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Pennsylvania license plate reader SUV camouflaged as Google Street View vehicle
- jscheel 11y agoIt'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.
- gruez 11y agoGoogle should sue them for misusing their trademark.
- mowxeo 11y agoImplying 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.
- jessriedel 11y agoI don't think trademarks are restricted like that. Don't you have to actually be engaged in trade to violate a trademark?
- caseysoftware 11y agoUsually trademark infringement hinges on "likelihood of confusion" and there are factors that contribute/detract from that: http://www.bitlaw.com/trademark/infringe.html#factors http://www.bitlaw.com/trademark/infringe.html#factors I think it would be trivial for Google to demonstrate that this group is attempting to deceive the public to take advantage of the good will Google has and questionable behavior - like we have here - could negatively impact Google's brand.
- jessriedel 11y agoFrom that page (my emphasis): > In a nutshell, a plaintiff in a trademark case has the burden of proving that the defendant's use of a mark has created a likelihood-of-confusion about the origin of the defendant's goods or services. In this case, the defendant was not selling goods or services i.e., not engaging in trade.
- DrJokepu 11y agoI might be wrong about this, but I was under the impression that due to sovereign immunity you cannot actually sue states for trademark infringement.
- sickbeard 11y agowhat'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 11y agoNothing 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 11y agoI would argue that there is a difference between searching and spying/surveillance
- rtkwe 11y agoWith 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.
- chillingeffect 11y agoWhat is the source of your implication that there is something wrong? No one is implying that. All too often people interpret headlines as indications that something is wrong and instantly feel the need to "react." (typically by dividing into camps of denial and counterattack) It's simply an announcement. You're free as an American to do what you like using the benefit of this free information. It could just as well have been stated like this: "Hey everyone. Just so you know: If you see a truck around that has a Google logo on it and you think that you can act as if it's going to be taking a picture here and there for map purposes and blur out your face, it's not." "In fact, it appears to be owned by the government and we don't know exactly what it's doing. So, if you happen to be considering some activity, such as taking a shortcut through a neighborhood which would automatically delegate you a suspect due to your race not fitting in, etc., you might want to re-consider, since we have no idea what the legally-collected data from this vehicle will be used for."
- frgewut 11y agoMakes me wonder what will happen when an average phone will be able to do ANPR easily...
- gruez 11y agonot really useful unless you also happen to have access to a license plate database.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- netsharc 11y agoWell, 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..."
- mowxeo 11y agoThey have been able to for years now.[0][1] If you want to wonder, imagine this tech being used to identify faces instead of plates.[2] [0]https://github.com/SandroMachado/openalpr-android https://github.com/SandroMachado/openalpr-android [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SZ3kDr-dYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SZ3kDr-dYo [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMUpq-JRTIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMUpq-JRTIc
- jellicle 11y agoDon't think phone; think "car". Every computer-driven car will also be an ANPR/face-recognition vehicle that records and collects data about every single human and vehicle that it passes during the day, and sends that data back to its owner (which isn't you, it's Apple/Google/Tesla/Uber/Ford/whoever). Companies with a self-driving car fleet will have fantastic amounts of information, considerably exceeding the U.S. spy agencies and law enforcement, about the movements of U.S. persons.
- at-fates-hands 11y agoThis 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 11y agoDriving has never been anonymous. The license plate is readable from a distance for a reason.
- Aelinsaar 11y agoAnd walking?
- thrownaway2424 11y agoWhat about it?
- Aelinsaar 11y agoFacial recognition software.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoAgain I'm not really seeing your point. One goes about in public "openly and notoriously" as the legal jargon goes. It is expected that one's face would be recognized.
- Aelinsaar 11y agoI really can't stand people who use "Not seeing your point" as a substitute for "Disagree with your point."
- ChrisBland 11y agoI 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.
- mowxeo 11y agoGiven the crudeness of the sign, it's a likely explanation. You'd think that if they wanted to pretend to be something they aren't they would have put in a bit more effort.
- pbrb 11y agoRepo men use these setups to find cars to repo, and they can sell the slurped up data to companies who in turn sell it to insurance companies, law enforcement, banks, and security companies. First result from google on subject: http://abc7.com/news/repo-industry-collecting-data-on-you/379656/ http://abc7.com/news/repo-industry-collecting-data-on-you/37...
- Cshelton 11y agoyes..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.
- krapp 11y agoShould it be illegal? License plates are in public view, so it seems they're meant to identify the vehicle for whomever sees them. If people have the right to record that number when reporting a crime (which they sometimes do) then surely the government has the right to keep track of it as well. That is presumably why they issue the plates and require them to be visible to begin with. It seems unreasonable to allow the existence of license plates and then complain when they're being used for their intended purpose.
- optimuspaul 11y agoSeems like they are suggesting that Google Streetview cars aren't government spy vehicles. I had never come to that conclusion myself.
- draw_down 11y agoHmm?
- TallGuyShort 11y agoHe'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.
- london888 11y agoIt's a needless way to alienate State and citizenry. Just say what it is on the outside.
- london888 11y agoIt's a needless way to alienate State and citizenry. Just say what it is on the outside.
- hackuser 11y agoThe 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?
- dsfyu404ed 11y agoThey might not be comfortably sure it will remain legal if they don't minimize the visibility of their technically legal activity.
- dexterdog 11y agoBecause it's harder to track the people you want to track when they know you're doing it.
- mgrennan 11y agoWhen and how did "Protect and Serve" become "Sneek and Spy"?
- abeppu 11y agoThis 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 11y agoGoogle can't put me in a box for the rest of my life. At least not yet.
- partycoder 11y agoNote 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.
- Terr_ 11y agoAlso with android phones: Identifying a known nearby wifi network can allow a faster estimate of the phone's location than waiting for a GPS fix. In a weird way, one privacy concern helps mask another: People spend time worrying that nefarious phone-software can locate itself even with GPS disabled... rather than worrying about nefarious server-software using a vast fleet of strangers' phones to locate and surveil their wireless equipment.
- JamesMcMinn 11y agoI 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 11y agoOr "games" such as Ingress.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- netinstructions 11y agoWhy equip cars and pay drivers to do this when ordinary people's Android phones can report WiFi MAC addresses, signal strengths, and GPS coordinates to Google? Android users are likely the ones wardriving without even realizing it.
- ars 11y ago
- kelvin0 11y agoIt'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?
- dpeterson 11y agoIt's odd that you don't see why guns are potentially more important. Because without guns or money (also something the left enjoys taking) the population is helpless to fight things like "being spied on and the loss of privacy".
- jrnichols 11y ago"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.
- rrggrr 11y agoIf 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.
- pitt1980 11y agodoesn'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
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
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- unabridged 11y agoI 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.
- beamatronic 11y agoWell what is the worst case scenario here? A google-like site where you could type in any plate and see its entire history ( aggregated from all the licence plate scanner sources )? There's no end to how bad this could be. Say with a free account you can see their history for the last 10 days but with a paid account you can have unlimited access! Also with the paid account, you can geofence any license plate and get SMS notifications when they go outside ( or inside ) a boundary. Where does it stop?
- unabridged 11y ago>Well what is the worst case scenario here? Public realtime video of every inch of the earth, and I honestly believe there is nothing we can do to stop it.
- beamatronic 11y agoThis was definitely alluded to in Snow Crash, with the gargoyle / CIC stringer concept
- the_ancient 11y ago>Well what is the worst case scenario here? Your car is spotted near a location that at one time in the past sold something to a drug dealer/grower/manufacture, Then you get your home raided (and possibly your dog killed, and children get to have flash bangs detonated in their beds/faces) all because your car was spotted some place the police took an interest in... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/12/28/federal-judge-drinking-tea-shopping-at-a-gardening-store-is-probable-cause-for-a-swat-raid-on-your-home/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/12/28/...
- godgod 11y agoAny government that has to hide it's actions from the people like this is a criminal government. Who are these people that get up every day and think it's morally acceptable to spy on the innocent citizens? Have you no honor or morals?