
Sensor tracks who's driving in your neighbourhood - edward
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41008141
======
turc1656
Another big brother style invention. Wonderful. I'm sure they won't sell this
info to the government at any point.

My biggest issue, though, is the inequitable terms of tracking. If you live in
a given neighborhood then you can opt out. Great. That gives those people
preference. And treats everyone else as lesser citizens because they don't
live there. We're talking about public spaces so there really shouldn't be any
inequity. I think the company behind this sees the opt out ability for locals
as the only way to make this palatable to people on a large scale.

Also, how is "neighborhood" defined? I assume it's by them and has some radius
or something like that. And I'm also fairly certain to opt out would require
me creating an account and providing my name, address, and car info (at
minimum).

You want to record everything in public spaces? Fine, the law says you can do
that so I respect that right. But that does not mean I am a fan of this by any
stretch of the imagination. I feel like the real reason for this is something
more nefarious they have planned later on - it could really be a way to
finally track the remaining untrackables in our society who may be older and
not have or use all the fancy tech we have today that tracks everything. It
could also include people like myself that go to reasonable but not insane
methods to circumvent tracking methods simply because I don't like to be
tracked. There's really nothing I can do if they see me leave my house and
drive to my friend's place and hang out there for 5 hours. Since I don't use
social media they can't really connect that he and I are close friends without
a tool like this. They can now make that association, which was previously
near impossible to achieve.

~~~
Overtonwindow
The government already uses these devices. First, there's the ever-increasing
use of license plate readers on patrol cars. These have spawned all over the
place, not just on the cruisers, but also fixed points. Second, if you've ever
driven on the Dulles Access Road from DC to Dulles Airport, sensors pickup the
bluetooth ID of your tire pressure monitor, and other SIGINT/MASINT details.
More cities are using SIGINT/MASINT technologies to gather all of that data.

I can't tell you how I know this, but drive just about anywhere within 20
miles of DC and everything about you that is possible is processed, cataloged,
cross-references, and stored.

~~~
turc1656
I had never heard of anything like this! Thank you very much for this
information.

Luckily for me I drive an old car (definitely pre-bluetooth for sure) so that
part wouldn't apply to me, but the increasing use of plate readers applies to
everyone, everywhere.

~~~
joering2
It doesn't matter what you drive.

I cannot tell you where I know this from, but the newest top secret satellites
launched recently from Florida will cover the whole US terrain with infrared
scanners. Now, given every person has a different size of veins running under
their skin in slightly different ways, there are no two people with the same
configuration of blood circulation system. So unless you are wearing metal
armor 24/7, you are being tracked and cataloged of when and how long you been.

So please - update your tires to let your car know and to notify you when your
pressure is low. It might safe your life!

~~~
kaybe
There is a physical limit on the possible resolution. From that alone I call
bullshit on your claim. Do you have hard evidence?

~~~
irq
You are correct, as the size of infrared waves is much too big to resolve the
same level of detail that the smaller waves of visible light can.

But even beyond that, water vapor is opaque to most IR frequencies. So a
cloudy day would be enough to render this system useless.

100% bullshit imho.

------
fuzzywalrus
I like the false pretense for "neighborhood protection", when really this is a
lowering bar for plate collection likely for more intrusive advertising. Even
if you were able to pay cash or epay system obfuscate store purchases at a
retailer, they could still nab your plates.

Really, if a criminal were to drive in and loot a house in your neighborhood,
what self respecting criminal wouldn't use dummy plates or a lifted car to
commit robberies and at least some sort of identity obfuscation. Let's not
pretend this is a noble invention.

While out in public you may not have a right to privacy, there's certainly a
level of general anonymity that most of us assume. While such plate reading
technology has existed for some time, now it could be easily deployed by a
overbearing ex-lover to know if/when person is home or worse, a hate group
outside an abortion clinic.

File this under war on privacy to further usher in a technocratic hellscape
future.

~~~
659087
Won't take long for plate data from this highly ethical YC startup to be used
as blackmail/extortion material against someone who gets caught parking in the
wrong driveway while their wife/husband is out of town.

------
awjr
Anybody have a link to the actual company? I also think they've missed the key
use for this. Modelling traffic movements through a space.

Many villages/residential areas suffer from speeding and rat running, but
getting a local authority to take you seriously or even get the local police
to 'visit' the speeders and have a word is hard to make happen.

Community speed watch using ANPR cameras to create an average speed monitored
area is HUGE. Even working out people that are using the one way road systems
incorrectly helps.

This has huge application across multiple resident associations. To achieve
this you need to be able to time synch, know the location of each camera, the
shortest 'route' between each camera, and the ability to 'network' each
camera.

Where do I invest? Hell I have 16 residents associations that would bite your
hands off to get their hands on a cheap traffic profiling system.

~~~
tfnw
First time I've heard of "rat running", but am having a hard time seeing the
justification for the negative connotation. I can only see it as a more
efficient use of the road system.

Just because at some time in the past there was less traffic in your street
doesn't mean it won't (or shouldn't) increase in the future.

It seems to me that these residents associations are trying to push the
problem of higher overall road use on to others that don't have such strong
residents associations.

~~~
Ntrails
The idea is that if a main road has consistently high traffic, some road users
will take narrower, less well appointed roads (through villages for example)
at unreasonable speeds.

This leads to traffic calming measures as a way to counteract over-use of what
should be largely residential traffic. This is also why "Bypasses" became very
common - to get high volumes of commuting traffic away from residential areas
where possible

~~~
tfnw
But why should it be for residential traffic, if the through traffic is
driving within the speed limit? Again, just because the history of a street
made it appropriate for relaxed pedestrian use, should that now be in
perpetuity?

Maybe a better solution would be to put in barriers.

~~~
Harvey-Specter
> But why should it be for residential traffic, if the through traffic is
> driving within the speed limit?

The problem is that through traffic often drives above the speed limit.

~~~
tfnw
So, I guess you think that this new driver tracking would be cheaper than
traditional obstructions (i.e. speed humps, chicanes, etc...)? I guess it
could be, but what are the non obvious secondary and tertiary order costs of
tracking all car movement? This seems worrying to me.

------
KaiserPro
If you want to make this your self:

A cheap hi-res outdoor day/night webcam (~$150) A server running openalpr
([https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr](https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr))

Job done

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
My neighborhood has multiple people that drive through each day, just to steal
packages from people's doorsteps.

Sometimes they get photos of the thieves from their security systems, but they
NEVER get plate numbers. This could be an awesome solution.

------
anfractuosity
It seems rather intrusive to me.

Also unless I'm misunderstanding it doesn't seems to be capturing the speed of
vehicles either, although I wonder if doing that accurately would require more
precise mounting and calibration.

I was wondering if you could identify these 'sensors' somehow, but it looks
like they're using cell networks, which as far as I understand means there is
no plaintext unique identifier.

Does this mean something similar could be done with tracking of people via
facial recognition? (Or is that different somehow?).

~~~
pavel_lishin
It's just a camera in a box, hooked up to some image recognition software. The
convicted thief would have been caught just as trivially with a regular
security camera.

So, the answer to your last question is "yes", same as with any other camera.

~~~
djmobley
In practice, if you request assistance from the owner of a conventional
security camera, you will run into one or more of the following issues:

a) Discover the camera was a dummy;

b) It was out of service at the time of the incident;

c) The camera is a live stream only and does not record footage;

c) The owner is unwilling to pore over hours of footage to help you;

d) They find an image but the quality is insufficient to identify a person or
a vehicle;

e) They find a satisfactory image but are unable to share it with you for data
protection reasons.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Don't b, c#2, d, and e apply to this also?

------
Animats
_" The data is only made available to 'neighbourhood leaders'"_

This is going to go over big in religious communities. Control-freak religions
such as Scientology and Haredi Judaism will go for this. Both already operate
sizable camera networks in areas where they have power.

~~~
froindt
Oh goodness, and polygamist groups. TLC has an interesting show called
escaping polygamy, where a few people (formerly in groups) help others escape.
They're routinely followed when they drive into places like Colorado city.

It would be so easy to track everyone in those cities. And that would really
up the level of danger to those residents.

------
mrmondo
Are there any privacy guards that can be applied to number plates that are
effective in protecting you from being tracked?

I’m immediately reminded of Jon Ronson’s article ‘Who killed Richard
Cullen?’[1] where companies such as Experian sell relational geo-data on
people to whatever companies want to use that data to target and potentially
manipulate people.

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/money/2005/jul/16/creditcards.de...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2005/jul/16/creditcards.debt)

~~~
TACIXAT
Bike racks! I thought about doing an ALPR project for a while which got me to
start looking at plates. I always laugh when I see a bike rack that totally
obscures the view.

~~~
mrmondo
Yeah I’ve noted that quite often, similarly on motorbikes I’ve seen people
ride with flip-up number plates operated by a lever or cable on the side of
the bike that when actions - flips the plate horizontal so it cannot (easily)
be read.

------
Overtonwindow
This reminds me of the Burbclaves in the novel "Snow Crash" by Neal
Stephenson. Looking at the exclusive neighborhoods and subdivisions around
D.C. I can totally see this becoming a selling point, along with the gates,
armed guards, etc. that already exist. Tie these sensors into a network and
suddenly a wrong turn can get you put on a neighborhood "watch list" across
the city.

------
have_faith
It doesn't track who is driving in your neighbourhood, it tracks who owns the
car driving in your neighbourhood. A not so subtle difference.

I don't want mob delivered justice based on bad data.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It doesn't track who is driving in your neighbourhood, it tracks who owns
> the car driving in your neighbourhood. A not so subtle difference.

Actually, it tracks who is the registered owner of the license plate numbers
read off the vehicles driving in your area, which is subtly different from
even what you describe.

~~~
have_faith
Good point.

------
mmmBacon
A great addition to this would be radar to track vehicle speeds. In my
neighborhood we have an issue with jerks doing 50mph down our street(speed
limit is 25mph) to bypass a traffic light on an adjacent street. Kids are
often out and we've had a few near misses. Most of the offenders live nearby
and I'd love a way to shame them into slowing down. The city is unable and
unwilling to do any enforcement or install traffic calming on our street so we
don't have any other options except moving.

~~~
criddell
Would you need radar? If you have a camera pointed at the street, couldn't you
use the distance traveled in successive frames to calculate a speed? If you
already have one camera set up to record the tags, a second one should be easy
to capture the speed.

~~~
telot1
10 year veteran of the ITS industry here. It's not trivial to do camera speed
recognition. You need to do ranging in addition to the video detection to know
how far the vehicle is from the camera to accurately measure the speeds using
movement between frames. These systems cost in the $10,000+ range, while a
k-band doppler can be had for around $500. It's a no brainer to stick with the
1940's doppler technology ;)

~~~
ambicapter
Or could you just post two posts near the road in view of the camera with a
known distance between them...

~~~
votingprawn
I wonder if you could even use road markings or kerb stones as your
calibration to save the effort of measuring things out.

I'm admittedly rather unqualified in this area (I don't even know what the ITS
industry is!) but I have experience in estimating distances from video and
calculating speeds from pixel displacement (particle image velocimetry) and at
first pass it seems to me this would be a fairly straightforward problem to
solve.

Obviously radar or lidar would be preferable but a quick search for "OpenCV
speed estimation" shows people having success with simple single <$50 camera
setups.

~~~
logfromblammo
I'd use two infrared laser LEDs on a PCB with a low-res-but-high-speed
infrared light detector, and set up a retroreflector across the street.

If the LEDs are 10cm apart, and parallel to the street, and left dot vanishes
7.45645 ms after the right dot, then something was moving through the beams
from right to left at 30 miles per hour (13.4112 m/s). If right dot vanishes
4.06716 ms after left dot, something was moving left to right at 55 mph
(24.5872 m/s).

You can even get an estimate of vehicle length and acceleration if you watch
for the dots to reappear.

The frame rates and resolutions of most cameras aren't great for precisely
estimating speed. You would need a high-speed camera, which is wasted on a
surveillance application. So you just use two cameras, one that sees 16
infrared pixels with an ultra high frame rate, and one that sees many RGB
pixels at 24 fps.

~~~
criddell
> The frame rates and resolutions of most cameras aren't great for precisely
> estimating speed.

How good do you think the numbers would be? For example, the speed limit on my
road is 25 mph but I know people routinely drive through at 40 mph. Would a
camera system be good enough to record, say, 30 mph with error bars equal to
+/\- 5 mph?

~~~
votingprawn
I reckon an RPi type camera would be perfectly sufficient to estimate speeds,
probably to a higher accuracy than you ask.

Edit: a quick search led me to this
[https://gregtinkers.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/car-speed-
detec...](https://gregtinkers.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/car-speed-detector/)

and this [https://github.com/pageauc/speed-
camera](https://github.com/pageauc/speed-camera)

~~~
criddell
Wow! That's perfect. Thanks for the links.

------
glitcher
A bit off-topic, but reminds me of the creative workarounds people tried when
automated ticketing via speed cameras were first introduced in Arizona. One
loophole was that if they weren't able to reasonably identify you in the
traffic photo then the ticket wouldn't stand up in court. Some guy kept
deliberately speeding by these cameras wearing a monkey mask:

[http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix-
traffic/20...](http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix-
traffic/2017/02/03/phoenix-speed-photo-cams-driver-wears-monkey-mask-racks-
up-37-tickets/97447212/)

------
infectoid
I have a new product. It's called FlockOff. Basically it is a laser connected
to a battery connected to a solar panel that shoot a high intensity beam of
(UV? IR?) light directly at the Flock 24/7.

Also available is the FlockOff Mini. This attaches to the plate on your car
bathing it in IR light 24/7.

Good times.

Note: I don't actually know what I'm talking about here.

------
llsf
I could actually consider such system for my neighborhood, but only if it is
off-line (i.e. nobody can access the data, unless I decide to deposit some
during a crime investigation). A bit like a ATM security camera. I would not
mind to have the data being discarded after X days for instance. Since it is
supposed to be used to make a case of crime, if no crime was reported there is
no need to keep the data. Also, they would have to make sure that the data
collected is receivable by the justice system. Otherwise it would be
pointless.

~~~
garrettlangley
llsf, great points. we let the neighborhood decide who has access and how
access is granted.

some neighborhoods give every resident unlimited access while others require a
police report before logging in.

~~~
dragonwriter
> we let the neighborhood decide who has access and how access is granted.

“Neighborhoods” generally aren't legal entities that you can deal with this
way. When you say “neighborhood” here, are you talking about an homeowners
association (which is a _very_ different thing than a “neighborhood”)
or...what, exactly?

~~~
garrettlangley
Either Homeowners association or a Civic association. Both are legal entities.

------
Dirlewanger
As if pockets of sheltered NIMBYs just existing wasn't bad enough, let's now
make tools for them to enforce their own mini-police state for their already-
gated neighborhoods!

The Big One™ that hits and sends all of Silicon Valley crashing into the
Pacific can't come soon enough...

------
IanCal
Perhaps a different side to the comments already raised:

Why did YC invest in this? Are there published ethical rules YC tries to
follow?

~~~
garrettlangley
IanCal, sorry you feel this way. Our goal is simply to help police do their
job. Today, only 13% of crime is solved due to lack of evidence. We are trying
to help drive that number to 100% and eliminate crime in our neighborhoods.

~~~
blackguardx
What type of crime is your main target? Do you store video in addition to
plate numbers? How accurate are your speed estimates at oblique angles?

I think you are getting some pushback because a lot of neighborhood watch
groups have a reputation for looking out for "wrong looking people." The
Trayvon Martin case surely didn't help, either.

Also, crime in the US is an all time low, but perception of crime is at an all
time high. This is good for your product, but not for our society.

------
brightball
As the president of an HOA, let me tell you...the residents here will be
begging to get one of these.

~~~
garrettlangley
drop us an email sales [at] flocksafety.com

this is garrett (co-founder of Flock)

------
imcrs
It was going to happen regardless, but it makes me deeply cynical to see this
infrastructure going up in the folksy tone of "neighborhood safety." I guess
to justify erecting yet another component of the massive surveillance
apparatus, you have to have a startup-ey landing page and cool logo. I would
prefer to see this announced on a dingy government website, or even signs on
every corner stating "all movement is tracked" installed by bureaucratic
decree. At least then we'd be honest with what we're creating.

~~~
iamatworknow
These types of scanners already exist in your neighborhood, and probably have
for a couple of years. The next time you're near a police car, look at the
trunk. There will probably be three or four cameras pointing to the adjacent
lanes. They look like this:
[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_y7NgL5zbq3U/TER5EIjZ20I/AAAAAAAAAt...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_y7NgL5zbq3U/TER5EIjZ20I/AAAAAAAAAtk/8tbGe_LcJU4/s1600/0710_platereader2.jpg)

------
throw2016
This is sketchy. The desire for absolute security can only end in a total
surveillance state.

This kind of surveillance makes a mockery of the concept of privacy and
anonymity. Nor only is data collected but it is stored enabling profiling.

The whole point of rule of law is to find common ground to temper out of
control self interest. This is akin to stalking people going about their daily
lives and should be illegal.

Why is YC supporting this. Why is anyone supporting this? Unless you take a
stand minute to minute surveillance of everyone's lives will become the new
normal.

------
dmitrygr
When laws do not give you privacy, paintball guns will (see speed cameras in
Chicago for examples of how citizenry will __rightly__ deal with this)

~~~
Harvey-Specter
Why do you expect privacy on public roads?

~~~
TomMarius
Because I contributed for these roads.

~~~
Overtonwindow
Since the OP of this thread is new, they're probably trolling us, but giving
benefit of the doubt for a moment, you have no right to privacy on public
roads. Whether you paid for them or not is irrelevant. You could make that
argument for state action, but not private. Just because you paid your taxes
for that road doesn't stop me from recording your license plate, description,
time and date of every time I've seen your car, the race, gender, etc. of your
passengers, and posting that to the internet.

~~~
TomMarius
In my country it's illegal since communism was overthrown. I'm not discussing
the current legal status though. People should not be tracked on public
property - property built from their own money.

~~~
matt4077
This has nothing to do with who paid for what. Case in point: children, the
elderly, or foreigners should enjoy the same right to privacy, even if they
aren't (currently) paying taxes. It's not about property rights, it's about a
modicum of dignity.

~~~
TomMarius
I'm talking about contributions because I want to make an easy distinction
between public and private property. Everyone should have a right to do
whatever they want on their own property as long as they don't break the non-
aggression principle.

------
amelius
Simple question: is this legal?

Shouldn't there be a law against building databases containing other people's
data?

~~~
Overtonwindow
It's absolutely legal. Anything in public you can photograph, record, monitor,
etc. A different question to ask is: Should this be legal when certain data
points, such as a license plate number, are required to be public, and the
state forces you to disclose these.

~~~
amelius
I'm not so sure. It's legal to walk next to somebody. It's not legal to
_stalk_ somebody. The latter is just a more elaborate version of the former.

A similar thing can be said about taking photographs (which is legal) versus
recording people's behavior in a database (akin to drag-net surveillance,
which we do not trust the government with, let alone companies or
individuals).

~~~
criddell
> which we do not trust the government with, let alone companies or
> individuals

Actually, I think it's legal for individuals or companies but not for the
government. For example, the government can't install surveillance cameras in
a shopping mall, but the mall owner can. The government can't watch people
shop in stores, but stores are installing cameras to track how people move
through the store, what items they smile at, and what they finally buy.

I was listening to a podcast recently where they were talking about a future
where companies will drive around, pick up peoples trash, then process it to
build a profile of the household. Because trash is fair game once you drop it
off at the curb, they claimed there was nothing stopping anybody from doing
this.

~~~
Overtonwindow
Which podcast was that? If you happen to remember, please post.

~~~
criddell
It was in this one: [https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-
tech/episodes/628](https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/628)

It was a very brief segment and I couldn't find it, but the idea stood out to
me. I could totally see somebody thinking about this - thinking about how much
it costs to dispose of a bag of garbage plus the cost to process it compared
to the value of the data inside. I could see a company like Amazon figuring
out which neighborhoods have their best customers and wanting that data to
figure out how to sell them even more stuff.

It's simultaneously fascinating and abhorrent to me.

------
aivijay
These are great ideas to monetize now. As it grows, it will be the same as its
been happening with the big companies, like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc.,
where law enforcement will force to acquire these data and naturally as its a
company which owns it, its going to turn up to be used to scrutinize anyone in
the name of security etc., and privacy at all levels will be basically sold
for money. These guys start snooping around and project its a great tool for
safety. True there could be a fraction of safety around this. But at the end
of the day its just about money and becomes another surveillance mechanism to
monitor everyone which is bullshit and nonsense.

------
neuronexmachina
I've sometimes pondered what it would be like to have something like Sensor's
license plate tracking, but using a car-mounted dashcam. Even with just one in
every few thousand cars equipped, you could probably get pretty comprehensive
location tracking of where particular cars were at a given time. There would
be many uses for such a capability, both positive and negative to society.

------
glennb
I tried this with a working prototype and all about 3 years ago...I struggled
with the retail bdev side as no one wanted it because of privacy issues and
base monthly costs. I went over the use cases and market left and right, up
and down, with not much success. I still have a system in operation in front
of my business that has been online since June 2014

~~~
telot1
Mind reaching out to me glennb? Curious how you went about it, and I might be
able to help with a new market. Thanks! jp@slndrtech.com

------
tyingq
For the US, you can register a "somewhat anonymous" LLC in places like New
Mexico, then register your vehicle in the name of the LLC.

Unwinding who really owns the vehicle is still possible for government, though
still not quick or automated. It would make it very difficult for private
efforts like this one.

Lot of work though.

------
jetti
I'm interested in who owns the data after it is collected. Is it the company's
or does it below to the person who is paying the $50/year? My hunch is that
the company will retain rights over the data collected and it can become
another source of income for them over time.

~~~
garrettlangley
the neighborhood owns the data. we have zero plans to sell the data.

our goal is to provide police with the evidence they need to solve crime.

today only 13% of non-violent crime is solved. we think it should be 100%.

~~~
Severian
Define "the neighborhood". I personally don't know more than three or four
neighbors in my apartment complex. Who specifically is it then? I tend to
believe you actually meant to type 'police precinct'.

I applaud your sense of civic duty, but having a complete panopticon of all
outside activities for an unobtainable goal of 100% seems absurd.

~~~
garrettlangley
Neighborhood = Homeowners association or civic association.

------
glennb
,

