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

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

wired.com

61 pointswalterbell24 comments

> 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 recording the precise locations of these observations.

I could see datasets containing this information being weaponized while simultaneously discouraging public discourse. Very Orwellian.

If people dont want to know which candidate they support or their position on the bumper sticker topic de jour then they should not advertise them.

I can not fathom turning my house / car / body into a walking advertiment and them being upset that people notice.

There's a qualitative difference between the people around you knowing and some fedcop thousands of miles away being able to punch your name into a system that's integrated with another system and know your leanings going back X years.

A lot of voters actually sign a piece of paper to do exactly that. It’s called registering as a Republican or Democrat.

Many states have rules on who is allowed to vote in which primaries based on that same information.

But perhaps I am missing you point?

Party registration is uninteresting at scale as it just determines whether someone is the left or right half of the bell curve. It doesn't tell you if they're in the fat part or the long tail or what issues they care deeply about.

The feds are very interested in cataloging who does and doesn't have extremist views (the long tail). Militant commies, 3%ers, stuff like that. And once some bit of iconography is identified they can run a historical search to see who had it before it went mainstream enough for the feds to pick up on it.

While it's fashionable to denigrate extremists pretty much every useful and/or positive political movement starts out there at some point.

It's also something you do once, and don't have to repeat every year. You could have registered as a Democrat when you were 18, and never bothered to change your affiliation.

Putting a sign outside of your house is something you have to actively do.

Some states also let you not-vote in a primary based on that information so you can register independent to vote in your choice of primaries.

It's also not the greatest piece of information as evidenced in 2016 where Trump under-performed compared to other Republican positions (pg 6 vs pg 10 [1]). Like a party registration of Republican may likely mean you voted for their candidates but that's all it means, "likely". Empirically, people do not always vote their party registration (nevermind even vote).

But I do find it annoying how trivially the state seems to give away all of your information that people are ok with using as authentication ... Or just to send you a ton of text messages.

[1]: https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federale...

Some people have opinions that are outside of the purview of the two parties, for example ending the forever war.

But that difference has nothing to do with technology.

The Stasi could do the same thing from Berlin by calling their IMs in any Hintertupfingen on a squeaky old landline.

That's way more expensive and doesn't scale. And more importantly it introduces more parties to the process any one of which can complain "this is an F-ing waste of resources, while we might not like the guy he's a distraction and not worth our time".

The aggregate and ease of access is bad.

I for one don't want my next boss or the banks I apply for mortage at to know what I think about the capitalist system.

Looking at my music play history you could quite easely tell them what.

Still I am not hiding what music I listen to to those around me. Like bumber stickers.

Calling lawn signs and bumper stickers "public discourse" is a stretch. Moreover, isn't the whole point of bumper stickers and lawn signs that you want to tell everyone what your positions are? The expectation that you'd want to tell everyone what your political beliefs are except the government and evil corporations is absurd.

Since the beginning of time you could tell your neighborhood your mediocre opinions and not put rattle suppression on your bedroom windows.. But totally absurd that our fathers didn't expect a spy satellite with a 2 meter accuracy, a CIA agent who couldn't pass the international language test and a typist to record a precise biography of them.

Even if they stick to just plates, they're still abused: https://www.kwch.com/2022/10/31/kechi-police-lieutenant-arre...

I can only imagine it getting worse the more data they can grab.

> Private investigator Joseph Schillaci says while this situation needs to be addressed, he doesn’t see this situation being a common theme in police departments. Schillaci says public safety isn’t a concern.

Hand-waved away. I wonder if Schillaci is an ex-cop. Also weird in this article is multiple quotes from people who are unrelated to the case and openly just guessing at the details:

> "I don’t know how they’re charging with stalking," said O’Hara. "I don’t know the specifics of any of this we are just kind of guessing..."

But this has always been a problem. My father worked in Australia for what would be something similar to the Marshals Service, and even 25 years ago this was an issue - one of his coworkers was reprimanded after a completely unrelated incident discovered that he'd routinely look people up via license plate information, including a young woman who'd just won a car in a lottery (and was pictured with said car with an uncensored plate).

https://archive.is/L5MmU

When are we going to start seeing a database of the details of the people who collect this kind of data and build these kinds of databases?

I'd like to know more about the people who do these things and what motivates them.

Which is exactly why EU has data protection rights. At least they try, even if quite unsuccessfully and without the right long term plan

Reflective plate covering and oops sorry officer I didnt know.

Doesn't matter they will still track you with BT or TPMS.

+ there are cars without these tools for fools.

and hackers who share how to disable them.

+ broadcast someone else’s

You're piloting 4000 lbs+ down the road at speeds way faster than humans evolved to do so. You need to take responsibility for your actions, and part of that is being identifiable.

But I'm just salty because my car was totaled by a woman with expired tags and no insurance, and the police response was "sorry".

I bought uninsured motorist coverage recently. 1 in 5 drivers are uninsured. You can bet they are uninsured because of things like a suspended license or way too many accidents. I would estimate that roughly half of the accidents in the state of Texas involve at least one uninsured motorist. In addition, minimum coverage is like $30k. This would barely cover medical bills for one person. Much less more than one.

It also makes the claims process way better. You get paid right away to fix your stuff instead of playing games with someone else's horrible fly by night insurance company.

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