4 ms·

how do these services work? is it something on the car giving away info about the vehicle?

by mylons 3y ago

vector_spaces 3y ago
It'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 ago
  Even 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 ago
    I 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 ago
It'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.

4 ms·

how do these services work? is it something on the car giving away info about the vehicle?

by mylons 3y ago

how do these services work? is it something on the car giving away info about the vehicle?

vector_spaces 3y ago
It'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 ago
  Even 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 ago
    I 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 ago
It'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.