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> I think most people agree that license plates are a good societal tradeoff in terms of privacy. I think most people have never even considered the matter in

by pdonis 4y ago

> I think most people agree that license plates are a good societal tradeoff in terms of privacy. I think most people have never even considered the matter in those terms; they just accept that license plates are how we do things and don't bother asking why. When you actually ask why, your claimed upsides don't, IMO, actually amount to much. Enforcement of traffic laws? Most of those are revenue sources for local jurisdictions, not improvements in safety. If someone does no harm when violating a traffic law, there's nothing actually worth enforcing from a safety perspective; and if someone does do harm, how much help is a license plate in tracking them down? What fraction of people who are in traffic accidents leave the scene in their vehicle before the police get there, but get found later because their license plates were known? A large enough fraction that license plates for everyone are justified taking into account the privacy downsides? This, btw, is the same logic you apply yourself in the latter part of your post. And your conclusion? > I think the security state would be hitting us over the head with these statistics if they could actually make a coherent case Which means that, since they're not, there actually isn't a case. And I agree with that--both for license plates and for encryption backdoors. And for other claims that we need to give up our privacy for some other supposed benefit.

nl 4y ago
> What fraction of people who are in traffic accidents leave the scene in their vehicle before the police get there, but get found later because their license plates were known? As a cyclist who continually sees stories of aggressive car behaviors being reported and acted on because the cyclist had cam footage of the license plate I'd say the fraction is close to 100%. So yes, it is a trade-off and in this case I agree with the OP that is is worth it.
- pdonis 4y ago
  > As a cyclist who continually sees stories of aggressive car behaviors being reported and acted on because the cyclist had cam footage of the license plate I'd say the fraction is close to 100%. My anecdotal evidence, for what it's worth (which is not much in either case), is exactly the opposite: in every traffic accident I have been involved in, neither I nor anyone else left the scene. (Btw, when you say "aggressive car behaviors", are these things that actually caused harm?) As far as actual data that would be strong enough to justify imposing public policy on everyone, I don't think it's there.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Define harm. Threatening behaviour included or excluded? "Likely to cause harm" or "intending to cause harm" included or excluded. Is running off the road OK if no material harm? What if they have a heart attack 20min later due to stress?
    - pdonis 4y ago
      > Define harm. Our common law legal system does a pretty good job of that already. For example: > Threatening behaviour included or excluded? See the legal definition of assault. > "Likely to cause harm" or "intending to cause harm" included or excluded. "Likely" is excluded in common law if that's all you have, because, as I said in response to another post upthread, actual facts trump guesses. "Intending" falls under assault if, roughly, the intent is perceived by the target. > Is running off the road OK if no material harm? Again, see the legal definition of assault. > What if they have a heart attack 20min later due to stress? How would you prove, in a legally sufficient sense, that the heart attack was due to whatever happened 20 min earlier? I'm not proposing "caused actual harm" as the standard because I just made it up. I'm proposing it because it is the standard that our common law legal system has used for the vast majority of its history. It's only fairly recently that nanny state legislators started thinking (incorrectly, in my view) that they were smarter than centuries of common law jurisprudence.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    > As far as actual data that would be strong enough to justify imposing public policy on everyone, I don't think it's there. In 2020, 26.3% [1] of cyclist fatalities were caused by hit-and-runs. That's a bit over 1/4 of cyclist fatalities. What more would you need, 1/2? [1]: https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/biking/what-we-learned-tracking-cycling-deaths-year/ https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/biking/what-...
    - pdonis 4y ago
      > In 2020, 26.3% [1] of cyclist fatalities were caused by hit-and-runs. How many of the hit and run drivers were caught because of the license plates on their vehicles? That's the relevant data for this discussion. I don't see it anywhere in the article you referenced.
ghaff 4y ago
If hit and runs were known to be virtually untrackable, I'd guess you'd have a lot more hit and runs.
whakim 4y ago
License plates are the primary enforcement mechanism for traffic laws. Traffic laws (red lights, speed limits, etc.) provably save lives, and surveys have shown that people's likelihood of obeying such laws correlates with their perceived likelihood of being caught. I think your argument about tracking down people who didn't actually do any harm misses the point - you might not intend to cause harm but the behavior you exhibit may simply lead to more harm if everyone did it. Should drinking and driving be legal as long as you don't hurt anyone? I have made the same point with regard to a tradeoff betweening traffic laws and encryption (intentionally, since that's the point of my post - everything is a tradeoff). But I think license plates enable a system beyond "man in police car" which provably saves many lives. Even if you disagree (and I think you'd almost certainly be in the minority if you conducted a poll), the fact that we're even discussing it proves the GGP wrong - privacy tradeoffs aren't necessarily harmful ipso facto.
- int_19h 4y ago
  And yet people don't like red light cameras. Case in point: many municipalities in US ban them outright, in most cases due to popular demand from their constituents.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    A lot of people favor traffic enforcement of, especially, significant violations in general without favoring the automation of every relatively minor traffic violation. Automated systems could of course be setup to mostly just catch gross violators but for lots of reasons they won't be.
- pdonis 4y ago
  > the behavior you exhibit may simply lead to more harm if everyone did it. This the same justification that is given for all nanny state laws. And I don't find it any more convincing than the justification that is given for encryption backdoors. The correct way to give people an incentive not to cause harm is to punish them if they cause harm. Not if they do something which you or the government thinks might cause harm if enough people did it. Actual events trump guesses. > Traffic laws (red lights, speed limits, etc.) provably save lives Compared to what? Compared to a society where we didn't punish anyone even when they did actually cause harm, probably yes. Compared to a society where we did punish people who actually caused harm, but didn't interfere with people who hadn't? I don't think so. The problem with punishing people who haven't actually caused harm is that they know they didn't actually cause harm but you punished them anyway. That weakens people's respect for the law in general. They start to view the law as a game, where the government tries to catch you breaking an arbitrary rule and you try to avoid being caught. That is how speeding laws, for example, are treated by virtually everyone. Nobody counts the costs of that when judging laws. But we should. And if we did, I think we would end up just where I am advocating: we would only use the law to punish people who actually caused harm. Sure, put a sign on the road that says "maximum recommended speed 55 mph", as long as it's only a recommendation--if a cop can't randomly pull me over for exceeding the limit just because he happened to spot me, or because it's end of the month quota time and the municipality needs some more income. If I actually cause an accident, and I get penalized more because I exceeded the recommended limit, that's fine; that's what the law is for. But not until I actually cause harm.
sanderjd 4y ago
Yeah I don't find your argument here compelling at all. You're right that I hadn't thought about license plates in these terms before, but now that I have, I'm convinced that they are a very good trade-off. So no, I don't think people only accept this because they haven't thought about it. I think enough people thought about it and accepted it long enough ago that we simply don't really need to think about it anymore. It was something that was invented, worked well, and thus faded into the unquestioned background. And that's good!
- pdonis 4y ago
  > I don't think people only accept this because they haven't thought about it. I think enough people thought about it and accepted it long enough ago that we simply don't really need to think about it anymore. If you have any historical evidence that this is how any of our common traffic laws that punish people who haven't caused harm, I would love to see it. My understanding is that no such process ever took place: government bureaucrats decided that certain arbitrary rules were appropriate and that anyone who violated them should be punished, based on whatever information they considered relevant, and imposed them by fiat. That is how 55 mph speed limits were imposed throughout the US, for example. And that doesn't even consider the part about traffic laws being revenue sources for state and local governments. The overall incentive to over-impose laws is huge. Yet somehow the laws we have are exactly right to optimize our safety? I strongly doubt it.
  - sanderjd 4y ago
    > My understanding is that no such process ever took place: government bureaucrats decided that certain arbitrary rules were appropriate and that anyone who violated them should be punished, based on whatever information they considered relevant, and imposed them by fiat. ... that's the process I was talking about. Bureaucrats making rules and then seeing if voters reject them by electing people to make different rules is how things work in a representative democracy. You seem to dislike a lot of the rules and incentives in the space, and I'm sure I agree with you on a lot of the details, but none of this is going to lead me (or many other people) to a categorical "license plates are bad" conclusion. I'm very glad we do licensing for cars and drivers, despite the existence of problems on the margins.
tzs 4y ago
> If someone does no harm when violating a traffic law, there's nothing actually worth enforcing from a safety perspective; and if someone does do harm, how much help is a license plate in tracking them down? Laws are often about reducing risk. If I drive 100 miles/hour (160 km/hour) through a school zone when kids are present but do not actually hit anyone I have not actually done any harm, but I did greatly increase the probability of harm. I just happened to get lucky on that particular trip trough the school zone.

by pdonis 4y ago

nl 4y ago

> What fraction of people who are in traffic accidents leave the scene in their vehicle before the police get there, but get found later because their license plates were known? As a cyclist who continually sees stories of aggressive car behaviors being reported and acted on because the cyclist had cam footage of the license plate I'd say the fraction is close to 100%. So yes, it is a trade-off and in this case I agree with the OP that is is worth it.

pdonis 4y ago
> As a cyclist who continually sees stories of aggressive car behaviors being reported and acted on because the cyclist had cam footage of the license plate I'd say the fraction is close to 100%. My anecdotal evidence, for what it's worth (which is not much in either case), is exactly the opposite: in every traffic accident I have been involved in, neither I nor anyone else left the scene. (Btw, when you say "aggressive car behaviors", are these things that actually caused harm?) As far as actual data that would be strong enough to justify imposing public policy on everyone, I don't think it's there.
- ggm 4y ago
  Define harm. Threatening behaviour included or excluded? "Likely to cause harm" or "intending to cause harm" included or excluded. Is running off the road OK if no material harm? What if they have a heart attack 20min later due to stress?
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > Define harm. Our common law legal system does a pretty good job of that already. For example: > Threatening behaviour included or excluded? See the legal definition of assault. > "Likely to cause harm" or "intending to cause harm" included or excluded. "Likely" is excluded in common law if that's all you have, because, as I said in response to another post upthread, actual facts trump guesses. "Intending" falls under assault if, roughly, the intent is perceived by the target. > Is running off the road OK if no material harm? Again, see the legal definition of assault. > What if they have a heart attack 20min later due to stress? How would you prove, in a legally sufficient sense, that the heart attack was due to whatever happened 20 min earlier? I'm not proposing "caused actual harm" as the standard because I just made it up. I'm proposing it because it is the standard that our common law legal system has used for the vast majority of its history. It's only fairly recently that nanny state legislators started thinking (incorrectly, in my view) that they were smarter than centuries of common law jurisprudence.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  > As far as actual data that would be strong enough to justify imposing public policy on everyone, I don't think it's there. In 2020, 26.3% [1] of cyclist fatalities were caused by hit-and-runs. That's a bit over 1/4 of cyclist fatalities. What more would you need, 1/2? [1]: https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/biking/what-we-learned-tracking-cycling-deaths-year/ https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/biking/what-...
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > In 2020, 26.3% [1] of cyclist fatalities were caused by hit-and-runs. How many of the hit and run drivers were caught because of the license plates on their vehicles? That's the relevant data for this discussion. I don't see it anywhere in the article you referenced.

ghaff 4y ago

If hit and runs were known to be virtually untrackable, I'd guess you'd have a lot more hit and runs.

whakim 4y ago

License plates are the primary enforcement mechanism for traffic laws. Traffic laws (red lights, speed limits, etc.) provably save lives, and surveys have shown that people's likelihood of obeying such laws correlates with their perceived likelihood of being caught. I think your argument about tracking down people who didn't actually do any harm misses the point - you might not intend to cause harm but the behavior you exhibit may simply lead to more harm if everyone did it. Should drinking and driving be legal as long as you don't hurt anyone? I have made the same point with regard to a tradeoff betweening traffic laws and encryption (intentionally, since that's the point of my post - everything is a tradeoff). But I think license plates enable a system beyond "man in police car" which provably saves many lives. Even if you disagree (and I think you'd almost certainly be in the minority if you conducted a poll), the fact that we're even discussing it proves the GGP wrong - privacy tradeoffs aren't necessarily harmful ipso facto.

int_19h 4y ago
And yet people don't like red light cameras. Case in point: many municipalities in US ban them outright, in most cases due to popular demand from their constituents.
- ghaff 4y ago
  A lot of people favor traffic enforcement of, especially, significant violations in general without favoring the automation of every relatively minor traffic violation. Automated systems could of course be setup to mostly just catch gross violators but for lots of reasons they won't be.
pdonis 4y ago
> the behavior you exhibit may simply lead to more harm if everyone did it. This the same justification that is given for all nanny state laws. And I don't find it any more convincing than the justification that is given for encryption backdoors. The correct way to give people an incentive not to cause harm is to punish them if they cause harm. Not if they do something which you or the government thinks might cause harm if enough people did it. Actual events trump guesses. > Traffic laws (red lights, speed limits, etc.) provably save lives Compared to what? Compared to a society where we didn't punish anyone even when they did actually cause harm, probably yes. Compared to a society where we did punish people who actually caused harm, but didn't interfere with people who hadn't? I don't think so. The problem with punishing people who haven't actually caused harm is that they know they didn't actually cause harm but you punished them anyway. That weakens people's respect for the law in general. They start to view the law as a game, where the government tries to catch you breaking an arbitrary rule and you try to avoid being caught. That is how speeding laws, for example, are treated by virtually everyone. Nobody counts the costs of that when judging laws. But we should. And if we did, I think we would end up just where I am advocating: we would only use the law to punish people who actually caused harm. Sure, put a sign on the road that says "maximum recommended speed 55 mph", as long as it's only a recommendation--if a cop can't randomly pull me over for exceeding the limit just because he happened to spot me, or because it's end of the month quota time and the municipality needs some more income. If I actually cause an accident, and I get penalized more because I exceeded the recommended limit, that's fine; that's what the law is for. But not until I actually cause harm.

sanderjd 4y ago

Yeah I don't find your argument here compelling at all. You're right that I hadn't thought about license plates in these terms before, but now that I have, I'm convinced that they are a very good trade-off. So no, I don't think people only accept this because they haven't thought about it. I think enough people thought about it and accepted it long enough ago that we simply don't really need to think about it anymore. It was something that was invented, worked well, and thus faded into the unquestioned background. And that's good!

pdonis 4y ago
> I don't think people only accept this because they haven't thought about it. I think enough people thought about it and accepted it long enough ago that we simply don't really need to think about it anymore. If you have any historical evidence that this is how any of our common traffic laws that punish people who haven't caused harm, I would love to see it. My understanding is that no such process ever took place: government bureaucrats decided that certain arbitrary rules were appropriate and that anyone who violated them should be punished, based on whatever information they considered relevant, and imposed them by fiat. That is how 55 mph speed limits were imposed throughout the US, for example. And that doesn't even consider the part about traffic laws being revenue sources for state and local governments. The overall incentive to over-impose laws is huge. Yet somehow the laws we have are exactly right to optimize our safety? I strongly doubt it.
- sanderjd 4y ago
  > My understanding is that no such process ever took place: government bureaucrats decided that certain arbitrary rules were appropriate and that anyone who violated them should be punished, based on whatever information they considered relevant, and imposed them by fiat. ... that's the process I was talking about. Bureaucrats making rules and then seeing if voters reject them by electing people to make different rules is how things work in a representative democracy. You seem to dislike a lot of the rules and incentives in the space, and I'm sure I agree with you on a lot of the details, but none of this is going to lead me (or many other people) to a categorical "license plates are bad" conclusion. I'm very glad we do licensing for cars and drivers, despite the existence of problems on the margins.

tzs 4y ago

> If someone does no harm when violating a traffic law, there's nothing actually worth enforcing from a safety perspective; and if someone does do harm, how much help is a license plate in tracking them down? Laws are often about reducing risk. If I drive 100 miles/hour (160 km/hour) through a school zone when kids are present but do not actually hit anyone I have not actually done any harm, but I did greatly increase the probability of harm. I just happened to get lucky on that particular trip trough the school zone.