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People often discuss of surveillance in the context of companies they interact with every day, but kinds of tools like this camera are typically used by public

People often discuss of surveillance in the context of companies they interact with every day, but kinds of tools like this camera are typically used by public services. What 's the discussion about privacy wrt to the data that govt services have? Event GDPR glossed it over, giving these services basically free reign.

wil421 7y ago
Georgia Power has recently started to sell license plate scanners to police departments in my area. They use their utility poles to place small cameras that scan each license plate and alert authorities when a stolen car is spotted. The city I used to live in did a trial. They recovered more stolen cars in the first month they tried it than the whole year before. Here’s a press release about the program in general[1]. [1]https://www.brookhavenga.gov/police/page/brookhaven-police-cameras-score-nearly-100000-hits-month https://www.brookhavenga.gov/police/page/brookhaven-police-c...
- TecoAndJix 7y ago
  You can set this up on your own! https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/dedicated-license-plate-cam-project.505/ https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/dedicated-license-plate-cam-pr...
  - donaltroddyn 7y ago
    Depending on where you live, recording passing license plates could be very unlawful, and leave you open to significant penalties, so best to check before you set something like this up.
    - TecoAndJix 7y ago
      Great point to add. In the US, as long as you are capturing from private property there should not be an issue (but IANAL)
- lph 7y ago
  Not one word in that press release about privacy safeguards. The benefits are real, but without safeguards it will be abused: police officers and, in this case, also power utility workers likely have full, unaudited access to this data. That means they'll use it to stalk and harass people, e.g. ex-girlfriends, in addition to legit uses.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    I'm far more worried about the use case where the people in power decide to robo-fine everyone for everything and do not get tarred and feathered in response than I am about a few cops stalking their exes. The latter we basically all agree is not ok (and there's existing well known channels for punishing that kind of stuff when it happens). The former makes our society worse and we have no good way of countering it until it becomes revolt worthy.
    - magduf 7y ago
      Yeah, I like the idea of stolen cars being found very quickly, but there's a huge potential for this to be abused and used for robo-fining, which would truly be awful, and reminds me a lot of that 90s movie "Demolition Man".
  - magduf 7y ago
    >That means they'll use it to stalk and harass people, e.g. ex-girlfriends This is such a common trope, and it should be fairly well-known by now how so many American cops are basically bullies with guns, that I really have to wonder why any sane woman would ever date one. Horror stories about the things the ex-girlfriends and ex-wives of cops have gone through have been around for many decades, it's not something new. I have seen a non-negligible number of women on online dating sites who have specifically said they would not date anyone in law enforcement.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  It may be time to investigate adversarial stickers for my license plate numbers.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    A bike rack is more effective and also has the benefit of plausible deniability.
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    Tilt it 30 degrees and add a decoy frame for the recognizer to lock on to. No Mods needed to the plate itself.
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  You should check out the Radiolab episode, "Eye in the Sky" for the super-creepy ramifications of filming everything all of the time. Everything is a balance between privacy and security. In a perfect world the cameras wouldn't be abused, but in a perfect world there wouldn't be any crime. Personally I think we don't need any more tracking in our lives, and I'd gladly swap some stolen cars in order to avoid a surveillance dystopia. https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/eye-sky https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/eye-sky
- stevenicr 7y ago
  The stolen cars thing seems to be the goto for making these okay in places. People think about a car being stolen or carjacked and want the masked armed robbers taken out. However I believe most of the 'stolen cars' they are actually looking for and finding are cars where someone is being in their car payments and a repo notice gets sent out.. technically the car is stolen from the place that holds the note.. but I don't think the malls and other places that have installed these and sold the data are really wanting to put our press releases about how many broke people late on their payments they turned over to repo men/women.. They used that excuse to put some in at the airport near here, but I have second hand knowledge that they have been used to Id other people and investigate other things, so that data is not in a read - only - plates put into the db that are stolen and get info back, it's db data that is there and searchable shareable for other reasons, most the general public may never know.
wjnc 7y ago
Honest question: How did GDPR gloss over it? That law is just as applicable to government as to business? And we have both GDPR and transparancy laws to aid those willing to search for transgressions. Only nit I know of is that fines to the government are fines to the public, with less of a possibility to shop elsewhere or the firm to face consequences from say shareholders (in extreme: a high fine means higher taxes).
- ovi256 7y ago
  >just as applicable to government as to business That's a very optimistic reading of GDPR. In practice, LEO agencies legal counsel has to write them a compliance rationale doc supporting their need to use private data and that's it. I bet activists are gearing up to challenge some of those rationales in courts but those will be speed bumps at most. It's hard to see the judiciary constraining the powers that law enforcement traditionally had. I know of some Romanian park rangers who temporarily lost their fining powers until their GDPR compliance gets sorted out - they're low priority compared to other LEO agencies. It's funny to think that people degrading natural parks is a consequence of GDPR, yet here we are. Unless you have some specific LEO capability you wish GDPR eliminated, it's hard to see GDPR as anything else than an compliance burden on government agencies.
- buboard 7y ago
  The gdpr explicitly allows member states to override crucial articles for purposes of public security etc There is also a sense of immunity, since a state fining itself doesnt cost them anything. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-23-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-23-gdpr/

wil421 7y ago

Georgia Power has recently started to sell license plate scanners to police departments in my area. They use their utility poles to place small cameras that scan each license plate and alert authorities when a stolen car is spotted. The city I used to live in did a trial. They recovered more stolen cars in the first month they tried it than the whole year before. Here’s a press release about the program in general[1]. [1]https://www.brookhavenga.gov/police/page/brookhaven-police-cameras-score-nearly-100000-hits-month https://www.brookhavenga.gov/police/page/brookhaven-police-c...

TecoAndJix 7y ago
You can set this up on your own! https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/dedicated-license-plate-cam-project.505/ https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/dedicated-license-plate-cam-pr...
- donaltroddyn 7y ago
  Depending on where you live, recording passing license plates could be very unlawful, and leave you open to significant penalties, so best to check before you set something like this up.
  - TecoAndJix 7y ago
    Great point to add. In the US, as long as you are capturing from private property there should not be an issue (but IANAL)
lph 7y ago
Not one word in that press release about privacy safeguards. The benefits are real, but without safeguards it will be abused: police officers and, in this case, also power utility workers likely have full, unaudited access to this data. That means they'll use it to stalk and harass people, e.g. ex-girlfriends, in addition to legit uses.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  I'm far more worried about the use case where the people in power decide to robo-fine everyone for everything and do not get tarred and feathered in response than I am about a few cops stalking their exes. The latter we basically all agree is not ok (and there's existing well known channels for punishing that kind of stuff when it happens). The former makes our society worse and we have no good way of countering it until it becomes revolt worthy.
  - magduf 7y ago
    Yeah, I like the idea of stolen cars being found very quickly, but there's a huge potential for this to be abused and used for robo-fining, which would truly be awful, and reminds me a lot of that 90s movie "Demolition Man".
- magduf 7y ago
  >That means they'll use it to stalk and harass people, e.g. ex-girlfriends This is such a common trope, and it should be fairly well-known by now how so many American cops are basically bullies with guns, that I really have to wonder why any sane woman would ever date one. Horror stories about the things the ex-girlfriends and ex-wives of cops have gone through have been around for many decades, it's not something new. I have seen a non-negligible number of women on online dating sites who have specifically said they would not date anyone in law enforcement.
logfromblammo 7y ago
It may be time to investigate adversarial stickers for my license plate numbers.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  A bike rack is more effective and also has the benefit of plausible deniability.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  Tilt it 30 degrees and add a decoy frame for the recognizer to lock on to. No Mods needed to the plate itself.
brokenmachine 7y ago
You should check out the Radiolab episode, "Eye in the Sky" for the super-creepy ramifications of filming everything all of the time. Everything is a balance between privacy and security. In a perfect world the cameras wouldn't be abused, but in a perfect world there wouldn't be any crime. Personally I think we don't need any more tracking in our lives, and I'd gladly swap some stolen cars in order to avoid a surveillance dystopia. https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/eye-sky https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/eye-sky
stevenicr 7y ago
The stolen cars thing seems to be the goto for making these okay in places. People think about a car being stolen or carjacked and want the masked armed robbers taken out. However I believe most of the 'stolen cars' they are actually looking for and finding are cars where someone is being in their car payments and a repo notice gets sent out.. technically the car is stolen from the place that holds the note.. but I don't think the malls and other places that have installed these and sold the data are really wanting to put our press releases about how many broke people late on their payments they turned over to repo men/women.. They used that excuse to put some in at the airport near here, but I have second hand knowledge that they have been used to Id other people and investigate other things, so that data is not in a read - only - plates put into the db that are stolen and get info back, it's db data that is there and searchable shareable for other reasons, most the general public may never know.

wjnc 7y ago

Honest question: How did GDPR gloss over it? That law is just as applicable to government as to business? And we have both GDPR and transparancy laws to aid those willing to search for transgressions. Only nit I know of is that fines to the government are fines to the public, with less of a possibility to shop elsewhere or the firm to face consequences from say shareholders (in extreme: a high fine means higher taxes).

ovi256 7y ago
>just as applicable to government as to business That's a very optimistic reading of GDPR. In practice, LEO agencies legal counsel has to write them a compliance rationale doc supporting their need to use private data and that's it. I bet activists are gearing up to challenge some of those rationales in courts but those will be speed bumps at most. It's hard to see the judiciary constraining the powers that law enforcement traditionally had. I know of some Romanian park rangers who temporarily lost their fining powers until their GDPR compliance gets sorted out - they're low priority compared to other LEO agencies. It's funny to think that people degrading natural parks is a consequence of GDPR, yet here we are. Unless you have some specific LEO capability you wish GDPR eliminated, it's hard to see GDPR as anything else than an compliance burden on government agencies.
buboard 7y ago
The gdpr explicitly allows member states to override crucial articles for purposes of public security etc There is also a sense of immunity, since a state fining itself doesnt cost them anything. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-23-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-23-gdpr/