4 ms·

Digital license plates finally hit the road in California

19 points by ALee 8y ago

closeparen 8y ago
I always thought digital license plates would be privacy controls against ALPR. You could thwart casual trackers by displaying a rolling code that only police could link to a specific vehicle registration, ideally generating an audit trail along the way. Or skip plates entirely and do a cryptographic challenge/response with a transponder. Updating registration stickers is such a weird non-problem to solve. They could've done that server-side years ago.
- raggi 8y ago
  Instead the plate embeds "targeted messaging" and makes tracking even easier. Cheap at only $7/mo!
- jakeogh 8y ago
  No way. It will make ALPR unnecessary while shutting out the smaller players, who will move to tagging cars with other characteristics. Electronic plates are like electronic ballots; just waypoints on the road to mandatory chips. TPMS is hilarious BTW.
jakeogh 8y ago
Finally? So typical to embed the propaganda at the lowest level. only took 3 years "finally!": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8950403#8950625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8950403#8950625 Whew, glad that "finally" happened! CA is like the England of the US. Collapsing under it's regulatory weight, but not fast enough.
ConcernedCoder 8y ago
Direct to consumer advertising in stop-n-go traffic...of course that's a thing.
- oceanghost 8y ago
  This idea seems so, hostile. I'm not allowed to use my phone in my car but I can look at advertising that turns bad traffic into a revenue stream?
rdiddly 8y ago
Oh boy, a new attack surface! drool, drool
King-Aaron 8y ago
Aside from the advertising angle, there's not many of those 'benefits' listed there which couldn't be achieved more cost effectively than with a traditional sticker (i.e. the handicap badge, etc). Police cars tend to already identify stolen or unregistered vehicles, and I don't see why adding vanity messages would be worth the additional money. All I can see here is increased complexity and cost, with a much shorter lifespan than a traditional aluminium or plastic plate. Of course, setting it up to have a refresh rate that was out-of-sync with multinova speed cameras (and distorting any captured image of it) would be interesting.
jenhsun 8y ago
So it's basically an iPad in the back. Can it play TV?

19 points by ALee 8y ago

I always thought digital license plates would be privacy controls against ALPR. You could thwart casual trackers by displaying a rolling code that only police could link to a specific vehicle registration, ideally generating an audit trail along the way. Or skip plates entirely and do a cryptographic challenge/response with a transponder. Updating registration stickers is such a weird non-problem to solve. They could've done that server-side years ago.

raggi 8y ago
Instead the plate embeds "targeted messaging" and makes tracking even easier. Cheap at only $7/mo!
jakeogh 8y ago
No way. It will make ALPR unnecessary while shutting out the smaller players, who will move to tagging cars with other characteristics. Electronic plates are like electronic ballots; just waypoints on the road to mandatory chips. TPMS is hilarious BTW.

jakeogh 8y ago

Finally? So typical to embed the propaganda at the lowest level. only took 3 years "finally!": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8950403#8950625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8950403#8950625 Whew, glad that "finally" happened! CA is like the England of the US. Collapsing under it's regulatory weight, but not fast enough.

ConcernedCoder 8y ago

Direct to consumer advertising in stop-n-go traffic...of course that's a thing.

oceanghost 8y ago
This idea seems so, hostile. I'm not allowed to use my phone in my car but I can look at advertising that turns bad traffic into a revenue stream?

rdiddly 8y ago

Oh boy, a new attack surface! drool, drool

King-Aaron 8y ago

Aside from the advertising angle, there's not many of those 'benefits' listed there which couldn't be achieved more cost effectively than with a traditional sticker (i.e. the handicap badge, etc). Police cars tend to already identify stolen or unregistered vehicles, and I don't see why adding vanity messages would be worth the additional money. All I can see here is increased complexity and cost, with a much shorter lifespan than a traditional aluminium or plastic plate. Of course, setting it up to have a refresh rate that was out-of-sync with multinova speed cameras (and distorting any captured image of it) would be interesting.

jenhsun 8y ago

So it's basically an iPad in the back. Can it play TV?