
Pennsylvania license plate reader SUV camouflaged as Google Street View vehicle - uptown
https://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-isnt-a-google-streetview-car-its-a-government-spy-truck
======
ChrisBland
I think this could be one of those really tasteless jokes that the people who
are stationed in truck made. I'd imagine it gets pretty boring in the car, and
someone thought it would be funny. It probably is funny to them, but taken out
of context it looks really bad.

~~~
Cshelton
yes..bad. Very, very bad.

I expect Google lawsuits to also be hitting them very soon. (Liable maybe? It
leads one to believe google is working with them, giving a bad representation
to Google.)

On another note: This kind of "passive" plate reading has got to stop. It's a
huge snowball waiting to happen. Next they put it on highways...traffic
lights...at which point any governmental agency will know where you went...,
when you went..., anytime..., ALL without a warrant....

How do we stop this encroachment on our liberties??

Note: Only speaking about the U.S.A., where this activity IS highly illegal
and violates our constitutional rights.

~~~
totalforge
Heh, Steve Jobs unknowingly solved this problem years ago. Apparently he
didn't want a license plate in order to protect his privacy, before plate
scanners were a thing. In California you have a certain amount of time after
buying a car to get the plate. Steve leased a new car at that interval, and
never had a plate.

~~~
devy
That loophole has been reduced to 90 days now and new bill has been introduced
to require new passenger cars to be issued with a temp license plate just like
many other states do.[1]

[1]:
[http://www.ktvu.com/news/4680503-story](http://www.ktvu.com/news/4680503-story)

~~~
areyousure
It's been a year since the bill was introduced and it appears to be
languishing in the Senate:
[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.x...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB516)

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jscheel
It's like a modern take on the "cable company" FBI van. Except now local law
enforcement is able to deploy advanced mass data-gathering technology without
any proper training or framework for handling said data appropriately.

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gruez
Google should sue them for misusing their trademark.

~~~
mowxeo
Implying Google hasn't sanctioned it, like undercover NYPD taxi cabs.

Edit: I'm not saying that's what happened, I'm pointing out that Google's
statements so far don't exclude that possibility.

~~~
eric_h
> like undercover NYPD taxi cabs.

Amusingly, these are the easiest unmarked NYPD vehicles to spot. They're the
only yellow cabs in the city with radio antennas.

~~~
dexterdog
They also give themselves away when they stop for minorities.

~~~
eric_h
Amusing, for sure, but I'm fairly certain the cops driving yellow cabs don't
actually take any fares.

I've also seen uniformed cops driving those cabs before.

~~~
dexterdog
That was kind of my point. They're not stopping to give a requested lift.

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partycoder
Note that streetview cars are not only for maps, they're also wardriving cars.
They collect information on Wi-Fi networks, so then you can map a router MAC
address to a physical location. They used to sniff wifi traffic too.

There was a tool ([http://samy.pl/mapxss/](http://samy.pl/mapxss/)) that
allowed you to interface that system. When I moved to a new home, my router
appeared on the old location for a few weeks, and then it got updated to the
new one. Creepy.

~~~
JamesMcMinn
I wouldn't be surprised if this was due to Android reporting MAC address and
GPS data back to Google, rather than a wardriving car.

~~~
partycoder
Or "games" such as Ingress.

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optimuspaul
Seems like they are suggesting that Google Streetview cars aren't government
spy vehicles. I had never come to that conclusion myself.

~~~
draw_down
Hmm?

~~~
TallGuyShort
He's suggesting that even legitimate Google Streetview cars are helping
government surveillance. We know Google's been asked to be a party to
surveillance before - it's a good cover for the government to get data from
large-scale war-driving, etc. Not outside the realms of possibility, but I
suspect there's likely another explanation here.

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at-fates-hands
This is actually pretty terrifying when you follow this to its logical
conclusion.

You're going after license plates, which are regulated by state governments.
It's illegal to obfuscate them, so there's no way to conceal your identity
like you can with some the CCTV stuff. It's essentially an easy, legal way to
keep tabs on your population. As the article pointed out, you can also tie
this to all kinds of available data, and start creating profiles for people.

This is really scary, scary stuff.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Driving has never been anonymous. The license plate is readable from a
distance for a reason.

~~~
Aelinsaar
And walking?

~~~
throwanem
Unless you walk around wearing a license plate around your neck, I'm not sure
how it's relevant here.

~~~
tomtoise
One could argue that you're wearing a license plate 'on' your neck. Facial
recognition and that.

~~~
lozf
Don't forget "Gait DNA"[0] for tracking your movement through a crowd, even
when your face can't be seen.

[0]
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6995061.stm)

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hackuser
The Democratic National Convention will be in Philadelphia in the next few
months. Possibly it's related to that.

If tracking citizens is legal and ok, then why do they have to hide it?

~~~
dexterdog
Because it's harder to track the people you want to track when they know
you're doing it.

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abeppu
This crowd is already aware that the public is more willing to entrust broad,
deeply personal datasets to profit-seeking corporations than to a government
which ostensibly serves them. But the people running the surveillance state
seem to always live in a parallel unreality, where their work is presented as
unimpeachably noble and necessary. To me, the silver lining in this story is
the indication that the people operating the surveillance machine _understand_
that we find their work strictly more creepy than the data collection
conducted by non-transparent, unaccountable, explicitly self-serving
corporations.

~~~
relaytheurgency
Google can't put me in a box for the rest of my life. At least not yet.

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mgrennan
When and how did "Protect and Serve" become "Sneek and Spy"?

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unabridged
I find it strange people here are worried about license plate readers (which
only record slivers of your location data) while at the same time they carry a
phone that transmits realtime location data to many companies (the
manufacturer, your provider, google or apple, and plus all the apps you have
installed). And if your car is less than 10 years old it probably has a phone
installed in it doing the same thing.

~~~
pdkl95
That's projection; maybe _you_ carry around a tracking device everywhere you
go, but that isn't universal. I know an increasing number of people that are
switching back to landlines (and other options like voip).

> car ... probably has a phone

Just like "smart" TVs, that's a feature that some of us will never buy.

~~~
unabridged
These measures will work for a while, but eventually there will be a video log
of everywhere you travel. Unless you wear a mask, disguise your gait, and mix
with other people doing the same thing, They will know.

~~~
pessimizer
I'm sure President Trump with be a wise steward of his new security apparatus.

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rrggrr
If the data they're collecting isn't being used in an active investigation
then its probably subject to FOIA requests. So, perhaps the effort to keep it
under wraps is to avoid a flood of FOIA requests for the data.

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kelvin0
It's a bizarre to see how many people are upset when gun laws even hint at
some regulation, but being spied on and loss of privacy is not even close to
being an issue for them. Isn't encroachment on personal lives a threat many
times worse?

~~~
jrnichols
"how many people are upset when gun laws even hint at some regulation, but
being spied on and loss of privacy is not even close to being an issue for
them"

I don't think this is true at all, at least in my experience. The gun owners I
know are against more gun laws (we already have 20,000 federal ones as it is)
and _VERY_ against a loss of privacy. They tie the two together often as
examples of government over-reach. In fact, many are against gun registrations
because it is a loss of privacy.

I think that privacy is definitely an issue for them, and they most certainly
view losing it as a threat.

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london888
It's a needless way to alienate State and citizenry.

Just say what it is on the outside.

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pitt1980
doesn't seems like a very good disguise

how often do you see a google streetview car?

shouldn't about 1 or 2 passes a year get them the info they need?

if you saw a google streetview car in the same neighborhood, 5 or 6 times in
the same week wouldn't it seem highly unusual?

\------------

seems like someone got overly cleaver to me

that the apparent sanctity of Google Streetview Cars was violated, and that
people seem upset, seems utterly laughable to me

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frgewut
Makes me wonder what will happen when an average phone will be able to do ANPR
easily...

~~~
gruez
not really useful unless you also happen to have access to a license plate
database.

~~~
netsharc
Well, you have a data recorder. Add time, you have your data that you can
store in a database.

Recording daily activities and movements of cars (uniquely identifiable by
plates) is pretty interesting already, associating cars to persons can be made
later.

You might even be able to detect suspicious activity, e.g. "KNHX-631 usually
just commutes to and from work (shows up going downtown at around 8:30 every
day, shows up going uptown 17:30 every day) and one day it showed up at 2:30
driving to leave the city, and returned at 5:30. There's a person reported
missing that night..."

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sickbeard
what's wrong with government spy truck? Did someone come to the sudden
realization that there are sanctioned government agencies whose sole job is to
spy?

~~~
crasco
Nothing other than the fact that it's the slippery slope of "let me search X
if you have nothing to hide". For why it's scary, read this comment just
below:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11683721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11683721)

~~~
sickbeard
I would argue that there is a difference between searching and
spying/surveillance

~~~
rtkwe
With enough of these in a city police etc. can track every single person in
the city at little to no cost with accuracy only limited by the density of
these readers. It's within spitting distance of having a GPS tracker on every
car in the city 24/7.

I'd be willing to accept them if they only captured and stored information on
people with warrants or under investigation but without any cause police
shouldn't be able to track my every movement and store that data.

