thanks for this. I scraped all of the PDF data, and threw it in a DB. Now it's searchable.

http://sfmtarefund.com

Is there a way to search by name?

Unfortunately, no. There was no rhyme or reason to the way that they formatted the names. I guess I could implement a fuzzy search, but I'm still at work.

This data can't be real. It says Steve Jobs has not one, but three license plates.

Wasn't he known for buying new cars all the time to get around parking fines (by milking the new car plates)?

It's reported that he leased a new Mercedes every 6 months so that he didn't have to put plates on the car at all.

http://gizmodo.com/5853927/the-real-reason-steve-jobs-benz-d...

I don't know if there was anything about parking fines involved; I doubt the guy was particularly concerned about them.

SFMTA is a truly awful organization.

Details on California DMV records.. surprisingly, a lot of the data is technically public record:

https://www.privacyrights.org/cradle-grave-government-record...

And here's the federal law on DMV record privacy. This would be a legal release of information, unfortunately (government agency "carrying out its functions"):

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2721

Appears to be illegal under DPPA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_...

That seems like an oversight....

Seems plausible - they accidentally created 9 PDF files, accidentally uploaded them to a new page in their CMS which they accidentally created, on which they accidentally wrote instructions on how to search through the PDF file to find your (or your ex-wife/stalkee's) name/plate.

No clear signs of intent that publishing names linked to plates was exactly what they set out to do...

Well, it's obvious their intent was that you could find whether or not you were owed money by searching for your license plate or name. You weren't supposed to search for someone else's licence plate or name.

Of course someone should have noticed that you can do that, and that it's bad for privacy, but didn't. That's the problem.

they'll for sure take this down.

Bit late now. ;)

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