
License Plate Readers Exposed – How Public Safety Agencies Responded - reitanqild
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/license-plate-readers-exposed-how-public-safety-agencies-responded-massive
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vgallur
This joke always comes to my mind with plate readers:

[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-URBVGKEBRss/U0GgQetIwEI/AAAAAAAAC2...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-URBVGKEBRss/U0GgQetIwEI/AAAAAAAAC20/b0DEdUTSCwo/s1600/i.img.jpe)

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baseten
Oh yes. little bobby tables we call him.
[https://xkcd.com/327/](https://xkcd.com/327/)

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lazyjones
I wish they wouldn't withhold information on locating such devices via
shodan.io or other methods. The more people look at such issues, the better -
and the victim's privacy has been compromised already, so it's unlikely that
disclosure would cause so much more damage to them as to justify obstructing
further security research.

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annnnd
Whenever something like this happens I am always left wondering if it would be
better to legalize and organize some sort of "locking service" which goes
around the (national) IPs, finds the holes, breaks in, fixes the hole and
sends a message to owner (if it is possible to determine who it is).

I think I am mostly aware of the implications, but I wonder if net effect
would be positive...

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oneJob
If that is all it will do why not write and release. Interesting analogy.
Viruses are now understood to facilitate horizontal gene transfer. Viruses and
the rest of our microbiome are functionally key constituents of the "human"
organism. This relationship is not a one off. It is found, to a greater or
lesser extent, in many biological systems. Yet, we have only formally welcomed
one such distinction into the public discourse surrounding the Internet :
Memes. I think there is an argument to be made that, software viruses are not
absolutely bad, and that code once release has a life of its own. We should
therefore accept, and in some circumstances embrace, such contributions to the
code base of the Internet.

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Shivetya
I am just dreading the day they move from license plate readers to face
readers. The technology is advancing fast enough for it to happen

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frgewut
Truth to be told - I'll buy one

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zo1
I'll buy them too. For every access point to our neighborhood/gated-complex.

As long as the privacy implications are solved, and reasonable. I don't see
any reason why local communities can't use this to prevent crime by excluding
undesirable individuals from gaining access.

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annnnd
I hope you mean whitelisting instead of blacklisting? otherwise, where would
you get the list of "undesired" (whatever that means) individuals?

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zo1
"Undesired" could mean anything the local community/neighborhood decides it to
be. Personally, I would not want anyone with criminal records in my
neighborhood/private property. Is that perfect? No, but it's a good start.

Whitelisting would also be more difficult to maintain, but is already done in
a lot of gated complexes I've seen. Where the individual phones ahead, and
get's given a ticket that has a day pass or something.

Ultimately, I believe this will get a lot of backlash as it will make a lot of
people uncomfortable as to the implications.

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smtddr
_> >Personally, I would not want anyone with criminal records in my
neighborhood/private property._

There are plenty of good people who get labeled criminals and plenty of people
would really should have a criminal record but avoided it. Don't make the
mistake of aligning morals/ethics with the law. What's legal often isn't
morally sound, what's illegal doesn't make sense half the time until you
follow the money.

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zo1
>" _Don 't make the mistake of aligning morals/ethics with the law. _"

I'm an anarcho-capitalist, so I don't align my morals/ethics with the law. All
I'm implying is that being a convicted criminal, to some extent, is an
undesirable property of individuals you want near your safe area.

>" _There are plenty of good people who get labeled criminals and plenty of
people would really should have a criminal record but avoided it._ "

You _have_ to assume the process by which they were convicted was reasonable
for the suggested idea. If that's not the case then of course you shouldn't
give too-much weight to being convicted. Again, it's up to the individuals how
they wish to restrict access to their private property. Some will take this as
a good signal for exclusion, others (like you, perhaps) will not.

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awjr
ALPR cameras are interesting. I've been looking at ALPR as a solution for
understanding how traffic moves through your city/town. Transport planning
feels like it is very much something done in the dark ages and primarily
focused around traffic flow. Scheme results are hard to determine and even
harder to reverse/tweak.

Creating a network of ALPR cameras that enable mapping of major routes and
centres of interest (e.g. schools) can also enable Local Authorities to focus
money "cleverly".

A case in point is Poynton, UK. Where a radical scheme has seen amazing
results despite restricting traffic massively.
[http://www.sustrans.org.uk/our-services/what-we-do/route-
des...](http://www.sustrans.org.uk/our-services/what-we-do/route-design-and-
construction/shared-space-busy-intersection-poynton)

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stevetrewick
Poynton seems to have achieved its result without the massively
disproportionate act of mass surveillance you seem to be advocating.

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awjr
Admittedly transport behaviour through the scheme could be measured with cable
vehicle counters, however determining the exact speed at which a vehicle
travels through the scheme could not be done without ALPR.

In the UK, there is a push to implement 20MPH zones throughout most
residential streets. Using ALPR you could easily measure the impact of these
changes to the average speed of vehicles. Yes you could identify "speeding"
drivers but I do not see that as a bad thing.

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mhb
_however determining the exact speed at which a vehicle travels through the
scheme could not be done without ALPR_

Of course it could. One way would be to ask for volunteers (compensated or
not) to put stickers on their cars which would uniquely identify them.

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awjr
Yes I have seen schemes like this used, but the analysis is at most done on
one day only and can be exceptionally expensive (labour costs).

To reduce costs local authorities use the simpler and poorer cable counts.
ALPR gives full visibility of traffic flow. Something other tracking systems
are taking to their logical conclusion
[http://insights.strava.com/](http://insights.strava.com/)

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mhb
Clearly using ALPR is convenient and produces better results. So would
studying people's sex habits by surreptitiously using their laptop cameras
instead of asking for volunteers.

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cjrp
Expectation of privacy in a private/public place.

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msandford
> Expectation of privacy in a private/public place.

Private spaces have "always" been private.

Public spaces have "always" been pseudo-private. I used to live out in the
country when I was younger with every house sitting on multiple acres. If I
stopped in the street and had a conversation with a friend, it was a private
conversation because we could see other people from a substantial distance.

In public people generally assume that what they're doing is basically private
unless they can tell that they're being watched, or other humans are so close
that there can be no privacy.

Technology has outstripped people's awareness of it though. It used to be, for
all of history until 20 years ago that license plates were only for other
people. Your car didn't care about it, the bridge didn't care about it,
license plates were only for other humans (government, police, citizens, etc)
to identify your car in some official-ish manner.

Now there are machines which can read them from a substantial distance through
difficult lighting automatically, nearly flawlessly and retain that
information with near perfect fidelity for very, very long time spans. It
shouldn't be surprising that people don't know this, don't like it when they
find out about it, and react negatively towards it.

It's like finding out that there is magic, and has been for years, and that
you've been purposefully kept in the dark about it so that some entity with a
lot of power has a little more in a vague and unsettling way.

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dang
Url changed from [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/lprs-exposed-
how-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/lprs-exposed-how-public-
safety-agencies-responded-to-major-vulnerabilities-in-vehicle-surveillance-
tech/), which points to this.

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NullCharacter
I can almost guarantee the people against ALPR are most likely the same people
who have no problem throwing a camera in somebody's face in your local
Starbucks or something, and then when asked to stop recording, they say "but
bro it's a public place".

