National License Plate Recognition Database

fbo.gov

11 points·o0-0o··2 comments

tl;dr - Homeland Security is taking bids for software that will gather license plate surveillance data, parse it and consolidate it into a searchable database where they can track the movement of vehicles anywhere in the country.

The good news: What? They don't already do this? The bad news: Phone call metadata is small time stuff. What Big Brother really wants is to know where you've been, anytime, anywhere.

Bear in mind, what they refer to with the innocent sounding phrase "phone call meta data" actually contains a lot more than simple log of call stats. It's:

• continuous, and historical, location data for a mobile phone (the phone polls the tower every 10 seconds I think)

• if a phone disappears from the network, they know if it was powered down (it sends the tower a message not to look for it) or if the battery was removed (it doesn't) ... And, due to the previous, they know the last location of the device

Sadly, even without this big-brother license plate location history database, they already know where you are and what your travel patterns are ... Just by the nature of you having a cell phone, not that you consciously asked to be tracked like this (or even knew about it when you decided to have a mobile phone).

Frankly both options horrify me.

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