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I wish the article weren’t so light on details about the purchasing of license plate reader data. Does anyone know who is supplying this data? I suppose it’s p

I wish the article weren’t so light on details about the purchasing of license plate reader data. Does anyone know who is supplying this data? I suppose it’s possible that they went to every 7-11 in the country and asked them if they can buy a feed of their external cameras, but that seems haphazard at best. Is there some central clearinghouse where private security camera feeds are being aggregated? I can’t think of an upside for any business to participate in such a thing.

Reelin 8y ago
> Is there some central clearinghouse where private security camera feeds are being aggregated? I can’t think of an upside for any business to participate in such a thing. Given the current legal climate, the potential upsides are incredibly numerous and downsides few (for now at least). Which ones actually exist in practice will naturally vary based on information I don't have access to. A few that immediately come to mind: * Direct compensation. Give us your data (which you already have to collect for security purposes) and we'll give you money. * Access to a marketplace. Turn over your data, and you'll gain the privilege of purchasing other data that we have (or some variant on this). * Access to generalized queries instead of raw data. Turn over your data, and we'll give you a discount or perhaps not even charge you for answers to various questions about the world that you might have. The possible uses of (and thus temptation for) such data access are incredibly vast. I distinctly remember this being one of the business scenarios presented by a cubesat startup a few years ago. Consider: * Information about your clients. What other interests do they appear to have, based on the other places they go? How much expendable income do you estimate them to have, based on the part of town they commute to for work every day? In light of such information, which new products should you consider stocking? What should you get rid of? What political stances on your part would be likely to please or offend them? * Information about your competitors. Does the family that owns a particular vehicle also shop at your direct competitor? Do people who visit your competitor's storefronts spend more or less time there? * Information about where to do business. Assume that you obtain a list of people (or cars, or other database entry) that utilize you or a competing business. Assume that you then query the routes these people typically travel to determine commonalities. Now you can make a very well educated guess about what future retail locations are most likely to be successful. * Information critical to business strategy. Is your competitor struggling, or is their business booming? How full are their parking lots compared to yours? How is their supply chain doing - how frequently are deliveries being made to their stores? If your competitor is a middleman, who are their clients? That is to say, where are their vehicles regularly stopping off? If they're an online distributor, how many shipments do you estimate they're sending out each day? This list could go on just about endlessly, so I'm going to get back to pretending to be productive now.
sfont 8y ago
I remember seeing it mentioned a few times that tow truck/repo operations collect license plate images in their area. This was best article I could find talking about that: https://abc7.com/news/repo-industry-collecting-data-on-you/379656/ https://abc7.com/news/repo-industry-collecting-data-on-you/3...

Reelin 8y ago

> Is there some central clearinghouse where private security camera feeds are being aggregated? I can’t think of an upside for any business to participate in such a thing. Given the current legal climate, the potential upsides are incredibly numerous and downsides few (for now at least). Which ones actually exist in practice will naturally vary based on information I don't have access to. A few that immediately come to mind: * Direct compensation. Give us your data (which you already have to collect for security purposes) and we'll give you money. * Access to a marketplace. Turn over your data, and you'll gain the privilege of purchasing other data that we have (or some variant on this). * Access to generalized queries instead of raw data. Turn over your data, and we'll give you a discount or perhaps not even charge you for answers to various questions about the world that you might have. The possible uses of (and thus temptation for) such data access are incredibly vast. I distinctly remember this being one of the business scenarios presented by a cubesat startup a few years ago. Consider: * Information about your clients. What other interests do they appear to have, based on the other places they go? How much expendable income do you estimate them to have, based on the part of town they commute to for work every day? In light of such information, which new products should you consider stocking? What should you get rid of? What political stances on your part would be likely to please or offend them? * Information about your competitors. Does the family that owns a particular vehicle also shop at your direct competitor? Do people who visit your competitor's storefronts spend more or less time there? * Information about where to do business. Assume that you obtain a list of people (or cars, or other database entry) that utilize you or a competing business. Assume that you then query the routes these people typically travel to determine commonalities. Now you can make a very well educated guess about what future retail locations are most likely to be successful. * Information critical to business strategy. Is your competitor struggling, or is their business booming? How full are their parking lots compared to yours? How is their supply chain doing - how frequently are deliveries being made to their stores? If your competitor is a middleman, who are their clients? That is to say, where are their vehicles regularly stopping off? If they're an online distributor, how many shipments do you estimate they're sending out each day? This list could go on just about endlessly, so I'm going to get back to pretending to be productive now.

sfont 8y ago

I remember seeing it mentioned a few times that tow truck/repo operations collect license plate images in their area. This was best article I could find talking about that: https://abc7.com/news/repo-industry-collecting-data-on-you/379656/ https://abc7.com/news/repo-industry-collecting-data-on-you/3...