
Oakland releases months’ worth of license plate reader data - oxguy3
https://data.oaklandnet.com/browse?q=alpr
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jacquesm
Amsterdam did something similarly stupid. They released a large batch of
license plates which had been 'encrypted' using MD5, as well timestamps and
locations. It didn't take more than a day before someone had built the 'dude
where's my car' app that listed where a licenseplate had been recognized and
when.

Rumor has it this led to more than one divorce and the municipality has since
changed the way they store the license plates and will likely not take part in
the distribution of such sensitive data again. (At least, not voluntarily.)

The incident did wonders for people realizing that they too valued privacy.

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oxguy3
I found this while perusing their open data portal for other information, was
completely shocked that they would make this type of potentially very
sensitive information public.

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bahador
Could you please give an example of how this data could be misused now that
it's public? I'm already aware of how it could be misused when it was private.
TIA.

~~~
ris
Ever had a stalker?

~~~
CyberDildonics
Are the license plates the actual numbers verbatim?

~~~
niccaluim
Yes.

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lubujackson
Wow, before clicking I thought, "these better be anonymized" then before the
page loaded I thought, "even if they are, with just a few points of data
(like, I know someone went to work these 3 days but not these two days, which
plates match that pattern?) it would be possible to locate some people and
therefore know all other movements they made that month."

But then it's not even anonymous, so I could just look my neighbor up by their
license plate. What about jealous partners? What about thieves that instantly
know everyone's work patterns? What about your boss seeing if you actually did
stay home sick that one time?

These sort of "emergent" privacy leaks are interesting. Information that is
already "out there" but being collected and distributed for the first time is
like a system shock when it happens.

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bpchaps
Funny. I posted something similar about Chicago a few hours ago.

Copy/paste: Chicago Tribune pretty much did this after a FOIA request for red
light data was published. It's not searchable by owner name, but it's still
pretty terrible.

[http://apps.chicagotribune.com/news/local/red-light-
camera-t...](http://apps.chicagotribune.com/news/local/red-light-camera-
tickets/)

[http://apps.chicagotribune.com/news/local/red-light-
camera-t...](http://apps.chicagotribune.com/news/local/red-light-camera-
tickets/data/chicago-rlc-data.zip)

[http://www.chicagophotociteweb.com/](http://www.chicagophotociteweb.com/)

I've sent many FOIA requests for parking ticket and towing data - the license
data gets redacted every single time. I'm really curious about how the tribune
got that data. FOIA specifically forbids license plate information from being
released.

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jjwiseman
Ars Technica already got 4.6M scans from 3.5 years of collection, and all it
took was FOIA requests: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/we-know-
where-you...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/we-know-where-youve-
been-ars-acquires-4-6m-license-plate-scans-from-the-cops/)

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stoneyv
I already have been visualizing the Oakland alpr data. Thanks very much for
the links to the Chicago data. The Guardian has some interesting
visualizations for Chicago.

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joshontheweb
Are there any legal ways of protecting yourself from this sort of data
collection?

~~~
wes-exp
Well there is the Steve Jobs solution: don't have license plates.

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ycommenter978
There's a searchable map of the data at oaklandlpr.com

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ed
I assume this is accidental?

~~~
halycon
I imagine it's related to this: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2015/03/we-know-where-you...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2015/03/we-know-where-youve-been-ars-acquires-4-6m-license-plate-scans-
from-the-cops/)

