28 ms·

A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

313 points by srameshc 8y ago

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
“California malls” is too forgiving a headline. It’s one company, Irvine Company, a group with locations in the Bay Area [1]. They have phone numbers on their websites [2]. Reaching out to their retailers, particularly those with locations in Mexico, couldn’t hurt either. It might not be a bad idea to also compile a list of their retailers’ investor relations and Twitter accounts and tweet this article to them (here's their store directory [3]). I just started e-mailing the brands I know. [1] https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/centers/ https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/centers/ [2] https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/about/contact/ https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/about/contact/ [3] https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/directory/store-directory/ https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/directory/store-directory/
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  I would also settle for some California legislation that would kill Vigilant’s business model.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jumby 8y ago
    More than this? https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160SB34 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      That’s actually pretty solid. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
      - johndubchak 8y ago
        How solid is it? You can easily keep license plate data much longer by simply stating, "we are using it as evidence". For what? "An on-going investigation." Done. Now you have it for much longer than 60 days.
        toomuchtodo 8y ago
        It’s substantially better than no governance and oversight, and additional reporting of deviations can be mandated (require documentation of what ongoing investigations data retention extension requests are tied to). You have to start somewhere.
  - PretzelFisch 8y ago
    It might be time for a group of tech people to write some initiatives to limit these kind of business models. This kind of behavior should be pretty simple to get Californians to vote for.
    - Latteland 8y ago
      The hard thing would be getting enough signatures on the ballot, that costs a million bucks usually. Of course that can be powerful, consider the recent surprising rush for privacy policy legislation.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- matte_black 8y ago
  Reach out and do what?
  - hyperdimension 8y ago
    touch someone, presumably.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    Here's an excerpt from e-mail I just sent 7 For All Mankind's support e-mail: "You have a California location at Fashion Island [1]. It has recently become public that the operator of that mall, Irvine Company, is sharing customers' license plate data--due to no legal obligation and en masse--with ICE [2]. Irrespective of political affiliations, I believe we share a mutual respect for customers' privacy. Hoping your brand, currently running a #WeAreMankind campaign, is wiling to speak out about this inconsistency. Best, [JumpCrissCross] [1] https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/directory/store-directory/ https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/directory/store-directory/ [2] https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/10/alpr-license-plate-recognition-ice-irvine-company/" https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/10/alpr-license-plate-recogni...
- zzleeper 8y ago
  Irvine Company is not just "one company", it's HUGE... it owns half of Orange County, Newport Beach, etc. From Wikipedia: > The Irvine Company develops suburban master-planned communities throughout central and southern Orange County, in addition to residential buildings in Santa Monica, Silicon Valley, and San Diego.[6] The company also owns and manages office buildings in Milpitas, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Downtown San Diego, Mission Valley, San Diego, La Jolla Village/University City, Sorrento Mesa, Del Mar Heights, Newport Center, UCI locations, West Los Angeles, Pasadena, Chicago, and New York City.[7]
  - justinjlynn 8y ago
    It's the closest thing I know to the burbclave running megacorporations from Snow Crash.
    - artificial 8y ago
      Donald Bren is essentially a Duke.
  - akhilcacharya 8y ago
    I’m now surprised this isn’t a plot point in Arrested Development
- ipsin 8y ago
  Given this news, I'm going to contact some other large mall chains (e.g. Westfield), in the hopes that they'll confirm that they don't give out license plate data to third parties. I'll be interested to see how they respond.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Better yet, ask them to confirm that they don't track this stuff in the first place.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > ask them to confirm that they don't track this stuff in the first place I could see a reasonable case being made for collecting these data, storing them for a few weeks, and then deleting them, to protect against thieves. The problem here is that for the government to collect these data, they would need to follow certain processes. A private actor who isn't following those processes is placing those data with the government, thereby circumventing a critical check on police power.
      - ohbleek 8y ago
        Even if private actors were not involved, there wouldn’t be any way to verify that the information was destroyed by a governmental department. I suppose that is a possible area where a public blockchain that broadcasts the storage and deletion of data could be useful but now everybody has stopped reading this comment so they can talk about how blockchain tech is useless. Regardless, the indefinite/temporary storage of tracking data needs to be addressed at some point.
        jstanley 8y ago
        How exactly could a blockchain publish deletion of data in a way that can't be cheated?
        bochoh 8y ago
- CzechTech 8y ago
  Looking on this from the outside, it is bordeline comical what the american democrats have become. The way You american lefties are behaving is the best way to ensure 8 years of Trump. Instead of promoting cooler heads and more reasonable approach, some people from the blue team (maybe a minority, but a very vocal one) are now calling Bernie not leftist enough and proposing the idea of abolishing your immigration agency. Like, what? Not only is that an idiotic proposal, it's also a political suicide. Meanwhile your country is still the only industrialized country on Earth without universal health care.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > abolishing your immigration agency Nobody in this thread has proposed abolishing ICE. It is a non-mainstream political movement entirely unrelated to this thread.
    - gremlinsinc 8y ago
      a reorganization and less political administration couldn't hurt though. Some checks and balances maybe to ensure all choices they make are ethical, and move in a more humane direction... (though, I think we could deal w/ open borders if we had a national sales tax to capture taxes off their grocery/restaurant/etc use. Then they'd all be contributing to the bottom line, the only reason people hate them being here in the first place right? Nobody wants a freeloader, so let's make it so anyone living here can't be one.
    - lukev 8y ago
      And abolishing ICE (or what ICE has become) actually isn't that radical. It was created as part of the Homeland Security Act in 2002 as part of the (over)reaction to 9/11 . Before that, customs and immigration concerns were handled perfectly well by the United States Customs Service (in the Treasury Department) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Department of Justice.) What is new with ICE is the militaristic "hunt them down" approach to immigration enforcement while pushing back on due process for offenders (which they mostly get away with because these people are poor non-citizens). Suggesting we do away with that is not that radical -- it's actually quite civilized and a return to much more humane pre-9/11 norms.
justboxing 8y ago
> A hallmark of Vigilant’s solution, the ability for agencies to share real-time data nationwide amongst over 1,000 agencies and tap into our exclusive commercial LPR database of over 5 billion vehicle detections, sets our platform apart. 5 Billion vehicle detections seems like an awfully high (and possibly made up) number. Even if you allow for the same vehicle to be detected 5 or 10 times, the total number of registered vehicles in US was barely around 300 million.[1] Or did I mis-interpret that statement / claim ? [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicle...
- sandworm101 8y ago
  5 billion is nothing. A busy mall parking lot with many cameras could have 100s of thousands daily, most all of them repeats as cars come and go. Over a year, across multiple malls, it adds up fast.
- foota 8y ago
  It's probably instances of vehicle observations. If they observe the same, say, million cars a day for a year that's ~400 million observations right there. If it's multiple times a day you could quickly reach 5 billion.
- Phlarp 8y ago
  5 or 10 times seems low if they have sharing agreements with other third party collection companies or the agencies they serve. 30 or even 50 impressions doesn't seem that out of the question, how often do people go to the grocery store? A single collection point on your path to/from work could get ~40 a month.
- ggg9990 8y ago
  If they have ten cameras in a mall and catch a car ten times as it circles, they probably count it 10 times.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  You could get to that just via chokepoints. Examples: The RFK/Triboro bridge in NYC gets 60M crossings annually. I95 at the North/Carolina border gets 14M cars a year. State DOTs publish this information for all interstate and many other highways, so it’s easy to piece see where the flows are. Additionally, DMVs sell all sorts of information, and auto repair and dealerships sell whatever DMV does not. It’s definitely pretty easy to gather and correlate data like this. I’d assume that many players, from billboard companies to the feds to fast food operators are collecting this data. It is too cheap to collect and too valuable to many parties for that to not be happening.
Skunkleton 8y ago
To me the issue here is that this data is collected in the first place. It seems wrong to me that private corporations are tracking my every move.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  Then don't go on to their private property to conduct business?
  - bcassedy 8y ago
    So hole up in a cave because someone might be tracking you every time you leave the house? It's perfectly reasonable to require companies to tell us what data they're collecting and how it will be used.
    - ryanmercer 8y ago
      >So hole up in a cave because someone might be tracking you every time you leave the house? Welcome to the late 20th century. Cat's out of the bag.
      - forapurpose 8y ago
        > Cat's out of the bag. I don't see a reason to believe this. It would be easy to restrict this behavior.
      - nkozyra 8y ago
        Cat was also out of the bag with child labor. It was out of the bag with DDT. We have the capability to reverse societal trends when we as a collective find them to be antithetical to our morals. This is no different.
        ryanmercer 8y ago
        >Cat was also out of the bag with child labor. It's easy "you can't hire employees" and enforce it, it's a lot harder to go "you can't use the billions and billions of cameras in existence to record or track thing" and realistically hope to enforce it, especially when there is valid application. I'm quite fine with the government knowing where my government registered, government licensed, government plated car is going. To legally drive a car you have to be licensed by the government, your car has to be registered with the government and you have to have a license plate issued by the government. You're going to be driving on public roads and private parking lots that have security cameras, ticketing cameras, news cameras, rear view cameras, autonomous car sensors, intersection monitoring cameras, internet streaming cameras and not to mention just about every human being you drive by will have at least one camera on their person. This is a fact of life. Barring the discontinuation of using electricity this isn't going to change. Do you have a phone? You're leaving records on every tower your phone connects to. Do you use WiFi? You're leaving records. Do you have a car with OnStar? You're leaving records. Do you use something like Automatic, you're giving a company all of your driving paths. Do you use Uber or Lyft, you're leaving a trail of where you go. Are you an illegal immigrant or a human/drug/weapon trafficker that is under investigation using a specific vehicle to commit your crimes? Yes? Then don't go to the mall.
OceanKing 8y ago
This article takes a distinctly negative tone towards this practice. What’s the problem here? License plate data is public information, it’s the same as if a person standing on the street saw your plate and told someone else. There should not be any expectation of privacy in regard to one’s license plate or the location of its sighting.
- matte_black 8y ago
  The trigger here is ICE. For many people in this country, anything ICE does is bad now.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Well, when you rip kids from parents seeking asylum, and then can't even get them back to their parents in a timely manner, yeah, people get upset.
    - CzechTech 8y ago
      Maybe don't try to cross the border illegaly then? Seems like a valid deterrent to me.
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > don't try to cross the border illegaly then? I'm an American citizen. I don't like that my visits to and from a mall being automatically collected by private company for a federal agency with domestic policing capabilities. One can construct a Fourth Amendment case critical of this practice that is completely agnostic towards the illegal immigration debate.
      - InclinedPlane 8y ago
        You have no clue what you're talking about, you're just parroting a line you've been fed.
        8y ago
ggg9990 8y ago
The headline is completely misleading and actually understated the problem. One California mall developer is sharing their license plate data with one third party company which may or may not be sharing this data with other parties. This is worse because 1) companies have gotten so big that one company can control a huge number of shopping malls 2) huge-scale data collection and transmission is so easy/cheap that one decision by one person can affect the privacy of hundreds of thousands of people 3) the “service” model of software delivery makes it much harder to know what is or isn’t being done with the data that you’re generating by using that software
User23 8y ago
This happens at every gun show too.
- chrissnell 8y ago
  I go to gun shows and I've never seen it. What is your proof?
  - User23 8y ago
    Let me google that for you: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/gun-show-customers-license-plates-come-under-scrutiny-1475451302 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/gun-sh...
    - tclancy 8y ago
      Now can you Google the difference between a gun show and a mall for the commenter as well?
      - ryanx435 8y ago
        They are both places to buy goods and services, not really much of a difference tbh.
      - donarb 8y ago
        I would think this sort of thing would be of interest to gun owners as well. Some of the stores that are in the malls in the article sell sporting goods, including hunting gear.
    - chrissnell 8y ago
      "Happens at every gun show" is not the same as "happened at California gun shows". I don't like the scanning at all but this is a far cry from a national gun show surveillance program.
      - tjfl 8y ago
narrator 8y ago
I read articles like this and I think that one's opinion on this is directly correlated with whether one thinks that immigration laws should be enforced. I don't think most people are calling for immigration laws to be eliminated and anyone who manages to make it here should be allowed to stay indefinitely. What I don't get is the whole selective enforcement of laws thing. If someone somehow managed to get across the border that gets the person some sort of award for sneaking past the border patrol and thus a right to stay here for being a particularly sneaky lawbreaker? The legal reasoning behind all this just strikes me as ridiculously convoluted.
- test6554 8y ago
  I feel like there are two types of people, those who respect property rights and those who don't. You might say that one type of person wants everyone to be like docker containers, not interfering with one-another and another type of person wants to be like a monolithic application where anyone's problem becomes everyone's problem, but free resources are to be shared.
  - hartator 8y ago
    That’s a very bad analogy.
- finnthehuman 8y ago
  > one's opinion on this is directly correlated with whether one thinks that immigration laws should be enforced. Oh, absolutely. If someone doesn’t like the surveillance state, this is just another datapoint on an ever-increasing list. Still disappointing, but not uniquely so. The people so civically unengaged that they actively champion the increased surveillance of modern life right up to the point it’s used against their pet causes disgust me.
danhorner 8y ago
I'm a little confused about the mall operator's incentive to do this. Are they using ALPR for their own security and voluntarily sharing the reads? Is the provider giving them a discount to do so or paying to place cameras or something?
- jstarfish 8y ago
  A former employer of mine opted to install ALPR cameras at the entrances to/from the office park. It would establish a direct feed to the local police as to who was entering the property at any given time. I questioned why this was necessary and received a vague hypothetical about domestic abusers/deranged exes harassing employees/kidnapping suspects entering the property, with no clear indication as to how we'd flag such individuals without them having active warrants out. The only practical use case was perhaps catching vehicles with active Amber Alerts out that might try to hide out on the property. So the police basically got free intel from us, and we received no incentives to install or maintain such equipment from them.
  - dahdum 8y ago
    It's not meant to stop vehicles in real time, but that data can be used to solve break-ins (identify all new vehicles and narrow down), establish proof of harassment / breaking of a restraining order, etc.. So could cell phone records, but ALPR is simpler and fewer legal concerns. As a business owner, there's little downside, and most of the employees would have been caught on ALPR, toll booths, cell phone tracking, and other tracking a dozen times on their way to work already. I don't really like that location data is near-public information nowadays, but I don't see it getting any better.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  The government will just ask. Security types crave the opportunity to do a favor for the cops, and voluntary cooperation is not a legal issue. I served on a jury where the police were able to gather footage covering like 14/24 hours of the defendants time from a variety of camera feeds (up to 40 I think). After torturing us with introducing dozens of these videos to build the timeline, the case was fucked up (and defendant found not guilty) because they couldn’t explain NTP in the context of a camera used as the primary time reference point.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nerdponx 8y ago
The fact that private malls are even tracking license plates to begin with is disturbing. Obvious in hindsight, but disturbing.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  I think that most people would be surprised at the scale of LPR deployments by both private ( http://drnrecovery.com/2016-trends-lpr-affiliates/ http://drnrecovery.com/2016-trends-lpr-affiliates/ ) and public sector ( https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/dea-recording-americans-movements-highways-creating-central-repository-plate https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/dea-recording-am... ) actors.
  - k_harper 8y ago
    Can you comment on the scale of VIN reader deployments? They're harder to read because of the smaller size, but I'd guess they're less likely to be intentionally altered or obscured.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      I cannot. I imagine that would require much better cameras and cost more. On my car the tamper prevention measures make it hard to read from many angles as well. I think the solution for the use case you describe is coming in 2020, where cars will be able to talk to each other and to road sensors. That technology will probably be used to collect mileage taxes and demand pricing as cars shift to electric, so identity will eventually be a component.
      - reaperducer 8y ago
        No need to wait until 2020. Your car is already being tacked by sensors that detect the unique ID's of the transponders in your tires (used to tell your car the tires' air pressure). And since most people don't change their tires very often, with enough sensors deployed in various locations (parking lots, drive-throughs, gas stations, etc...) it is very easy to develop patterns of movement and build a profile of an individual person. It gets even worse when you realize that the tire sensor data can be date/timestamp correlated with your phone's bluetooth radio. So a pattern can be developed for inside movement, as well. Big retail chains are already doing this (the bluetooth part). No need to have the Radio Shack electric eye bing-bong on the front door to count customers anymore. Now you can just tally the bluetooth IDs and not only tell how many customers you're getting, but how many UNIQUE customers you're getting, which areas of the store they visit most frequently, how long they linger at various displays. And yes, they know if you're just there to use the bathroom, thanks to the phone you take with you in there. I wonder if some day this behavior profiling will allow stores to refuse you entry because you've been there 20 times in the last six months and never bought anything, but used the bathroom every time.
MatrixAlgebra 8y ago
Good, the more resources that ICE has to remove people here illegally from the country, the better, as long as that data is collected in a legal manner.
kaendfinger 8y ago
Let the tribalism begin.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
nodesocket 8y ago
Once upon a time Hacker News used to be a community for developers and startup/technology news. Political stories were quickly removed...
- nstart 8y ago
  And one day the community realised that technical innovations had deeper ramifications than something to nerd over or some fancy valuation in a startup with a quirky name. As an industry, software is still very young. And as it comes of age in the modern era, its impact continues to reach further and further into the fabric of society. We are more than ever before making ethical questions part of the conversation when developing technology. Politics and policies making their way into HN is therefore an inevitable evolution. Nothing else.
  - nodesocket 8y ago
    Here-in lies the problem, the assumption that HN readers have to all prescribe to a single political and "social" ideology. I would argue a majority of HN readers would prefer to stay neutral while on HN. If users want that content, there is certainly not a shortage of political focused websites. I am going to debate the fact that the HN community silences opposing opinions and comments, which won't be popular... But it is evident in the fact that I challenge you to show a conservative viewpoint post making the front page. I have personally seen comments and posts silenced by a minority that had the majority of votes countless times. Anyway, I digress which is the entire point. In the same vein as I loath sports pundits that try and always get political because it distracts from the essence of sports, the same is true of HN.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
darpa_escapee 8y ago
This data is collected, as well as shared with, the DEA, repo companies, debt collectors, etc. This has been the case for at least 5+ years, now.
iosDrone 8y ago
This is the first thing I've read that actually increased my support for the widespread use ALPR technology. Every illegal alien in this country is a criminal, by definition.
- FireBeyond 8y ago
  Hopefully you've never gotten a speeding ticket, parking or similar. Because most of those are classified at the same misdemeanor level as "entering illegally", which would make you a criminal, too.
  - dahdum 8y ago
    Speeding and parking tickets are usually infractions, and are non-criminal. DUIs, reckless driving, fleeing the scene, and the like are criminal misdemeanors or felonies. Illegally entering is a criminal misdemanor, so they aren't the same thing.
    - zardgiv 8y ago
      Unlawful presence, which is all anyone at a mall in California could be charged with, is a civil matter, not a crime. Unless there's some international border in Sunnyvale I missed, I don't think the ALPRs will catch any illegal entry.
      - dahdum 8y ago
        I wasn't arguing that. Just that illegal entry is not the same as a speeding ticket was my point. Overstaying on legal entry is civil, and just unlawful presence. I believe that's a bit less than half the population.
        zardgiv 8y ago
        Unlawful presence is 100% of the offenses you'll be able to catch in a Sunnyvale mall parking lot, and it disproves the OPs contention that they are all "criminal, by definition."
sixdimensional 8y ago
The malls in Southern California also use machine vision to detect your gender, approximate age, sentiment and unique facial structure through unique identifier tracking. If they have you from your license plate, to when you’re in the mall, as well as any information they can glean from your cell phone signal... yikes. Or at least there was an article some time ago how they were testing it.
- sixdimensional 8y ago
  Ah, here’s the article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2018/06/25/a-vision-of-the-future-mall-four-innovation-scenarios/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2018/06/25/a-vision...
blitmap 8y ago
I wonder where we're supposed to go from here. After 9/11 I worried about having something as convenient as Google Maps. Now we have more real-time surveillance and going outside I know I will be tracked and collected and bought and sold to private companies and the government. There's a psychological cost to knowing you're watched/exploited every time you go outside. In the past this was limited to what people might have seen you do in the public view. Now there are large distributed systems in place to collect an itinerary of your movements - even if you're not the focus of a search. I was born in California, and I don't feel like these systems keep me safer. It makes me want to participate in society less. Maybe I'm just paranoid. I wonder what this at scale, alongside other tracking systems, will do - and how it changes our behavior. I feel harmed by this.
- vinchuco 8y ago
  > Maybe I'm just paranoid This common saying. I'd rather be paranoid and informed than blissfully ignorant. But a person can only process so much while carrying on with their lives. The jewel beetle attempts to mate with an amber glass bottle it finds attractive until it dies from exhaustion. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/06/19/193493225/the-love-that-dared-not-speak-its-name-of-a-beetle-for-a-beer-bottle https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/06/19/193493225/t... We increasingly manufacture our own deception. Deep fakes, targeted advertising, you name it. We are both the beetle and bottle designers. It is definitely worth thinking about. It's much easier to design glass bottles than to save beetles from the best and worst time of their lives. Now, as crafty bottle designer, think of all the stuff you could do, given the necessary resources.
grizzles 8y ago
That was fast: “Irvine Company is a customer of Vigilant Solutions. Vigilant employs ALPR technology at our three Orange County regional shopping centers. Vigilant is required by contract, and have assured us, that ALPR data collected at these locations is only shared with local police departments as part of their efforts to keep the local community safe.” From:https://www.irvinecompany.com/press-release/irvine-company-statement-regarding-erroneous-report-about-alpr-technology-use/ https://www.irvinecompany.com/press-release/irvine-company-s...
pimmen 8y ago
For comparison: in Sweden there was a chain of gas stations who installed plate recognition cameras to record people who didn't pay for the gas (if you opt to pay cash, you get to fill your car first and pay later, with this system in place the clerks could refuse that you got to fill up your car first if your plate showed up in a search). The Swedish agency of data regulation was able to challenge the system in court and got the chain to dismantle the system, and with fines added to that. This was a couple of years ago, long before GDPR. Something like this would absolutely not fly on this side of the pond, and I'm very glad about that.
npi 8y ago
I'm not sure why all of the furor exists over a group of commercial properties doing this. The reality is that there are so many entities collecting this same information at so many places, and selling it to private parties, and keeping historical records for years - that there's not a good way to unring this bell. We just happened to find out about this one and the media is highlighting that ICE purchases the data. Scores of police departments and other government agencies run ALPR cameras, and share the results with Vigilant and other companies so that they can have access to all of the results that Vigilant holds. Philadelphia PD even ran unmarked vehicles with ALPR equipment bearing a Google Maps logo a few years back.[1] Repo companies and others are sending out drivers in vehicles with ALPR cameras who patrol mall parking lots, apartment complexes, etc and then upload all of that data to one of several companies including Vigilant. These folks can scan 15,000 plates a day without a lot of effort. Homeowner associations and apartment complexes (or their security companies) also frequently have these ALPR cameras along the paths of ingress or egress. Universities are using ALPR for parking enforcement (and then selling the data to companies.) [1]https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kb77dm/philly-police-admit-they-disguised-a-spy-truck-as-a-google-streetview-car https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kb77dm/philly-pol...

313 points by srameshc 8y ago

“California malls” is too forgiving a headline. It’s one company, Irvine Company, a group with locations in the Bay Area [1]. They have phone numbers on their websites [2]. Reaching out to their retailers, particularly those with locations in Mexico, couldn’t hurt either. It might not be a bad idea to also compile a list of their retailers’ investor relations and Twitter accounts and tweet this article to them (here's their store directory [3]). I just started e-mailing the brands I know. [1] https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/centers/ https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/centers/ [2] https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/about/contact/ https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/about/contact/ [3] https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/directory/store-directory/ https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/directory/store-directory/

deleted 8y ago
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toomuchtodo 8y ago
I would also settle for some California legislation that would kill Vigilant’s business model.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jumby 8y ago
  More than this? https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160SB34 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    That’s actually pretty solid. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
    - johndubchak 8y ago
      How solid is it? You can easily keep license plate data much longer by simply stating, "we are using it as evidence". For what? "An on-going investigation." Done. Now you have it for much longer than 60 days.
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        It’s substantially better than no governance and oversight, and additional reporting of deviations can be mandated (require documentation of what ongoing investigations data retention extension requests are tied to). You have to start somewhere.
- PretzelFisch 8y ago
  It might be time for a group of tech people to write some initiatives to limit these kind of business models. This kind of behavior should be pretty simple to get Californians to vote for.
  - Latteland 8y ago
    The hard thing would be getting enough signatures on the ballot, that costs a million bucks usually. Of course that can be powerful, consider the recent surprising rush for privacy policy legislation.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
matte_black 8y ago
Reach out and do what?
- hyperdimension 8y ago
  touch someone, presumably.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  Here's an excerpt from e-mail I just sent 7 For All Mankind's support e-mail: "You have a California location at Fashion Island [1]. It has recently become public that the operator of that mall, Irvine Company, is sharing customers' license plate data--due to no legal obligation and en masse--with ICE [2]. Irrespective of political affiliations, I believe we share a mutual respect for customers' privacy. Hoping your brand, currently running a #WeAreMankind campaign, is wiling to speak out about this inconsistency. Best, [JumpCrissCross] [1] https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/directory/store-directory/ https://www.shopirvinecompany.com/directory/store-directory/ [2] https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/10/alpr-license-plate-recognition-ice-irvine-company/" https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/10/alpr-license-plate-recogni...
zzleeper 8y ago
Irvine Company is not just "one company", it's HUGE... it owns half of Orange County, Newport Beach, etc. From Wikipedia: > The Irvine Company develops suburban master-planned communities throughout central and southern Orange County, in addition to residential buildings in Santa Monica, Silicon Valley, and San Diego.[6] The company also owns and manages office buildings in Milpitas, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Downtown San Diego, Mission Valley, San Diego, La Jolla Village/University City, Sorrento Mesa, Del Mar Heights, Newport Center, UCI locations, West Los Angeles, Pasadena, Chicago, and New York City.[7]
- justinjlynn 8y ago
  It's the closest thing I know to the burbclave running megacorporations from Snow Crash.
  - artificial 8y ago
    Donald Bren is essentially a Duke.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  I’m now surprised this isn’t a plot point in Arrested Development
ipsin 8y ago
Given this news, I'm going to contact some other large mall chains (e.g. Westfield), in the hopes that they'll confirm that they don't give out license plate data to third parties. I'll be interested to see how they respond.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Better yet, ask them to confirm that they don't track this stuff in the first place.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > ask them to confirm that they don't track this stuff in the first place I could see a reasonable case being made for collecting these data, storing them for a few weeks, and then deleting them, to protect against thieves. The problem here is that for the government to collect these data, they would need to follow certain processes. A private actor who isn't following those processes is placing those data with the government, thereby circumventing a critical check on police power.
    - ohbleek 8y ago
      Even if private actors were not involved, there wouldn’t be any way to verify that the information was destroyed by a governmental department. I suppose that is a possible area where a public blockchain that broadcasts the storage and deletion of data could be useful but now everybody has stopped reading this comment so they can talk about how blockchain tech is useless. Regardless, the indefinite/temporary storage of tracking data needs to be addressed at some point.
      - jstanley 8y ago
        How exactly could a blockchain publish deletion of data in a way that can't be cheated?
        bochoh 8y ago
CzechTech 8y ago
Looking on this from the outside, it is bordeline comical what the american democrats have become. The way You american lefties are behaving is the best way to ensure 8 years of Trump. Instead of promoting cooler heads and more reasonable approach, some people from the blue team (maybe a minority, but a very vocal one) are now calling Bernie not leftist enough and proposing the idea of abolishing your immigration agency. Like, what? Not only is that an idiotic proposal, it's also a political suicide. Meanwhile your country is still the only industrialized country on Earth without universal health care.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > abolishing your immigration agency Nobody in this thread has proposed abolishing ICE. It is a non-mainstream political movement entirely unrelated to this thread.
  - gremlinsinc 8y ago
    a reorganization and less political administration couldn't hurt though. Some checks and balances maybe to ensure all choices they make are ethical, and move in a more humane direction... (though, I think we could deal w/ open borders if we had a national sales tax to capture taxes off their grocery/restaurant/etc use. Then they'd all be contributing to the bottom line, the only reason people hate them being here in the first place right? Nobody wants a freeloader, so let's make it so anyone living here can't be one.
  - lukev 8y ago
    And abolishing ICE (or what ICE has become) actually isn't that radical. It was created as part of the Homeland Security Act in 2002 as part of the (over)reaction to 9/11 . Before that, customs and immigration concerns were handled perfectly well by the United States Customs Service (in the Treasury Department) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Department of Justice.) What is new with ICE is the militaristic "hunt them down" approach to immigration enforcement while pushing back on due process for offenders (which they mostly get away with because these people are poor non-citizens). Suggesting we do away with that is not that radical -- it's actually quite civilized and a return to much more humane pre-9/11 norms.

justboxing 8y ago

> A hallmark of Vigilant’s solution, the ability for agencies to share real-time data nationwide amongst over 1,000 agencies and tap into our exclusive commercial LPR database of over 5 billion vehicle detections, sets our platform apart. 5 Billion vehicle detections seems like an awfully high (and possibly made up) number. Even if you allow for the same vehicle to be detected 5 or 10 times, the total number of registered vehicles in US was barely around 300 million.[1] Or did I mis-interpret that statement / claim ? [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicle...

sandworm101 8y ago
5 billion is nothing. A busy mall parking lot with many cameras could have 100s of thousands daily, most all of them repeats as cars come and go. Over a year, across multiple malls, it adds up fast.
foota 8y ago
It's probably instances of vehicle observations. If they observe the same, say, million cars a day for a year that's ~400 million observations right there. If it's multiple times a day you could quickly reach 5 billion.
Phlarp 8y ago
5 or 10 times seems low if they have sharing agreements with other third party collection companies or the agencies they serve. 30 or even 50 impressions doesn't seem that out of the question, how often do people go to the grocery store? A single collection point on your path to/from work could get ~40 a month.
ggg9990 8y ago
If they have ten cameras in a mall and catch a car ten times as it circles, they probably count it 10 times.
Spooky23 8y ago
You could get to that just via chokepoints. Examples: The RFK/Triboro bridge in NYC gets 60M crossings annually. I95 at the North/Carolina border gets 14M cars a year. State DOTs publish this information for all interstate and many other highways, so it’s easy to piece see where the flows are. Additionally, DMVs sell all sorts of information, and auto repair and dealerships sell whatever DMV does not. It’s definitely pretty easy to gather and correlate data like this. I’d assume that many players, from billboard companies to the feds to fast food operators are collecting this data. It is too cheap to collect and too valuable to many parties for that to not be happening.

Skunkleton 8y ago

To me the issue here is that this data is collected in the first place. It seems wrong to me that private corporations are tracking my every move.

ryanmercer 8y ago
Then don't go on to their private property to conduct business?
- bcassedy 8y ago
  So hole up in a cave because someone might be tracking you every time you leave the house? It's perfectly reasonable to require companies to tell us what data they're collecting and how it will be used.
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    >So hole up in a cave because someone might be tracking you every time you leave the house? Welcome to the late 20th century. Cat's out of the bag.
    - forapurpose 8y ago
      > Cat's out of the bag. I don't see a reason to believe this. It would be easy to restrict this behavior.
    - nkozyra 8y ago
      Cat was also out of the bag with child labor. It was out of the bag with DDT. We have the capability to reverse societal trends when we as a collective find them to be antithetical to our morals. This is no different.
      - ryanmercer 8y ago
        >Cat was also out of the bag with child labor. It's easy "you can't hire employees" and enforce it, it's a lot harder to go "you can't use the billions and billions of cameras in existence to record or track thing" and realistically hope to enforce it, especially when there is valid application. I'm quite fine with the government knowing where my government registered, government licensed, government plated car is going. To legally drive a car you have to be licensed by the government, your car has to be registered with the government and you have to have a license plate issued by the government. You're going to be driving on public roads and private parking lots that have security cameras, ticketing cameras, news cameras, rear view cameras, autonomous car sensors, intersection monitoring cameras, internet streaming cameras and not to mention just about every human being you drive by will have at least one camera on their person. This is a fact of life. Barring the discontinuation of using electricity this isn't going to change. Do you have a phone? You're leaving records on every tower your phone connects to. Do you use WiFi? You're leaving records. Do you have a car with OnStar? You're leaving records. Do you use something like Automatic, you're giving a company all of your driving paths. Do you use Uber or Lyft, you're leaving a trail of where you go. Are you an illegal immigrant or a human/drug/weapon trafficker that is under investigation using a specific vehicle to commit your crimes? Yes? Then don't go to the mall.

OceanKing 8y ago

This article takes a distinctly negative tone towards this practice. What’s the problem here? License plate data is public information, it’s the same as if a person standing on the street saw your plate and told someone else. There should not be any expectation of privacy in regard to one’s license plate or the location of its sighting.

matte_black 8y ago
The trigger here is ICE. For many people in this country, anything ICE does is bad now.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Well, when you rip kids from parents seeking asylum, and then can't even get them back to their parents in a timely manner, yeah, people get upset.
  - CzechTech 8y ago
    Maybe don't try to cross the border illegaly then? Seems like a valid deterrent to me.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > don't try to cross the border illegaly then? I'm an American citizen. I don't like that my visits to and from a mall being automatically collected by private company for a federal agency with domestic policing capabilities. One can construct a Fourth Amendment case critical of this practice that is completely agnostic towards the illegal immigration debate.
    - InclinedPlane 8y ago
      You have no clue what you're talking about, you're just parroting a line you've been fed.
      - 8y ago

ggg9990 8y ago

The headline is completely misleading and actually understated the problem. One California mall developer is sharing their license plate data with one third party company which may or may not be sharing this data with other parties. This is worse because 1) companies have gotten so big that one company can control a huge number of shopping malls 2) huge-scale data collection and transmission is so easy/cheap that one decision by one person can affect the privacy of hundreds of thousands of people 3) the “service” model of software delivery makes it much harder to know what is or isn’t being done with the data that you’re generating by using that software

User23 8y ago

This happens at every gun show too.

chrissnell 8y ago
I go to gun shows and I've never seen it. What is your proof?
- User23 8y ago
  Let me google that for you: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/gun-show-customers-license-plates-come-under-scrutiny-1475451302 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/gun-sh...
  - tclancy 8y ago
    Now can you Google the difference between a gun show and a mall for the commenter as well?
    - ryanx435 8y ago
      They are both places to buy goods and services, not really much of a difference tbh.
    - donarb 8y ago
      I would think this sort of thing would be of interest to gun owners as well. Some of the stores that are in the malls in the article sell sporting goods, including hunting gear.
  - chrissnell 8y ago
    "Happens at every gun show" is not the same as "happened at California gun shows". I don't like the scanning at all but this is a far cry from a national gun show surveillance program.
    - tjfl 8y ago

narrator 8y ago

I read articles like this and I think that one's opinion on this is directly correlated with whether one thinks that immigration laws should be enforced. I don't think most people are calling for immigration laws to be eliminated and anyone who manages to make it here should be allowed to stay indefinitely. What I don't get is the whole selective enforcement of laws thing. If someone somehow managed to get across the border that gets the person some sort of award for sneaking past the border patrol and thus a right to stay here for being a particularly sneaky lawbreaker? The legal reasoning behind all this just strikes me as ridiculously convoluted.

test6554 8y ago
I feel like there are two types of people, those who respect property rights and those who don't. You might say that one type of person wants everyone to be like docker containers, not interfering with one-another and another type of person wants to be like a monolithic application where anyone's problem becomes everyone's problem, but free resources are to be shared.
- hartator 8y ago
  That’s a very bad analogy.
finnthehuman 8y ago
> one's opinion on this is directly correlated with whether one thinks that immigration laws should be enforced. Oh, absolutely. If someone doesn’t like the surveillance state, this is just another datapoint on an ever-increasing list. Still disappointing, but not uniquely so. The people so civically unengaged that they actively champion the increased surveillance of modern life right up to the point it’s used against their pet causes disgust me.

danhorner 8y ago

I'm a little confused about the mall operator's incentive to do this. Are they using ALPR for their own security and voluntarily sharing the reads? Is the provider giving them a discount to do so or paying to place cameras or something?

jstarfish 8y ago
A former employer of mine opted to install ALPR cameras at the entrances to/from the office park. It would establish a direct feed to the local police as to who was entering the property at any given time. I questioned why this was necessary and received a vague hypothetical about domestic abusers/deranged exes harassing employees/kidnapping suspects entering the property, with no clear indication as to how we'd flag such individuals without them having active warrants out. The only practical use case was perhaps catching vehicles with active Amber Alerts out that might try to hide out on the property. So the police basically got free intel from us, and we received no incentives to install or maintain such equipment from them.
- dahdum 8y ago
  It's not meant to stop vehicles in real time, but that data can be used to solve break-ins (identify all new vehicles and narrow down), establish proof of harassment / breaking of a restraining order, etc.. So could cell phone records, but ALPR is simpler and fewer legal concerns. As a business owner, there's little downside, and most of the employees would have been caught on ALPR, toll booths, cell phone tracking, and other tracking a dozen times on their way to work already. I don't really like that location data is near-public information nowadays, but I don't see it getting any better.
Spooky23 8y ago
The government will just ask. Security types crave the opportunity to do a favor for the cops, and voluntary cooperation is not a legal issue. I served on a jury where the police were able to gather footage covering like 14/24 hours of the defendants time from a variety of camera feeds (up to 40 I think). After torturing us with introducing dozens of these videos to build the timeline, the case was fucked up (and defendant found not guilty) because they couldn’t explain NTP in the context of a camera used as the primary time reference point.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

nerdponx 8y ago

The fact that private malls are even tracking license plates to begin with is disturbing. Obvious in hindsight, but disturbing.

Spooky23 8y ago
I think that most people would be surprised at the scale of LPR deployments by both private ( http://drnrecovery.com/2016-trends-lpr-affiliates/ http://drnrecovery.com/2016-trends-lpr-affiliates/ ) and public sector ( https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/dea-recording-americans-movements-highways-creating-central-repository-plate https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/dea-recording-am... ) actors.
- k_harper 8y ago
  Can you comment on the scale of VIN reader deployments? They're harder to read because of the smaller size, but I'd guess they're less likely to be intentionally altered or obscured.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    I cannot. I imagine that would require much better cameras and cost more. On my car the tamper prevention measures make it hard to read from many angles as well. I think the solution for the use case you describe is coming in 2020, where cars will be able to talk to each other and to road sensors. That technology will probably be used to collect mileage taxes and demand pricing as cars shift to electric, so identity will eventually be a component.
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      No need to wait until 2020. Your car is already being tacked by sensors that detect the unique ID's of the transponders in your tires (used to tell your car the tires' air pressure). And since most people don't change their tires very often, with enough sensors deployed in various locations (parking lots, drive-throughs, gas stations, etc...) it is very easy to develop patterns of movement and build a profile of an individual person. It gets even worse when you realize that the tire sensor data can be date/timestamp correlated with your phone's bluetooth radio. So a pattern can be developed for inside movement, as well. Big retail chains are already doing this (the bluetooth part). No need to have the Radio Shack electric eye bing-bong on the front door to count customers anymore. Now you can just tally the bluetooth IDs and not only tell how many customers you're getting, but how many UNIQUE customers you're getting, which areas of the store they visit most frequently, how long they linger at various displays. And yes, they know if you're just there to use the bathroom, thanks to the phone you take with you in there. I wonder if some day this behavior profiling will allow stores to refuse you entry because you've been there 20 times in the last six months and never bought anything, but used the bathroom every time.

MatrixAlgebra 8y ago

Good, the more resources that ICE has to remove people here illegally from the country, the better, as long as that data is collected in a legal manner.

kaendfinger 8y ago

Let the tribalism begin.

dang 8y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

nodesocket 8y ago

Once upon a time Hacker News used to be a community for developers and startup/technology news. Political stories were quickly removed...

nstart 8y ago
And one day the community realised that technical innovations had deeper ramifications than something to nerd over or some fancy valuation in a startup with a quirky name. As an industry, software is still very young. And as it comes of age in the modern era, its impact continues to reach further and further into the fabric of society. We are more than ever before making ethical questions part of the conversation when developing technology. Politics and policies making their way into HN is therefore an inevitable evolution. Nothing else.
- nodesocket 8y ago
  Here-in lies the problem, the assumption that HN readers have to all prescribe to a single political and "social" ideology. I would argue a majority of HN readers would prefer to stay neutral while on HN. If users want that content, there is certainly not a shortage of political focused websites. I am going to debate the fact that the HN community silences opposing opinions and comments, which won't be popular... But it is evident in the fact that I challenge you to show a conservative viewpoint post making the front page. I have personally seen comments and posts silenced by a minority that had the majority of votes countless times. Anyway, I digress which is the entire point. In the same vein as I loath sports pundits that try and always get political because it distracts from the essence of sports, the same is true of HN.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

darpa_escapee 8y ago

This data is collected, as well as shared with, the DEA, repo companies, debt collectors, etc. This has been the case for at least 5+ years, now.

iosDrone 8y ago

This is the first thing I've read that actually increased my support for the widespread use ALPR technology. Every illegal alien in this country is a criminal, by definition.

FireBeyond 8y ago
Hopefully you've never gotten a speeding ticket, parking or similar. Because most of those are classified at the same misdemeanor level as "entering illegally", which would make you a criminal, too.
- dahdum 8y ago
  Speeding and parking tickets are usually infractions, and are non-criminal. DUIs, reckless driving, fleeing the scene, and the like are criminal misdemeanors or felonies. Illegally entering is a criminal misdemanor, so they aren't the same thing.
  - zardgiv 8y ago
    Unlawful presence, which is all anyone at a mall in California could be charged with, is a civil matter, not a crime. Unless there's some international border in Sunnyvale I missed, I don't think the ALPRs will catch any illegal entry.
    - dahdum 8y ago
      I wasn't arguing that. Just that illegal entry is not the same as a speeding ticket was my point. Overstaying on legal entry is civil, and just unlawful presence. I believe that's a bit less than half the population.
      - zardgiv 8y ago
        Unlawful presence is 100% of the offenses you'll be able to catch in a Sunnyvale mall parking lot, and it disproves the OPs contention that they are all "criminal, by definition."

sixdimensional 8y ago

The malls in Southern California also use machine vision to detect your gender, approximate age, sentiment and unique facial structure through unique identifier tracking. If they have you from your license plate, to when you’re in the mall, as well as any information they can glean from your cell phone signal... yikes. Or at least there was an article some time ago how they were testing it.

sixdimensional 8y ago
Ah, here’s the article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2018/06/25/a-vision-of-the-future-mall-four-innovation-scenarios/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2018/06/25/a-vision...

blitmap 8y ago

I wonder where we're supposed to go from here. After 9/11 I worried about having something as convenient as Google Maps. Now we have more real-time surveillance and going outside I know I will be tracked and collected and bought and sold to private companies and the government. There's a psychological cost to knowing you're watched/exploited every time you go outside. In the past this was limited to what people might have seen you do in the public view. Now there are large distributed systems in place to collect an itinerary of your movements - even if you're not the focus of a search. I was born in California, and I don't feel like these systems keep me safer. It makes me want to participate in society less. Maybe I'm just paranoid. I wonder what this at scale, alongside other tracking systems, will do - and how it changes our behavior. I feel harmed by this.

vinchuco 8y ago
> Maybe I'm just paranoid This common saying. I'd rather be paranoid and informed than blissfully ignorant. But a person can only process so much while carrying on with their lives. The jewel beetle attempts to mate with an amber glass bottle it finds attractive until it dies from exhaustion. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/06/19/193493225/the-love-that-dared-not-speak-its-name-of-a-beetle-for-a-beer-bottle https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/06/19/193493225/t... We increasingly manufacture our own deception. Deep fakes, targeted advertising, you name it. We are both the beetle and bottle designers. It is definitely worth thinking about. It's much easier to design glass bottles than to save beetles from the best and worst time of their lives. Now, as crafty bottle designer, think of all the stuff you could do, given the necessary resources.

grizzles 8y ago

That was fast: “Irvine Company is a customer of Vigilant Solutions. Vigilant employs ALPR technology at our three Orange County regional shopping centers. Vigilant is required by contract, and have assured us, that ALPR data collected at these locations is only shared with local police departments as part of their efforts to keep the local community safe.” From:https://www.irvinecompany.com/press-release/irvine-company-statement-regarding-erroneous-report-about-alpr-technology-use/ https://www.irvinecompany.com/press-release/irvine-company-s...

pimmen 8y ago

For comparison: in Sweden there was a chain of gas stations who installed plate recognition cameras to record people who didn't pay for the gas (if you opt to pay cash, you get to fill your car first and pay later, with this system in place the clerks could refuse that you got to fill up your car first if your plate showed up in a search). The Swedish agency of data regulation was able to challenge the system in court and got the chain to dismantle the system, and with fines added to that. This was a couple of years ago, long before GDPR. Something like this would absolutely not fly on this side of the pond, and I'm very glad about that.

npi 8y ago

I'm not sure why all of the furor exists over a group of commercial properties doing this. The reality is that there are so many entities collecting this same information at so many places, and selling it to private parties, and keeping historical records for years - that there's not a good way to unring this bell. We just happened to find out about this one and the media is highlighting that ICE purchases the data. Scores of police departments and other government agencies run ALPR cameras, and share the results with Vigilant and other companies so that they can have access to all of the results that Vigilant holds. Philadelphia PD even ran unmarked vehicles with ALPR equipment bearing a Google Maps logo a few years back.[1] Repo companies and others are sending out drivers in vehicles with ALPR cameras who patrol mall parking lots, apartment complexes, etc and then upload all of that data to one of several companies including Vigilant. These folks can scan 15,000 plates a day without a lot of effort. Homeowner associations and apartment complexes (or their security companies) also frequently have these ALPR cameras along the paths of ingress or egress. Universities are using ALPR for parking enforcement (and then selling the data to companies.) [1]https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kb77dm/philly-police-admit-they-disguised-a-spy-truck-as-a-google-streetview-car https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kb77dm/philly-pol...