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I've said this before elsewhere, but this is precisely the situation where the distinction is important. There's this disease within the tech community where p

I've said this before elsewhere, but this is precisely the situation where the distinction is important. There's this disease within the tech community where people can't see the harm of scaling things up using automation. Potentially harmful thing X, previously moderated and slowed by the high cost of labor to do it at scale, must not be harmful because we've always technically allowed it, so therefore we should not do anything to moderate it now that robots are doing it for us. "We could run this nuclear reaction at a much faster rate if we just removed the moderator, what could go wrong?"

akira2501 3y ago
What is the actual harm here? If you don't pay for the property, and you refuse to work out an agreement with the owner, they are entitled to come get their property. How is there additional harm, at this point, by using ALPRs to find the (effectively) stolen property? It's not as if these things happen suddenly, either. There's months of effort by the lender to try to get you back on track. Repossession comes with risk, and it always comes with a fee. No one is eager to do this.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  > It's not as if these things happen suddenly, either. There's months of effort by the lender to try to get you back on track. Repossession comes with risk, and it always comes with a fee. No one is eager to do this. Not quite true. Buy here pay here dealerships and similar are absolutely eager to do this, and will go out of their way to make it onerous to pay what is owed, so they can sell the same 5 year old Kia for $15K multiple times over.
  - akira2501 3y ago
    They also tend to just put a GPS tracker in the car, which seems far more onerous than a repossession agent with an ALPR database at hand.
- petsfed 3y ago
  There's currently months of effort, in part because of the labor constraints. Its not worth paying a guy with a tow truck to go looking for a car that might not even be there. ALPRs exist to lower that cost of labor, potentially to the point that the lender can still make money sending out the repo guy much sooner than 90 days. I'm not even upset about that. Hell, it might be a net good, I dunno. The thing that I'm concerned about is that there is no guarantee (or even guard rail, really) against selling that data to a law enforcement organization that would otherwise have to undergo judicial scrutiny to get that data. What happens when some hacker gets a hold of their license plate database and uses it for an actual stalking operation? Or who knows what else?
  - akira2501 3y ago
    ALPRs tell you where a plate is. It doesn't tell you who owns the plate. You'd have to know that already. I'm not sure just having the database grants you the ability to stalk, other than at completely random strangers. If you can stalk someone to the point of getting their plate, you can just stick an airtag on their car.

akira2501 3y ago

What is the actual harm here? If you don't pay for the property, and you refuse to work out an agreement with the owner, they are entitled to come get their property. How is there additional harm, at this point, by using ALPRs to find the (effectively) stolen property? It's not as if these things happen suddenly, either. There's months of effort by the lender to try to get you back on track. Repossession comes with risk, and it always comes with a fee. No one is eager to do this.

FireBeyond 3y ago
> It's not as if these things happen suddenly, either. There's months of effort by the lender to try to get you back on track. Repossession comes with risk, and it always comes with a fee. No one is eager to do this. Not quite true. Buy here pay here dealerships and similar are absolutely eager to do this, and will go out of their way to make it onerous to pay what is owed, so they can sell the same 5 year old Kia for $15K multiple times over.
- akira2501 3y ago
  They also tend to just put a GPS tracker in the car, which seems far more onerous than a repossession agent with an ALPR database at hand.
petsfed 3y ago
There's currently months of effort, in part because of the labor constraints. Its not worth paying a guy with a tow truck to go looking for a car that might not even be there. ALPRs exist to lower that cost of labor, potentially to the point that the lender can still make money sending out the repo guy much sooner than 90 days. I'm not even upset about that. Hell, it might be a net good, I dunno. The thing that I'm concerned about is that there is no guarantee (or even guard rail, really) against selling that data to a law enforcement organization that would otherwise have to undergo judicial scrutiny to get that data. What happens when some hacker gets a hold of their license plate database and uses it for an actual stalking operation? Or who knows what else?
- akira2501 3y ago
  ALPRs tell you where a plate is. It doesn't tell you who owns the plate. You'd have to know that already. I'm not sure just having the database grants you the ability to stalk, other than at completely random strangers. If you can stalk someone to the point of getting their plate, you can just stick an airtag on their car.