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Comment by encoderer | Hacker News Reader

No it doesn’t track. In his example, observing license plates is perfectly legal without a warrant. Looking in your phone is not. These are not at all alike.

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Here's my rebuttal: I don't want police sitting down and writing every license plate down 24/7 on every street corner tracking my every movement. That's bad. And they don't do that now, so saying "it happens today" is false.

It isn't possible for them to do that without sensors and AI everywhere. That's why using this technology is a red line.

Then it should be legal for citizens to deploy their own network that allows anybody to track any license plate?

Of course? We already have private entities doing this today. Private toll road operators such as United Bridge Partners already administers camera systems that collect license plates for toll payments. I would assume parking lot operators also do this, and private citizens could create a nonprofit network too if they wanted.

Are you suggesting that people couldn’t do that for some reason?

The challenge here is to ensure that any controls that apply to law enforcement operating their own hardware for this purpose would also apply to them obtaining this information from a third party. We don't need the mayor setting up "Totally Not The Cops, LLC" that collects this data and "sells" it to his police department to bypass warrant requirements.

Is there a law against that?

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