
Cheap automatic license plate readers are creeping into neighborhoods - jseliger
https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/automatic-license-plate-readers-hoa-police-openalpr.html
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neaden
There are an increasing number of things that were so person-hour intensive
before that they were legal but not practical, with the understanding the
police would only do them if they had a good reason, like following a suspect
as they went about their day. Now with the ability to do it so cheaply I think
we have to acknowledge that in these cases a difference in degree has
essentially become a difference in kind and we need to go back from square one
and evaluate how we use these tools.

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jmpman
I want one. Specifically I want one that includes a directional microphone to
detect noise violations, then automatically tweets the lic plate number, time,
street, direction to the police, and then continues to collect the information
providing predictive tweets to the police (Lic plate XYZ is likely to pass at
location A at time Y with a volume 10x the legal limit). I live next to a
noisy street and sound insulating my bedroom is over $10k. This would be a
much cheaper solution to the neighbors crotch rocket at 4am.

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atlasunshrugged
Brilliant idea, I have the same problem, but unfortunately for me the main
culprit is London's overground and the neighborhood cars are a small part of
the noise troubles so I'm not sure how much good it'd do me

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m463
It is dead easy to set up a raspberry pi to do license plate recognition.

In python, it's probably 10 lines of code.

Once you import the openalpr library, then you get a routine that in one call
takes a jpg image and returns an array of <plate-number>, <confidence %>
pairs.

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s09dfhks
Sucks they charge to use the python library

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m463
I think it is GPL:
[https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr](https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr)

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s09dfhks
OOOOOOO i misread their documentation, thank you!

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mattr47
License plates are public information. There is no website or state DMV that
you, a private citizen, can go to and get the information on the plate's
owner.

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neaden
That is true, but there are ways to get it either with some footwork or money.
The second concern is tracking people who you know. Imagine if I tracked every
time my neighbors cars entered or left their garages, and every guest that
came and saw them. This is perfectly legal, but also very creepy.

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1-6
It's not only about the big companies being accountable for holding data. What
about private individuals uploading gigabytes of data to the public web?

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ecolonsmak
So could someone mount these cameras on private property with views of major
highways and stand up a subscription service?

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ecolonsmak
looks like it's out there - [https://www.irbsearch.com/vehicle-
sightings.html](https://www.irbsearch.com/vehicle-sightings.html)

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bradknowles
Any idea how much this service costs?

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ecolonsmak
no idea, didn't look at it too hard.

