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Data brokers selling license plate location and analytics data
- TechBro8615 3y agoMy instinctual reaction to this has always been "well, you drive around in public, and your license plate is on the back of your car, so of course you can't expect privacy of it any more than you can stop someone from following you and taking photos of it." And generally I feel it's a valid argument, but it exposes two root problems: 1) Scale: There is a clear difference between a single person photographing license plates in a parking lot, or even a single person following one car, compared to an enterprise industrializing that tracking process through wholesale procuring of security camera footage or similar. 2) Linkage: Even if your license plate can be tracked, why should it be linked to your identity? The answer is that it really shouldn't. Of course you can register your vehicle to an LLC, but even if you don't do that, you shouldn't expect anyone on the road to map your license plate to your address. But again we return to the problem of scale, because ultimately someone could see your car in your driveway, then see it on the road, and therefore know your starting location and current location. The first problem of scale, while clearly exposing an obvious difference, doesn't seem easily resolvable to me, because at what point is a process "industrialized?" How do you legislate against this without imposing on constitutionally protected activity, or at least basic pseudo-freedoms like freedom of commerce? And how do you avoid regulatory capture granting carve outs to a few anointed large corporations to continue the practice, especially if they're the same corporations that "contract" with the government? [One side-problem/solution here is the lack of transparency of, or restrictions on, government purchasing "public" data.] The second problem of linkage, seems more easily addressable (no pun intended). States should put more protections on license plate databases, and make it easier for people to register their vehicle through a proxy, even without needing to create an LLC. But you still have the problem of "manual" linkage using photos of driveways. But the larger, perhaps root issue, is that modern technology is exposing a middle ground between "private" and "public" (meta)data - we see this with enterprise-scale tracking of public information, and also with "personal data" shared with limited audiences on social media sites, where it's obviously not private because you intend to share it with people, but you also don't intend to share it with everyone.
- phantom784 3y agoPrivacy could be a use case for those e ink license plates that have started showing up in California. Instead of the "real" number, change the plate every 5 minutes using some sort of OTP algorithm. Makes it impossible for anyone with a camera to put together a location database, but the car is still identifiable by law enforcement if necessary.
- cryptonector 3y agoAn OTP license plate scheme is a very interesting idea. The license plate would probably have to get larger to accommodate more characters. EDIT: I wonder why you got downvoted. I've recently been seeing a lot of downvoted comments that there's little conceivable reason to downvote, so I wonder if downvoting is a new way of trolling.
- floren 3y agoWell, for starters, if you witness a hit and run and don't note the EXACT time along with the plate number, you're outta luck.
- tzs 3y agoAssuming that the function that generates the plate numbers from the current time and a per plate seed is deterministic this shouldn't be a problem. You tell the police you saw the car with plate 2XYZ345 do a hit on run and give a time range. The state would have the seeds in its plate owner database and could generate a list of all cars that had 2XYZ345 sometime in that time range.
- floren 3y agoGood point!
- Johnny555 3y agoPresumably such a system would keep a history of expired identifiers, so law enforcement could still look it up after it's been expired and replaced with a new one.
- xnx 3y agoWhy get the data piecemeal from license plates, when you can get it straight from the cars themselves? /s "New Tool Shows if Your Car Might Be Tracking You, Selling Your Data": https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-selling-data-privacy4cars-vehicle-privacy-report https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-sel...
- throwbadubadu 3y agoRelated and recent: Autoenshittification! https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-de...
- gruez 3y agoThe article talks about privacy being violated via your car, but it's ostensibly a fluff piece for a website that asks for your VIN just so it can grab the manufacturer's privacy policy.
- dpiers 3y agoIs this news? I'm genuinely asking - TLO and other skip tracing tools have been around for a while, and have been offering license plate location data for years. The ACLU issued a report on how ALPR devices are used to track people in July 2013 (1). Flock Safety (2) was founded in 2017 and has raised $381M from name-brand VCs like Tiger Global and A16Z. The ACLU raised concerns about them a year ago in a report. (3) No one has been keeping it secret. 1: https://www.aclu.org/documents/you-are-being-tracked-how-license-plate-readers-are-being-used-record-americans-movements?redirect=technology-and-liberty/you-are-being-tracked-how-license-plate-readers-are-being-used-record https://www.aclu.org/documents/you-are-being-tracked-how-lic... 2: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/flock-safety https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/flock-safety 3: https://www.aclu.org/report/fast-growing-company-flock-building-new-ai-driven-mass-surveillance-system https://www.aclu.org/report/fast-growing-company-flock-build...
- olyjohn 3y agoNo, people do not know these services exist.
- brightlancer 3y agoI think people know these exist. As this thread shows, I think lots of people don't _care_ that it exists, or only object to the data being sold to Amazon rather than DHS.
- throwaw1yyy 3y agoI did not know
- JohnMakin 3y agoNo, I don't think people realize it. Also, these brokers are basically the sole gatekeepers for this type of information - as AI recognition software becomes more potent, I think this kind of data becomes much more dangerous.
- hackernewds 3y ago
- mylons 3y agohow do these services work? is it something on the car giving away info about the vehicle?
- vector_spaces 3y agoIt's crowdsourced from PIs and other entities that install plate readers in parking lots, highways, and on their own vehicles [1] https://slate.com/technology/2020/07/customs-border-protection-tracking-cars.html https://slate.com/technology/2020/07/customs-border-protecti... [2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne879z/i-tracked-someone-with-license-plate-readers-drn https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne879z/i-tracked-someone-wit...
- mike_d 3y agoEven better, they lease the camera systems to police departments to put on traffic lights at major intersections and along highways. When doing a search very few of the hits I've seen have been from vehicle mounted cameras.
- brightlancer 3y agoI can't speak to the ratio, but I know many local law enforcement agencies which mount these on patrol cars -- the LE agency benefits from access to the databases and in return provides data to the databases. There are tons of private collectors, but lots of LE agencies are doing it too.
- mike_d 3y ago> There are tons of private collectors, but lots of LE agencies are doing it too. A good 90% of hits are from one of two sources: fixed traffic installations and parking garages. Maybe 10 years ago repo companies would put them on trucks and drive around mall parking lots, but the return was so low most scrapped them.
- JohnFen 3y agoIt's all about the databases. Reading license plates isn't, all by itself, a very serious privacy problem. It becomes a problem, though, when that data is combined with hundreds or thousands of other data points (each of which also aren't a huge deal in isolation). The privacy violation isn't really in the camera, or the telemetry, or any other data point you generate that is collected. It's in the combining of all of these things into a profile.
- manzanarama 3y agoCan you register cars under a company or other shell entity? I feel like the only way to get around this kind of stuff is to have layers of abstraction above your identity.
- mindslight 3y agoSure! Enjoy your higher taxes and fees, extra parking restrictions, and possibly being unable to represent yourself in court.
- wmf 3y agoFrom what I read, the problem is that you need to have the driver's name on the insurance policy even if the car is owned by a corporation.
- KirillPanov 3y agoMost, probably all, states allow you to post a cash bond in lieu of insurance. They were forced to allow this by lawsuits. That cash bond is good for the driver to drive any car. Of course it is only in lieu of liability insurance.
- oceanplexian 3y agoI've seriously given some thought to do exactly this. It's not particularly difficult. You need a valid business entity (Which you can create for about $100 a year in some states), and a car paid for in cash. Then any LEO running the plates through ALPR will have no idea who identity of the driver is. Literally millions of small business owners do this so it's not particularly unusual.
- ClassyJacket 3y agoWouldn't they just be able to look up who is the owner of the LLC? Wouldn't this only keep you out of a subset of automated systems?
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- davidkellis 3y agoMy tin-hat alter ego says the three letter agencies are creating these companies for the sole purpose of then purchasing the data and skirting the law. But that guy is crazy. ha ha.
- brightlancer 3y agoWhy would the three letter agencies need to do that? There's plenty of money to be made by private businesses doing it with fewer risks of violating the law. And the TLAs aren't interested in selling this info to state and local agencies, while that's probably the bigger dollar for private businesses.
- colechristensen 3y agoBecause sometimes there are laws that prevent governments from doing things which don't prevent them from buying the results.
- johnea 3y agoIn the US it's illegal for anyone to do it. This is just as clear a violation of the 4th amendment as the multi-billion dollar goggle empire. But nobody really cares about that do they? Laws are routinely enforced or ignored based on which option allows the largest profits for incumbents.
- jonathankoren 3y agoThe 4th amendment only applies to the government, and has only ever applied to actual tangible property. This is being in public where there is no expectation of privacy.
- JohnFen 3y agoThis. The Bill of Rights doesn't protect us here. We need plain old lawmaking.
- yegle 3y agoI always had the idea of building something similar to this for my own use: have a dashcam recording while I was driving, and every night taking those videos and extract the timestamp/GPS/plate number and a short video clip of all cars I encountered on that day. I haven't thought too much about why documenting these would be useful, but on top of my mind I could get answer of these questions: - have I seen this fancy/unique looking car in the past? - is this the same douche bag that I saw last week who can't drive? - what's the last CA plate number starts with now? Is it 9G or 9H? - are there more people driving w/ a 9[A-Z] plate in my town? (As a proxy of knowing how many people are still buying new cars in my town)
- alsodumb 3y agoI believe this is illegal in many states.
- loeg 3y agoIt is sometimes illegal for cops/parking enforcement to do this, which might be what you are thinking of.
- CameronNemo 3y agoWhy would it be illegal? You are just filming things you see in public.
- rahimnathwani 3y agoRing should make a dashcam.
- greyface- 3y agoThey do. https://ring.com/products/car-cam https://ring.com/products/car-cam
- rahimnathwani 3y agoWow, a network of these with ANPR would be better than fixed cameras.
- Modified3019 3y agoIf we want this to stop, we’d need to set up an open source project that likewise tracks politicians, CEOs and judges.
- monkpit 3y agoDidn’t someone do that with Musk’s jet already?
- systems_glitch 3y agoBut that's different! Some crazy might use that data to go hurt them or something! ...wait...
- timewasterthrow 3y agoI know someone that caught their wife cheating by using the ChargePoint app the wife used to charge their Chevy Bolt. The wife charged their Chevy Bolt at work, which had a paid 'public' charger at her work site. The wife charged everyday and left it there so it could maintain battery and AC if she wanted. The chargepoint app shows the last vehicle that charged there, and a history of the last few days. He checked her works charger histories, and noticed over a few weeks that on days she said she was still at work, the car wasn't showing on ChargePoint. He knew she was a charging fanatic. He drove to the work once. Verified she wasnt there. Called her and talked to her about how her work day is going. She pretended like she was at the actual office. She wasnt. At that point he knew, but took a few more days to fully get proof.
- JoBrad 3y agoThat feels different, though. They could see their account, and which vehicle was charging, by location.
- timewasterthrow 3y agoIt wasnt their account. He had his own chargepoint account. But because its a public charge station, it shows history and its current use status. She was the only one that charged at work consistently at that charger, and had a more rare bolt instead of a tesla so her charge history was showing on a public charger. It's 'technically' anonymous, unless you have a clue about who has what car and where they charge.
- MengerSponge 3y agoLosing a single bit of entropy can be enough, if it's the correct bit
- zeroping 3y agoYep, and this is why protecting medical data is hard. This is a nice compact example of the same thing.
- kbos87 3y agoThis is so infuriating to me. It's also shocking to see how not shy TransUnion is about promoting a service like this. How long is it before anyone can find out the location of anyone else in real time? It's usually only a matter of time before things like this drop in price and become consumer tools, which is a scary proposition (not to downplay how scary it is already.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pixl97 3y agoWe're cell phone companies not selling tracking data in near real time at one point?
- throwaway9091 3y agoThis is Motorola Solution's subsidiary drndata.com reselling to TLO. It all goes to law enforcement, too.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- dismalpedigree 3y agoI think its about time people go “Mr Robot” on these companies. They are parasites.
- imiric 3y agoThis is the market that powers the advertising industry, which in turn powers most consumer services, and billion-dollar companies. It's not going away anytime soon. Individuals are generally unaware this even exists. Even if they are, few are willing to fight it; and even if they are, there's hardly anything an individual can do to change this. Regulation needs to exist to prevent this, but considering governments are likely also using this data, and that lawmakers are in bed with lobbyists, the chances of that happening are also slim.
- SirLJ 3y agoIs there a way to obscure the license plate, some semi transparent film or something to make the automatic reading difficult?
- AlotOfReading 3y agoThey sell those, but broadly speaking they're both illegal and ineffective. The way ALPR systems typically work is that there's a camera running OCR against rectangular objects in frame. What you're asking is whether there's a way for a only human eyes to be able to see the plate. That doesn't exist for obvious reasons. Products that attempt to do this anyway usually try to reduce viewing angles or blur things, but these aren't very effective strategies. Furthermore, obscuring your license plate for any reason is illegal in every jurisdiction.
- techwizrd 3y agoI built one of these as a hackathon during undergrad. It was surprisingly easy to get something working, even before modern DL techniques, in under 24 hours. I'm not surprised this has taken off.
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoAnd this is the reason I have a cover over my plate that makes it hard to read from angles. Defeats the cameras.
- voyagerfan5761 3y agoThis cover sounds like something that could easily be illegal depending on the location. Quick research says that license plate covers are "Allowed" in just 16/50 states, though I have no idea how accurate the source is and it also says that the "Allowed" designation "only" means that that that state requires license plates to be easily readable. (One of the table rows is "Arizona: Arizona | Arizona", so perhaps it's not very accurate.) Still, regardless of how reliable the sources I found are, I'd be shocked to find many states that don't have prohibitions on making it difficult for red-light/speed/ALPR cameras to read plates.
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoLuckily most states have provisions that don't allow red-light / speed cameras in general. And we should keep it that way. It is insane that I can get accused of an infringement by a piece of software. I have the right to face my accuser in court. Who are you going to put on the stand? The camera? The CEO of Gatso? ALPR is done for turnpikes & some HOAs are deploying them to track who comes in and goes out. While I don't condone getting a cover for the purpose of avoiding taxes on turnpikes, I do condone them for avoiding ALPRs to avoid private companies from tracking me.
- gmerc 3y agoAmericans ideological ‘I don’t trust the government coupled with ‘the government shouldn’t interfere with private businesses’ has hilarious results
- izacus 3y ago[flagged]
- azmodeus 3y ago[flagged]
- parineum 3y agoPainting with an incredibly broad brush while also oversimplifying the situation to the degree of misunderstanding is, I'm sure, emblematic of the people wherever you come from.
- stevage 3y agoGovernment shouldn't be able to spy on citizens. That's a job for they private sector...
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoIt's pretty easy to stick it back on the government here. License plates were originally sold in a time before mass surveillance, when they didn't constitute a de facto tracking device. Now they do constitute a tracking device, but you're still required by law to carry one wherever you go. And that's the thing we need to fix, because nobody should have this data. Not corporations, not the government, and not the criminals and foreign governments who are going to violate whatever law you propose to solve this in some way other than removing the legal requirement to carry a tracking device.
- didntcheck 3y agoYeah this is the point I find myself repeatedly making. In the internet age we're increasingly grappling with increases in quantity that become a quality of their own. Capture of public data points that seems reasonable, or even harmless, at the scale of manual human work can become a major instrument of coercion when networked computers can collate information from across the globe And do note that we have some precedence for understanding how legal actions can become illegal by magnitude with the offence of stalking. Taking pictures of people in public is generally legal, but repeatedly targeting the same person is in many cases not
- stevage 3y agoKind of amazed that the entire product description doesn't even use the word "privacy" anywhere.
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y agoData brokers are selling every aspect of your life that can be measured
- Eumenes 3y agoSame crap is going to happen with biometrics for dumb things like buying booze: https://www.axios.com/2023/07/25/alcohol-biometric-scan-face-palm-age-recognition https://www.axios.com/2023/07/25/alcohol-biometric-scan-face...
- tzm 3y agoI always thought collecting license plate data was considered confidential and only be used for law enforcement purposes. Aren't there laws forbidding this?
- adultSwim 3y agoI'm struggling to find the link, but there was a really good CCC talk about this (around 5-8 years ago?) In the talk, they demonstrate Experian's traffic camera database of license plate images.