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Comment by Rygian | Hacker News Reader

The gist of it: I can subscribe to location updates for any license plate that I want, without knowledge or consent from the owner of that car.

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Something you could do anyway with a network of $50 android phones mounted on bridges over freeways.

But this way you don't have to pay for the cameras - someone else has done it for you.

Not sure why this is being downvoted, it is an actual thing:

“Several companies operate independent, non-law enforcement ALPR databases, contracting with drivers to put cameras on private vehicles to collect the information.”

https://www.eff.org/pages/automated-license-plate-readers-al...

Motherboard did a deeper dive on one of them:

“DRN is a private surveillance system crowdsourced by hundreds of repo men who have installed cameras that passively scan, capture, and upload the license plates of every car they drive by to DRN's database. DRN stretches coast to coast and is available to private individuals and companies focused on tracking and locating people or vehicles.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne879z/i-tracked-someone-wit...

To further this, I know someone who was a public defender a decade ago in the US. They would regularly try to get intersection camera footage to attempt to prove their clients not guilty. Often it was impossible to track down who owned the cameras, or even if they were municiple or private. I imagine this has only gotten worse as cameras have gotten cheaper.

Tape over lens and watch who comes out? I am very much not a lawyer.

I'd bet half the time nobody will come out.

So many systems are legacy and entirely unused, or best effort - ie. if the camera is working, it'll be used, but nobody will be sent to repair it if it's broken.

Wow, this sounds very illegal in my state. I wonder if DRN even respects my state's laws about storing my personal information.

Is the location of your state-registered vehicle vehicle on publicly owned roads personal information in your state? Despite the phrasing, I'm honestly curious.

No, but likely his face biometrics are off he happens to have been captured in the video. So if they are keeping the raw video, not just the processed license plate output, they may fall under this jurisdiction.

Assuming you're talking about the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, that only requires consent for facial recognition databases based on facial geometry. The law explicitly allows storing photographs of people's faces without consent.

It's probably not, which is the problem. I feel like the wilful processing of such details into parse-able, privacy-violating form should be regulated.

What state is that, California? I'd love to have a way to block ubiquitous surveillance, also places taking your picture when you walk into a drugstore or restaurant, uploading it. If it hasn't happened yet, we will be tracked all the time.

I didn't downvote it, but $50 for cameras is not even a blip in the cost of setting operation like that, and op's comment make it sound, like that's all you need.

Surveillance is easy now. But not yet $50 easy.

You'd need to place those, maintain them, prevent vandalism, route power to them, pay for network connectivity and weather-proof them. The price of the cameras is not the problem.

I will place and maintain road cameras for $50/yr, including data connectivity for plates. Minimum 1,000 cameras. 75% uptime/scan rate guarantee.

You'd likely lose a lot of money trying to do that, you're vastly underestimating the cost of maintaining the data network for that kind of installation alone, even before looking at the cost of physical installation.

If it's a bargain, take me up on the offer then.

It absolutely is a bargain. I don't have the money or time to risk but I strongly recommend that you start a company, build a website and advertise your service to the world. I'm assuming you'll also deal with any regulatory and data protection issues, get permission from local authorities etc... . You've found an astonishing gap in the market, it seems.

> get permission from local authorities

For some reason I guess the business plan was about forgetting to get the permits...

Ok, I'll bite. How would you do that? How do they stay connected and powered?

Within the UK, 4G sim cards and data are cheap. Android phone with tether capabilities, Raspberry Pi with solar and a webcam.

Or even better to save all that faff, root a phone, run the drivers plate OCR software using the phones camera, stick to a gantry and send results via text message. You wouldn't even need live updates, pull the latest data at midnight each day.

Text is cheap.

I suspect the computing and communication parts of a project like this are by far the easiest bits.

Weatherproofing the camera and solar panels, getting permission to get them installed, actually installing them (working at heights over busy roads) and then maintaining them would be pretty expensive. You might also have to pay rent to whoever owns gantries, and what about locations where there aren't any existing gantries?

What about insurance in case you camera falls off the gantry onto a car and kills someone?

Edit: What about roads that don't have network coverage (not that uncommon in the Scottish Highlands)

You wouldn't get permission. Just walk with a phone+solar panel in a weatherproof box. Either use magnets or zip ties to tie to the the pedestrian rail of a bridge overlooking a freeway. Done.

I would likely order some chinaphone motherboards only - for example[1] - without the screen+case+accessories you save ~50% on the retail price. They're then not valuable enough to be worth stealing either.

If it's a small road with no bridges, tie to a lamp post instead.

You need to be able to install 3 per hour to make the finances work out - 10 mins driving, and 10 mins installing, and repeat.

If the city catches you, it's only a littering penalty. They likely wouldn't care.

[1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003892325502.html

Breakeven is 1 year average residency - that has to include failure, end-of-life, theft, and removal by the city.

Anything placed in a location which has easy accessed to pedestrians is going to get stolen and vandalised - particularly once people realise what they are.

How much power do you need to be continuously running video/snapshots, OCR software, and comms? How expensive a solar panel is needed to generate that power, will it work overnight and through the winter, and will it also be theft-resistant? What's the cost of petrol for driving 4+ hours per day? How will you get coverage in parts of the country that aren't near your home/office?

About 1.2 watts to capture+process 1 frame/second - thats how much my current phone uses, and I suspect a cheaper platform will be more power efficient. You'd use a 5 watt solar panel (costing $4) in the southern USA, and a 10 watt panel (costing $9) in the northern USA. You would aim to rarely have spare power - in winter, you just drop the frame rate and the comms interval.

With more engineering effort, you can probably dramatically reduce power usage, for example by discarding parts of the frame that cars never drive through, which should allow extending the hardwares lifespan as batteries age and solar panels get covered in dust.

Well, I'm slightly less skeptical than I was before. I'm not convinced you can break even for much less than $100 per instance, and I think the risk of getting into trouble is quite high, but there could be something to it.

There is a fairly new automated weather station at the side of the road not far from where I live here in Scotland - the solar cells are actually quite large - I'd guess about 0.50m by 1m. The whole setup is also pretty substantial probably to cope with the fact that supporting solar panels in a windy location requires a fair bit of strength!

Love the style, but wouldn't those boxes be conspicuous? It only takes a few observant people to notice a couple before they spot the pattern and see them everywhere. Then it seems like the game would be up.

if the city catches you and finds you installing multiple cameras on their infrastructure for private surveillance youre pr0jably going to get charged with all sorte of business violations that will cost you thousandw ler camera plus the citys cost to inspect their infrastruxture.

> What about roads that don't have network coverage

Satellite. you can buy text bundles. Sure the kit would cost a little bit more, but nothing major.

Solar panels, probably.

You'll either have to do this guerrilla style, in which case solar panels will be far too obvious. Or you'll have to apply for all relevant permits, in which case you'll never get them.

Permits? We're not talking a solar farm to power a small device. There are a lot of trail cams that have solar built in, are very small, camouflaged, and motion activated with 20MP cameras for under $200.

We're talking about filming major roads here. "Motion activated" effectively means running 24/7. No way a built in solar panel in a camouflaged trail camera will manage that. Also it doesn't matter how small the device is, if you legally want to attach a camera to any sort of infrastructure overlooking a road, then yes you need permits you almost certainly will not get. You could possibly attach it to a pole on private land next to the road, but even then you'd need the permission of the land owner.

Partner with roadside billboard providers. Sell it to them on the cheap as "analytics", and then just re-sell the LPR data.

I wonder if something like this already exists. This seems like a great business.

By great business I mean it seems like something people would say for. I don’t know if it would actually be valuable data to billboard owners though. But I can imagine a mega unicorn startup advertising IRL advertisement analytics and back-selling the data to tons of data brokers.

I suppose it depends on the jurisdiction. For instance, some courts, like the 9th District Court of Appeals have ruled that cities can't remove homeless camping on public property. Public forests are public, and there's lots of trail cams.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/court-ruling-homless...

Forcibly moving living people and removing unattended property are entirely different scenarios.

Yeah, the issue with those who are homeless is that it essentially criminalizes living for people who cannot rent or own, and thus infringes on their liberties.

There’s no right to hang up privately owned cameras in public.

I am imagining an army of homeless sitting at every intersection in the US holding surveillance cameras and getting paid by # of unique plates scanned per minute

Reminds me of the company that got homeless people to be 4g wifi hotspots at SXSW

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/03/13/148506762...

A random solar powered android phone is found fastened to a bridge and you can be sure the police are going to look into it and take it down.

Put a police sticker on it and they will think it's theirs and leave it alone.

buy the data from someone else.

That's not how the market works.

For reference: Speed cameras have an annual operating cost of ~$30,000/year.[1]

[1]: https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news...

I suspect speed cameras have to produce results that are verifiable in court, while ALPR cameras just best-effort help locate cars.

$1000 per yr in actual op cost. $29000 p/y to pay the contracted company to say it's $30k.

Of course I'm exaggerating. But at the same time gov is not known for being efficient + effective.

"I will place and maintain"

I suspect a lot of that $50,000 a year would get burned getting a single camera installed.

Only if you do it legally

Why do you think any city in any Western country will allow you to pepper public property with thousands of surveillance devices?

Right, gov't doesn't like competition

What does your SLA look like? Do I get to pick the roads? And when do I get my $50k back when you fail to deliver?

SLA: 75% of the cars that pass will be captured. The 25% covers equipment failure/theft/service outage/etc. This applies to the whole set, not per camera.

We mutually agree the roads - but it's unlikely I'll disagree unless you want to place four cameras per country worldwide to maximize logistics difficulties.

Half upfront, half when the service has been operating 3 months. Full refund if SLA not met. If you can show you're very solvent, you can pay in arrears instead.

>for $50/yr..... Minimum how many years?

I see software doesn't seem to be incuded.

Also, your numbers sound like you like to bid for government contracts.

1 year minimum (my breakeven point is 8 months optimistically, 12 months more realistically, and the profit comes from either you continuing the contract past 12 months or from someone else contracting me for the same cameras).

I know Philadelphia has a network of publicly accessible traffic cameras that were installed by the city. I assume other places have them too.

I thought those kind of networks were pretty common - here is Scotland's:

https://trafficscotland.org/map/index.aspx?type=26

Those cameras are placed in such a way and have a low enough resolution that it is impossible to read the license plates from the public data.

Fair point, you can almost read number plates on some of the cameras that are close to roads. Presumably the cameras are capturing data at a higher resolution than those public images?

I'd bet with a bit of data processing on that video feed (subpixel aligning and stacking all the frames, using the prior knowledge that you know the numberplate isn't changing as the car drives down the road), you'd be able to read them.

Yeah - I was squinting at some of them thinking that the appropriate tech could probably read them.

Quebec has the same: https://quebec511.info

Not even close. Cars on a freeway are doing 10 to 100mph. To capture a plate on a moving car you need less than 1" of movement during the exposure time.

At 10mph a car is moving at 176 inches per second, and to be able to read the plate with less than 1" of movement you need a camera that has a shutter speed of 176th of a second, or rounded up at 1/200th . To capture at 100mph a vehicle is moving at 1760 inches per second. To read the plate you'll need a camera that can capture at 1760th of a second, or rounded up to 1/2000.

I don't know of any android phones that can capture both at 1/2000th and video on a second camera at the same time to know when to fire the first camera.

You assumed the camera was capturing a photo of the car viewed from the side where the full speed is apparent (and ironically where the plate will not even be visible).

Most cameras point down the length of the road and the "speed" that the camera sees is only a fraction of that. You can record a video with a merely-ok phone and probably see most plate numbers assuming the lighting isn't terrible. Good luck getting a phone camera to work at night with an LED flash though

(oh and also, this assumes you want to catch people speeding, to capture every plate number you would just put the camera near a slow area like a bend or stop sign)

I assure you the motion blur, even looking down the same plane (parallel) to the car will not be able to capture the plate, even in decent light on video alone. Go try to take video yourself of a car driving by in full daylight.

The obvious approach is to just train your numberplate recognition algorithm with blurred plates. Since the blur is almost equal across the whole plate, and nearly all cars are moving in the same direction, you aren't really losing much information. Sure, it might be hard for a human to read, but for a deep learning algorithm I don't think it's actually any harder.

But there are other approaches too - like putting a 99 cent novelty zoom lens on the front of your camera to capture more light for your region of interest, allowing you to use shorter exposure times. Or an infrared strobe light that flashes once per frame (most numberplates are retroreflective, so IR strobes work really well).

'Something you could do anyway' with something that would actually cost a huge amount of money and effort to build (those $50 phones probably wouldn't have adequate cameras, and would still need to be supplied power by solar panels or something, not to mention being subject to removal).

did you know that the city of Menlo Park california requires companies to have cameras which can see for miles and track and report all vehicles that drive by them....

look up the largest company in menlo park...

I wouldn't be surprised if this is because of the trip cap thing that Menlo Park has - which seems purely aimed at Facebook to collect tax revenue. https://almanacnews.com/news/2019/05/01/facing-trip-cap-slip...

yup

a friend of mine told me - a few years ago - that BART had >4k cameras everywhere. He thought it might be enough to see fingerprints.

If only they put that effort towards... any other aspect of BART...

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