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Comment by hnbear | Hacker News Reader

Finally a reason for a custom plate:

The explosion of full color images on special plates has also created some concerns for law enforcement’s use of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), which automatically scan the plates of cars as they drive down the road or through tolls. Many police cars are equipped with ALPRs that scoop up all of the plates that drive by. A report by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators warned that high contrast backgrounds in these special plates can cause readability issues for ALPRs.

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Also, with hundreds of legal variations, how can the police keep track of them all? Counterfeiting a plate wouldn't require a very exacting match, just close enough to fly under the radar.

Personally, it’s all the other plate readers I care about too. I’m more a privacy nut than trying to evade police detection.

I’d imagine, as with so much, cops just outsource it to a data broker type service. They feed the camera footage to a third party API that spits back matched data. Either plate info or human info. My data doesn’t need to go into so many tracking DBs.

No way so many small agencies can do anything themselves.

May I ask why your plate information being out there concerns you? If it's 3rd party "plate readers" tracking your travel, your vehicle is already sending telemetry data outbound regardless, after you give the manufacturer 40 grand and you don't even get to pick which fancy picture goes on your car.

Nothing especially rational, although generally I like to minimize what I can. If I can easily reduce one form of data leak I will.

Your point is correct. There are many sources that we each hemorrhage data from, and it’s likely a lost battle.

Thinking a little more there are aspects of choice and consent here. I know I bought a car with telemetry, a cell modem in it, and a gps receiver, so it can be tracked. I’m not willingly opting into continuous surveillance by various third parties. It happens and driving is worth more to me then my loss of data tantrum, so I have a car and drive.

It’s not all rational.

That said, I also have an older car with no electronic monitoring and love it too.

> your vehicle is already sending telemetry data outbound regardless,

Not anymore, thanks to the 3G cutoff :P

All the responses seemed to go straight to scanners and such, but I'm just thinking about the cops using their eyes. A fake-looking plate would attract a cop's attention, but with so many real variants, how is a cop going to recognize a fake out of all the possible legal looks?

They don't care about the design, only the letters/numbers.

I've ported my plate numbers from design to design several times in two states.

Georgia reuses plate numbers, both on specialty plates and when there's a new general issue of plates. The combination of plate design and number/text is what is unique, meaning scanners cannot work properly if they don't recognize the design. In practice, it's common for violations to be assigned to the wrong vehicle because of confusion over plate design.

I see fake plates on an almost daily basis IN California (for whatever reason the white on black look is pretty popular,and not just with the Reviver plates).

Although fun fact - in California you can legally get a wrap of your license plate instead of having to physically affix one

The white on black is so popular that I've heard people inquire about it at the DMV and get upset when the person working there tells them it doesn't exist!

The Reviver "RPlate" is strange to me. I can't imagine paying that much myself. BUT, I can see a huge market if they're marketed toward lessors. I have to imagine I'm not the first to think of this, and maybe this is already out in the wild...but if someone missed payments and the car was to be repo'd, it'd be hilarious if the Reviver plate changed to "REPO ME" or something.

I’d never heard of Reviver till now. Seems to be solving problems I’ve never had.

“ Reimagined convenience, personalization, and safety.” a metal plate I got effectively for free from the DMV and screwed to my car is very convenient, and never posed a threat. Sure, I can’t change it from my smartphone, but never wanted to either.

But if you pay them $20/month, you'll be able to save 30 seconds a year by not having to put a new registration sticker on your car

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