
ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US - tonyztan
https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/1/26/16932350/ice-immigration-customs-license-plate-recognition-contract-vigilant-solutions
======
jermaustin1
One of my clients does license plate reading and tracking. They have hundreds
of tiny customers, and a handful of VERY LARGER customers, so I can say with
100% certainty, there are hundreds of agencies across the USA already doing
this.

For fun, I tracked my rental car from Georgia to Texas after a vacation a few
months back to see how often I hit one of my client's customer's cameras. It
was a lot. I saw myself hit toll booths, go under over passes, and parked at a
service station. About 25 hits that my account had access to (probably
hundreds or thousands that I didn't have rights to see).

~~~
ams6110
IIRC there's an episode of _Jay Leno 's Garage_ that features a cop with a
license plate reader. He can sit on the side of the road and every car that
passes is scanned and checked for warrants. The answer comes back about as
quickly as the speed reading on a radar gun.

What they don't tell you is that all those plate numbers are going into a
database, time- and location-stamped.

~~~
MAGZine
In Saskatchewan, Canada, they no longer require yearly insurance stickers on
plates because the information is automatically checked by plate scanners on
cop cars (to the best of my knowledge).

The officer will still require proof of registration when pulled over.

~~~
doikor
We've had this since 1997 for car tax stickers in Finland when they decided it
was easier to just install a computer in every cop car that has the db. Same
db also has info on insurance and inspections and also the check has been
recently made automatic on the camera when previously the officer had to
manually enter the plate.

I wouldn't be surprised if the data about the scans goes the other way too.

Proof of registration was made electronic in 2016 and again checked on the
computer.

Driving a car isn't a right but a privilege so I'm on with this.

~~~
syrrim
>Driving a car isn't a right but a privilege so I'm ok with this

That's an interesting perspective. I get it in the sense of safe driving - if
you are swerving all about the road, you shouldn't be on the road - but it
doesn't work so well for registration and tracking. Bare minimum, people
should have a right to get around. So much of what people want to do in their
life is beyond walking distance, that some method of transport is necessary to
get there. This isn't a political right, but rather a pratical right -
something that people need to be able to do to live a full life. At the
extreme, house arrest involes banning a person from going anywhere, and is
clearly a (perhaps necessary) breach of their rights. In particularly rural
areas, banning someone from owning a car would amount to banning them from
going anywhere. So I think it makes sense to say someone has a right to own a
car.

We ban poor drivers from the road merely because other rights are more
important than driving is. For example, my right to safety is more important
than your right to drive. If your dangerous driving puts my safety in
question, than you should be taken off the road. However, if you manage to
drive without infringing other's rights, than the government shouldn't be able
to stop you from driving.

~~~
rayiner
The difference is that the roads are built by the government and are
government property. The government can quite reasonably control what happens
in its property without implicating peoples’ rights in the same way as when
its regulating what happens on private property.

As to rural areas—people who live there make a choice to live somewhere that
requires them to travel on government property to get anywhere.

------
tehlike
I said this before, and i will say it again.

Call your representative and voice your opinion. Donate to eff and aclu or any
other civil and digital liberties organizations, to help them protect our
privacy and rights through legal means.

Privacy evasion is slippery slope and it only gets worse.

Take this as your daily or weekly reminder to do something, even if that
something is donating just the price of a coffee.

~~~
ActsJuvenile
I am feeling pessimistic man. We had a few decades of privacy and human rights
progress post World Wars. But with Terrorism on the rise there is no way for
privacy or human rights to make a comeback. We will see increasingly clever
ways to water down laws we already have in place.

~~~
JBlue42
>Terrorism on the rise

Terrorism in the US isn't on the rise (unless we're counting white
supremacists marches, which the media doesn't) but the powers that be and
their cohorts are still milking the teat and our fears from 9/11 on this
stuff. People who have no reason to be scared of any of this also won't stand
up to it ('I'm not a criminal so it doesn't matter...'). Also funny that
when/if another attack does happen, it will be those of us in blue cities
(NYC, LA, SF, etc.) sacrificing our lives even if we're against this stuff and
the system as it is.

Fear is a business and some people are making bank. Osama would be proud.

------
mschuster91
Yet another piece of evidence that the US is turning into an authoritarian
state - as, to be fair, others do too (especially China!), but the US have the
unique advantage of being the technologically most advanced civilization.

In earlier times, when situations got too authoritarian, there were rebellions
and revolution. With the level of militarization in police and military and
the abilities made possible by today's technology (the Gestapo or the Stasi
would have done anything for this kind of power), it is very well possible
that a revolution might simply be made impossible or crushed before it even
begins, as you can simply single out and eliminate potential "leaders" based
on AI analysis of what people do... and what people think, as they post it on
Twitter, Facebook or their own "private" cloud space.

In addition, the future of AI is already showing its first signs - and
governments around the world have not shown _any_ interest in planning for the
inevitable millions that will lose their jobs or for the social unrest caused
by this. Quite to the contrary: governments and right-wing parties are
"looking back in time" and promising their citizens that they will bring back
the "good old times" and snatching up the votes of the Frustrated Old White
Men - and are very successful at this.

Scary indeed.

~~~
mc32
To quote madam secretary, "at this point, what difference does it make".

People have been more then willing to give up their data to FB, Google, Apple,
etc. The only difference is this is captured by governments --who at least in
theory represent the voting public.

It'll be interesting to see what the outcome is. Will the public demand the
government regulate industry as well as ask it to rein in its own
capabilities, or will they just get used to it and accept it?

We'll have to see. Some technologists, libertarians and interestingly an
intersection of right wing and left wing ideologies will oppose this for
different reasons, but in the end, I think they will be a minority in total.

~~~
mschuster91
> The only difference is this is captured by governments --who at least in
> theory represent the voting public.

Actually I trust a megacorp like Google, Amazon, Twitter or Facebook more with
my data than I trust the state.

The state can arrest me based on that data. The tech giants not, and they are
fighting like hell that the government does not get access to that data (as
that would compromise trust, and by that their business model). Given the
massive amounts of money involved, I have no doubt who will win that fight.

~~~
confounded
Anything Google, Amazon, Twitter or Facebook store on you is available to the
government. If they want to get hold of it to get something to arrest you
with, all they have to do is ask. While they may push back on some requests,
there's actually very little they can do with FISA/NSA requests, they're
almost always complied with.

I've heard them grumble about mass surveillance laws, but I haven't heard
about them openly defying them, or using any of their substantial lobbying
muscle in Washington against them. If they _really_ cared, they could encrypt
a lot of communications data, and simply not store things like real names, GPS
co-ordinates and IP addresses as soon as they're not necessary to provide a
service. The data wouldn't be as profitable, though.

If it makes you feel any safer, your license plate data is already being sold
to private companies who want to build a file on you for profit.

From the EFF[1]:

> _Vigilant Solutions ' subsidiary Digital Recognition Network, along with
> MVTrac, are the two main companies hiring contractors to collect ALPR data
> across the country. The companies then share the data not just with law
> enforcement but also with auto recovery (aka "repo") companies, banks,
> credit reporting agencies, and insurance companies. Data collected by
> private entities does not have retention limits and is not subject to
> sunshine laws, or any of the other safeguards that are sometimes found in
> the government sector._

[1]: [https://www.eff.org/pages/automated-license-plate-readers-
al...](https://www.eff.org/pages/automated-license-plate-readers-alpr)

~~~
mastax
The difference is that, the government has to _ask_ for the data, they can't
just casually sift through the universe.

(I'm assuming that FISA courts, at the very least, won't agree to a warrant
for "all of your data on everyone forever")

~~~
confounded
> _" all of your data on everyone forever"_

As far as we know (which is as little as possible), they can get all the data
on you as an individual, if you’re on a data retention list. This is outside
of data you generate happening to hit certain search terms

I qualify for such a list; I was/am a subscriber to _The Linux Journal_ , an
‘extremeist publication’ according to the NSA, at least at the time of the
Snowden leaks.

Am I still? It’s illegal for me to know. But it’s reasonable to assume that
the maximalist approach to data collection is shared by the government and
Google et al quite happily.

------
confounded
Taking a quick look at Vigilant Solutions has been interesting. Yet another
Israeli mass surveillance company started by ex 8200 IDF 'graduates'.

The founder Adi Pinhas may ring a bell --- he also founded SuperFish!

Worth noting that the EFF have been on ALPR tech for years. Signing up for
their emails has given me opportunities to contact representatives regarding
ALPR legislation and decisions I would have never heard about otherwise.

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aeff.org+ALPR](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aeff.org+ALPR)

~~~
Scoundreller
The same Superfish that US-CERT warned us about here: [https://www.us-
cert.gov/ncas/current-activity/2015/02/20/Len...](https://www.us-
cert.gov/ncas/current-activity/2015/02/20/Lenovo-Computers-Vulnerable-HTTPS-
Spoofing)

And US-CERT is a part of DHS, just like ICE.

~~~
confounded
Yes

------
pavel_lishin
Is it possible to fight back by poisoning the data? Is it legal to set up a
display by the roadside that shows randomly generated license plates, filling
their automated cameras with garbage data? Or is their data collection smart
enough to recognize a non-car, either technologically or by filtering
everything through a Turk-like equivalent?

~~~
DrScump
It would be ideal if you chose the fake plate numbers from the population of
actual plate numbers used by corporate plate-tracking vehicles, just in case
one encounters its "namesake" \-- you might trigger some highly entertaining
edge condition. ("Um, wait, that's... _me!_ WTF?")

~~~
pavel_lishin
Maybe, but that would be incredibly easy to filter out.

------
kd5bjo
Wasn't there a Supreme Court case a while ago that ruled it illegal for the
government to put a tracking device on your car? Given this recognition
technology, could someone challenge the visible license plate requirement as
an illegal tracking device?

~~~
Clubber
Plate scanning is against the spirit of the law; it's a workaround for not
being able to place a tracking device on your car. Unfortunately, since your
car is in a public place, and your plates are in the open, I don't think place
scanning will be ruled unconstitutional.

Of course congress could always pass a law making it illegal, but both our
major parties have authoritarian with regards to privacy.

~~~
leereeves
> Unfortunately, since your car is in a public place, and your plates are in
> the open, I don't think place scanning will be ruled unconstitutional.

The question GP asked was a bit different:

> could someone challenge the visible license plate requirement as an illegal
> tracking device?

In other words, in a world where plate scanning is ubiqitous, have license
plates become a tracking device? And if they are a tracking device, is
requiring them unconstitutional?

~~~
Clubber
Oh, that makes it more interesting. A workaround to that (thought not as
effective) would be face scanning. It wouldn't be as effective because I would
imagine it would be more difficult to get a consistent scan of an object
inside a car.

------
chucksmash
It would be nice to see voters react to these sorts of technologies (whether
they're provided by private companies or not) the way people reacted to the
idea of being filmed via Google Glass when they went to a bar on a Friday
night.

~~~
scarface74
Of course they won't. The same group of anti government people are very pro
hard on crime/ pro police.

~~~
JBlue42
Yeah, also love cops and firemen voting Republican - you know, tough on crime,
small business - while also pulling down taxpayer OT pay and pensions. Is
there any metric showing they Republican party is actually good at enacting
crime-fighting policies or are they just good at funding crime fighters? Seems
more like the latter.

------
8bitsrule
The Frog slowly boils.

~~~
tyingq
I thought of lobsters or crabs, but yeah. It's slow and not getting much
attention.

~~~
craftyguy
Too bad the end result is not likely to be as tasty as crab or lobster.

~~~
tehlike
It will be more like an episode of black mirror.

------
WalterBright
I decided to get my garage queen back on the road after 10 years. The tabs
being expired, I went down to the DOL to get new tabs. They claimed that the
auto records were purged after 7 years, and that there was no record of my car
in their system. I needed to present the original title to prove the car
existed and was mine.

~~~
jmaygarden
Title issues can be... interesting. I've had major headaches trying to title a
boat purchased in a state that doesn't have boat titles in a state that
requires them for registration. Eventually, you can lay everything out before
a judge/magistrate, and they can rule that your vehicle indeed exists and
belongs to you.

~~~
JBlue42
Don't want to be that guy, but I have read where blockchain might make this
easier in the future. I'm sure given the money hose that someone is trying to
work on this.

~~~
callumjones
A database can also do this.

~~~
JBlue42
True. It's odd that titles of cars, boats, etc. aren't already in one but it
seems laws vary by state.

------
coldcode
I remember reading a paper on confusing road sign recognizers by adding
certain bits of noise to the sign that completely baffled the recognizer. I
wonder if one could do this to the license plate which would still look normal
to a human but be unreadable to an AI.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Most plate cameras rely in part on the reflectiveness of the plate. You can
definitely modify a plate to be mostly illegible to these cameras but easily
human readable.

~~~
craftyguy
Given that most cameras are sensitive to IR (but human eyes are not), it seems
like you could also wire up some super bright IR LEDs to obscure the plate
too. Hmm... idea for a new license place 'holder'...

~~~
Scoundreller
Wouldn't it be better to use IR to saturate the camera?

I think they use IR to 'light' up the plates at night, otherwise the exposure
time would be too long to pickup a license plate.

Should make your car invisible to dashcams too.

I want an IR detector for my car, so I can know when I'm getting hit by one of
these things. Not that it will accomplish much.

~~~
craftyguy
Yes, 'saturate' is the word I wanted to use. Basically, the light source(s)
are pointed at the camera, and it is unable to make out anything near the
light source(s) as a result.

------
d--b
Anyone care to comment on the legality of the whole thing? Why are people
allowed to snap pictures of my car and store them in a database?

Do roads come with Terms of Service these days?

~~~
Clubber
In the US, anything you do in a public place is considered fair game. The
inside of your car does require consent, a warrant, or probable cause.

~~~
DrScump
... except for objects in plain view.

------
cinquemb
Another selector for potential metadata drone strike in the future… largesse
abroad tailored to domestic needs!

------
chatmasta
One solution is to purchase your car from and register it to a front company.
This way they can still track license plates, but not easily associate them
with owner names.

------
Scoundreller
New license plates in my jurisdiction are $59... Maybe something to do every
few years...

~~~
tehlike
You can buy car and keep it license plate free legally for sometime. I think
this is what steve jobs was doing.

New license plates wont help as it needs to get registered with the state.

~~~
ubernostrum
California allowed a grace period to obtain a license plate for a newly-
purchased car, and taking into account the allowed time to file for a plate,
and time to issue and mail it to the car's owner, this could stretch out to a
few months.

However, California's laws are changing due to a case in which someone was hit
and killed by a car that couldn't be identified for lack of plates. Beginning
January 1, 2019, all cars sold in California will be required to have a
license plate attached at time of sale (for new cars which don't yet have a
permanent plate, dealers will be able to produce a temporary plate).

~~~
tehlike
Great info, thanks for sharing. This is the bill mentioned:
[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB516)

------
cup
Disgusting development and a horrible example of how destructive technology
can be.

This reinforces my belief that engineers and scientist need to go through
mandatory ethics classes throughout their education.

~~~
EduardoBautista
Who gets to determine what is considered ethical?

~~~
tptacek
In general, the individual engineers do. The point of ethics training is to
recognize that you have ethical obligations that extend past your job
responsibilities, and that when your ethics conflict with your work tasks,
it's not your ethics that should compromise.

For some of us, that might mean not working on a project that we could
reasonably foresee would result in the deportation of children who don't speak
Spanish and have only ever known this country to some foreign country. For
others, it might mean not working on projects that assist women in obtaining
an abortion.

Obviously, there's no "class" that settles the differing ethical boundaries we
all have (though better ethics education would allow us to recognize the huge
subset of ethics that we tend to share). The point is to tune in to our own
ethics and not let the noise of professional life occlude them.

As a field, I think we've allowed ourselves to simultaneously believe that
we're doing the most important work that's being done this century, while at
the same time believing that we're powerless to shape the outcomes of our
labor. But that's not true at all: if you believe the former, then it's likely
that we have immense power over the latter! So, I think the point of the root
comment on this thread is well taken.

~~~
userbinator
_For some of us, that might mean not working on a project that we could
reasonably foresee would result in the deportation of children who don 't
speak Spanish and have only ever known this country to some foreign country.
For others, it might mean not working on projects that assist women in
obtaining an abortion._

Unfortunately it seems a lot of engineers either don't have much in the way of
ethics, or truly believe what they're doing is good. See all those willing to
implement things like invasive telemetry, DRM, and walled gardens, for
example. The "security" argument is pervasive and very convincing to those who
don't realise that it's also a way for companies to enforce more control over
its users.

This also brings up another point: if you had to choose between not working on
a project that goes against your ethics (leaving others to drive it toward its
undesirable-to-you goal), or work on it but silently subvert it (as in subtly
break it or otherwise impede its progress), which one would be the more
ethical thing to do? In other words, "do everything you're told, just some
things better than others"? Maybe I'm just optimistic, but the existence of
jailbreaks, rooting, and flaws discovered in DRM schemes really make me want
to believe that the latter exist.

~~~
tptacek
People have different morals and ethics. I don't have a problem with DRM, for
instance, and even if we debated to the point where I had to concede some
theoretical problem with it, it'd be pretty far down my list of ethical
priorities.

I'm not commenting to advocate for the notion that people should get an ethics
education so they'll all turn out to be good Democratic Socialists. I'm
saying, our field would be better off if people recognized that their ethics
intersect with the field heavily, and they should do this work mindfully.

