6 ms·

Paraphrasing the crux of the issue: "It's regular practice in Colorado to list license plates with both versions, the one with 'O's and the other with Zeros in

by pj_mukh 6mo ago

Paraphrasing the crux of the issue: "It's regular practice in Colorado to list license plates with both versions, the one with 'O's and the other with Zeros in the warrant list." Insane. Practice. As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI, but "law enforcement has an insane lazy practice" doesn't make for a very good headline anymore.

LocalH 6mo ago
The AI is making it way worse because they're continually flagging these individuals even after the police make contact. Police are starting to use AI as a shortcut to avoid doing actual policing, and that's the real problem. AI has no place in law enforcement. Its use should result in complete spoilage of the case, and complete exoneration of the accused, with prejudice.
- pj_mukh 6mo ago
  No licensed engineer can say "Well Claude made this bridge for me, it's not my fault". If you're licensed by the state to carry a gun around, your standard should be higher than that, not lower. AI has nothing to do with this. Cops have been using facial recognition since the 2010's, computers and databases with glitchy connections even longer than that. AI is just the latest boogeyman hiding the actual issue.
  - LocalH 6mo ago
    Still, AI has no place in law enforcement. It's the hammer that is being used to put screws in. It enables injustice at a far larger scale than ever before. See: the TN woman who was extradited to NC, having never been there, for a crime that the AI "face recognition" flagged as her, and the cops did zero actual investigation, they just took the AI at its word and put her in jail for six months. I also remember a man who was jailed for violating someone else's casino trespass under similar reasons. Bodycams in that case showed the cops says "the software is saying it's him 100%" Edit: it was North Dakota, not North Carolina.
    - pj_mukh 6mo ago
      "the TN woman who was extradited to NC," Yup, exactly. Look that case up, it had nothing to do with Flock. It was facial recognition software and an old school database built in 2014, so likely not big-data ML (AlexNet hadn't even come out) but classic CV. Productivity improvements will be needed in all industries. I'd rather have fewer well-paid and well-trained, accountable LEO's that have all the productivity tools they need vs. a mini-army of union-protected tom-dick-harry's grabbed of the street, handed a gun and a database. No thank you.
      - LocalH 6mo ago
        I'd rather we have cops who are required to actually investigate, versus just taking what a computer program tells them as if it is inerrant gospel Maybe if the cops can prove they actually did investigation and were only prompted by the AI to do that investigation, I'd agree. But the whole problem is that the cops are blindly using AI to tell them who to arrest, which is such a blatant rights violation that I can't see how anyone could support it and sleep soundly at night Also, a non-zero number of cops have been using AI to stalk ex-partners. That's just known cases, and it stands to reason there are also a non-zero number of cops who have done it and not been caught. Since a single such case is too many, it needs to stop. Also, don't forget, "good" cops who aren't reporting bad cops and trying to get them off the force are also really bad cops
    - 1qaboutecs 6mo ago
      (light correction - she was extradited hundreds of miles all the way to Michigan!)
      - LocalH 6mo ago
        Maybe there were two cases because I thought I remembered hearing about that (or was it Maryland?) but I also remember a similar situation of someone being taken to NC Edit: the one I was referencing was North Dakota, not NC. But there was a very similar case that I think involved Maryland. The fact that there are multiple cases to confuse in this scenario only emboldens my viewpoint that AI has no place being anywhere near LEO
  - allknowingfrog 6mo ago
    I think both can be true. Ideally, we should do more to address the social issues that cause people to drink and drive, but revoking licenses is still a good short-term move. We could outlaw AI policing while we work on deeper issues with law enforcement.
jeremywho 6mo ago
> this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI This story wouldn't exist without flock cameras constantly surveilling the public...cameras have EVERYTHING to do with this story.
- pj_mukh 6mo ago
  "Law enforcement is setting up a multi-county dragnet by putting every version or mistype of a license plate into a warrant list" wouldn't be a story? It should be! We should have a higher standard for the people with guns and a badge on the street.
  - LocalH 6mo ago
    Flock is the problem too because their system is enabling the rights violations to scale up.
    - tcp_handshaker 6mo ago
      Its by design. By using a third party, they can get around the 4th amendment.
      - LocalH 6mo ago
        Using a third-party to bypass legal restrictions should in and of itself be considered willful and knowledgeable intent to violate the Constitution under color of law, regardless of the specific actions taken
      - _DeadFred_ 6mo ago
        How are they not an 'agent of the state' and how does the 4th not apply? If the government asked for the scan/info on the vehicle, they are acting on behalf of the government? https://www.fletc.gov/audio/definition-government-agent-under-4th-amendment-mp3 https://www.fletc.gov/audio/definition-government-agent-unde...
        6mo ago
virissimo 6mo ago
It's not insane at all to return both in a lookup. The "reporting person" will often be wrong about slight variations when calling in a license plate and the downside of errors are asymmetric: it is much more dangerous for the officer to think a driver doesn't have a warrant when they do versus thinking they have a warrant when they don't.
- zamadatix 6mo ago
  The insane part is trying to solve the problems created by homoglyphs in post-assignment. What's the need to allow both `O` and `0` on a plate if it's supposed to be hard to tell apart anyway? Say there was some reason to want to both characters, why allow assigning a new plate which would match with an existing assignment? It's just a loss of time, resources, and safety for both law enforcement and everyone else to allow duplicate matches to be a possibility.
  - LocalH 6mo ago
    The funny thing is that disambiguation of glyphs in a font is a solved problem. Slash the zeroes, wide serifs on the capital i, etc. They just...don't do so in these states where it is still a problem.
    - zehaeva 6mo ago
      It's also a a problem because not all states are the same, some don't allow O, some do. Some allow 0, some don't! The cameras need to be able to read both.
      - mrlonglong 6mo ago
        In the UK this issue was recognised decades ago. They only allow certain letters and numbers in specific places on the registration plates.
- LocalH 6mo ago
  Let's just arrest everyone then - I'm sure they've committed a crime of some kind during their life. We're approximately halfway down the slippery slope, and I don't see any way out other than hard revolution, which is very touchy talk on the internet. Ultimately it's all modern capitalism's fault, else there would be much less incentive for these companies to fuel what is rapidly becoming the effective Fourth Reich
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
AlexandrB 6mo ago
The insane practice was allowing "O" and "0" to be used in license plate numbers in the first place. Once you do that, you're stuck dealing with the fallout of trying to distinguish confusing glyphs at distance on a moving vehicle. Many places omit letters that can be confused like this for good reason - e.g. Ontario plates can't have the letters G, I, O, Q, and U.
- harwoodr 6mo ago
  My Ontario green plate starts with GV...
  - philipwhiuk 6mo ago
    I imagine it's unambiguous because it's a specific length so it can ONLY be a G.
- bloak 6mo ago
  In the font used for British number plates O and 0 are identical and 1 and I are identical. This link might work for an example: https://www.dafont.com/uk-number-plate.font?text=OO01+III https://www.dafont.com/uk-number-plate.font?text=OO01+III Software that handles number plates needs to take account of this. Not all of it does but the glyphs being identical makes it quite clear where the responsibility lies.
  - philipwhiuk 6mo ago
    Isn't the British solution to only allow certain combinations so this is always unambiguous? e.g. a prior car we had was FE51 WOC - the O can't be a 0 because of the format requirements. Similarly the 1 can't be an I.
ragall 6mo ago
[dead]
munk-a 6mo ago
I simply don't understand why our legal system needs a non-deterministic agent injected into it. What value are we trying to capture that isn't already delivered by our overbearing amount of surveillance.
- LocalH 6mo ago
  The ability to do less actual work and still get arrests
  - dylan604 6mo ago
    the question does not really seem like a good faith question. if people on this forum can't see a reason why someone would want to use AI to make their life easier is kind of hypocritical. what, it's only good for techbros to use it, but other's can't? we know that pretty much every police agency is understaffed and those working are humans and would like to make their job easier/faster/more successful just like everyone else. unfortunately, they are running into the same thing techbros are in that AI is an oversold bill of goods that can actually cause more work than without it. and i'm saying this that has a very strong skepticism about the status of current policing.
    - LocalH 6mo ago
      There are a lot of people here who are against any so-called modern "AI" I'm kinda one of them ELIZA they are not
      - antonvs 6mo ago
        ELIZA was a trivially simple hardcoded chatbot, that mainly reflected your statements back at you as questions, so it's not clear what you mean by that comparison. If you were looking for an impressive example of early AI, SHRDLU would be it.
TheMagicHorsey 6mo ago
Law enforcement being lazy, dumb, and incompetent is not an unpredictable bug. Its predictable. The smartest human capital does not go into law enforcement in this country. They go to other industries. Flock needs to have procedures for whitelisting plates when errors are discovered because these kinds of issues are very common.
- LocalH 6mo ago
  Yes, in fact, it's possible to be too smart to be a cop
scottlamb 6mo ago
> Paraphrasing the crux of the issue: "It's regular practice in Colorado to list license plates with both versions, the one with 'O's and the other with Zeros in the warrant list." Insane. Practice. Agree. > As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI, but "law enforcement has an insane lazy practice" doesn't make for a very good headline anymore. Flock allows them to execute their intent at scale. That's a regression, unless it leads to the realization their intent is harmful and stupid. (Lots of other reasons Flock is bad too.)
- api 6mo ago
  The inability of governments to perfectly enforce laws and regulations shields us from their incompetence and corruption to some extent.
  - LocalH 6mo ago
    And they think AI will allow them to approach that perfection, when in reality it's worse than actual police investigation
amanaplanacanal 6mo ago
Why the heck are they using both O and 0 on their license plates? Seems like a recipe for this kind of failure.
- mitthrowaway2 6mo ago
  Or at least, enforce a totally unambiguous font, like slashed zero!
  - rtkwe 6mo ago
    Doesn't solve the issue until all 48/50 states have the same standard.
    - dylan604 6mo ago
      interesting. i never new a fraction of something could be considered all.
      - kajman 6mo ago
        I think the assumption is most criminals won't bother to bring cars from Hawaii or Alaska if they don't follow along.
        rtkwe 6mo ago
        Yeah Alaska plates are fairly rare so you could maybe get away with them not adopting the standard. Hawaii plates are EXTREMELY rare because of the cost of freighting a car over and there's no real reason to register a car in Hawaii that I'm aware of. [0] [0] I'm thinking here of places like Montana which attracts a fair number of out of state registrations to avoid sales and registration taxes in some states. PS don't try this most states already consider this and you're often violating the sales tax laws if the car doesn't leave the state within a few days of purchase.
- zehaeva 6mo ago
  The cameras that they have to read plates in a lot of different conditions and various states of cleanliness. Some states allow O and some states allow 0, and some states don't care. Combine the two issues and cops get lazy and want to check the plate with both the 0 and O just to "make sure". The cameras also confuse D and Q with 0 and O. And 5 & S, and 2 & Z, and 6 & G, and 8 & B.
thaumasiotes 6mo ago
> As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI, but "law enforcement has an insane lazy practice" doesn't make for a very good headline anymore. That practice isn't insane. It's what you'd always want. To the extent that it causes problems, you'd want to fix the practice that doesn't make sense, which is using an alphabet for license plates that contains both O and 0.
- kajman 6mo ago
  I personally don't want people violently dragged out of their cars at gunpoint when they don't actually have warrants.
  - thaumasiotes 6mo ago
    So?
    - kajman 6mo ago
      Maybe the practice is what you would always want. Not me.
      - thaumasiotes 6mo ago
        "The practice" in my comment is in fact what you, personally, would always want. Any other practice would have no way to work. "The practice" in your comment is unrelated. Is there a reason you brought it up?
matheusmoreira 6mo ago
https://xkcd.com/1105/ https://xkcd.com/1105/
- zehaeva 6mo ago
  There truly is an xkcd for everything.
- LeifCarrotson 6mo ago
  Unfortunately, there are a lot of squad cars and they don't have post-its, they have ALPRs that flag all possible combinations of 1 and I for arrest.
Zigurd 6mo ago
Except that's not an excuse. What it really means is that potential matches have extremely low confidence, and shouldn't be reported as matches.
NoSalt 6mo ago
Wow ... how would you like to get arrested in front of friends and family simply because you had an 'O' instead of a '0', or vice versa?
dualvariable 6mo ago
> "It's regular practice in Colorado to list license plates with both versions, the one with 'O's and the other with Zeros in the warrant list." That is a suspicion of what might be the problem. And he's facing a Kafkaesque problem that in order to get him removed from the list they need to know who the warrant is for, but he also can't find out who the warrant is for. Someone can clearly figure this out and help to get it fixed, but he's been unable to talk to a person that has the ability and authorization to query the system to figure it out for him. We really need some anti-Kafka laws in this country so that if you wind up any sort of list like this, including bans from companies like Apple/Google/Meta/etc, that you have the right to know why and to appeal, and that they must not by default assume that you're a fraudster and refuse to speak with you.
- tcp_handshaker 6mo ago
  >> And he's facing a Kafkaesque problem Dont forget the comment from the local police... "We can remove him from our list...we cant do anything about others list"
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
josefresco 6mo ago
No it still relates to the cameras. When you hook up incompetence with automation bad things happen quickly an in far great numbers. Incompetence alone, if isolated or kept from spreading viraly is far less damaging.
devilbunny 6mo ago
For why, just glance at this. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fddhjxwfnjkyg1.jpeg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fd... (It's a Dungeon Crawler Carl-themed license plate.) Look carefully at the sticker at the top right. The tag is actually MONGON0, but it is far from obvious that the last character is a zero at a quick glance unless you are very familiar with the typeface used in Tennessee license plates. The logical solution is to forbid issuing plates that could be misinterpreted. If MONGONO exists, then you can't have M0NG0N0 or other permutation of O's and 0's.
tzs 6mo ago
The net is telling me that since 1975 the license plate format in Colorado is XXX-XNN where Xs are letters and Ns are digits. Having a plate entered into the watch list with multiple times with all variations of substituting Os for 0s and 0s for Os should not cause a problem. That suggests that this involves a plate that does not come from the normal sequence you get when you let the state choose your plate. It looks like most of their collector and special use plates also should be safe [1]. That's probably why we haven't heard of a lot of people running into this. It seems you probably would have to have a vanity plate that includes 0 or O, and someone else would have to have a vanity plate that differs from yours only by changing 0s to Os or vice versa. [1] https://dmv.colorado.gov/other-license-plates https://dmv.colorado.gov/other-license-plates
jjav 6mo ago
> As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI Obviously not true, but with nuance. This shows the problem with bad practices at infinite scale. Maybe they always conflated 0 with O. Not great, but if it was done manually it came up as a problem almost never. Still not great if someone got caught up in it, but it was not a widespread problem. Add a layer of ever-present spying on literally everyone and suddenly what was a footnote of a problem is a major issue.

by pj_mukh 6mo ago

LocalH 6mo ago

The AI is making it way worse because they're continually flagging these individuals even after the police make contact. Police are starting to use AI as a shortcut to avoid doing actual policing, and that's the real problem. AI has no place in law enforcement. Its use should result in complete spoilage of the case, and complete exoneration of the accused, with prejudice.

pj_mukh 6mo ago
No licensed engineer can say "Well Claude made this bridge for me, it's not my fault". If you're licensed by the state to carry a gun around, your standard should be higher than that, not lower. AI has nothing to do with this. Cops have been using facial recognition since the 2010's, computers and databases with glitchy connections even longer than that. AI is just the latest boogeyman hiding the actual issue.
- LocalH 6mo ago
  Still, AI has no place in law enforcement. It's the hammer that is being used to put screws in. It enables injustice at a far larger scale than ever before. See: the TN woman who was extradited to NC, having never been there, for a crime that the AI "face recognition" flagged as her, and the cops did zero actual investigation, they just took the AI at its word and put her in jail for six months. I also remember a man who was jailed for violating someone else's casino trespass under similar reasons. Bodycams in that case showed the cops says "the software is saying it's him 100%" Edit: it was North Dakota, not North Carolina.
  - pj_mukh 6mo ago
    "the TN woman who was extradited to NC," Yup, exactly. Look that case up, it had nothing to do with Flock. It was facial recognition software and an old school database built in 2014, so likely not big-data ML (AlexNet hadn't even come out) but classic CV. Productivity improvements will be needed in all industries. I'd rather have fewer well-paid and well-trained, accountable LEO's that have all the productivity tools they need vs. a mini-army of union-protected tom-dick-harry's grabbed of the street, handed a gun and a database. No thank you.
    - LocalH 6mo ago
      I'd rather we have cops who are required to actually investigate, versus just taking what a computer program tells them as if it is inerrant gospel Maybe if the cops can prove they actually did investigation and were only prompted by the AI to do that investigation, I'd agree. But the whole problem is that the cops are blindly using AI to tell them who to arrest, which is such a blatant rights violation that I can't see how anyone could support it and sleep soundly at night Also, a non-zero number of cops have been using AI to stalk ex-partners. That's just known cases, and it stands to reason there are also a non-zero number of cops who have done it and not been caught. Since a single such case is too many, it needs to stop. Also, don't forget, "good" cops who aren't reporting bad cops and trying to get them off the force are also really bad cops
  - 1qaboutecs 6mo ago
    (light correction - she was extradited hundreds of miles all the way to Michigan!)
    - LocalH 6mo ago
      Maybe there were two cases because I thought I remembered hearing about that (or was it Maryland?) but I also remember a similar situation of someone being taken to NC Edit: the one I was referencing was North Dakota, not NC. But there was a very similar case that I think involved Maryland. The fact that there are multiple cases to confuse in this scenario only emboldens my viewpoint that AI has no place being anywhere near LEO
- allknowingfrog 6mo ago
  I think both can be true. Ideally, we should do more to address the social issues that cause people to drink and drive, but revoking licenses is still a good short-term move. We could outlaw AI policing while we work on deeper issues with law enforcement.

jeremywho 6mo ago

> this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI This story wouldn't exist without flock cameras constantly surveilling the public...cameras have EVERYTHING to do with this story.

pj_mukh 6mo ago
"Law enforcement is setting up a multi-county dragnet by putting every version or mistype of a license plate into a warrant list" wouldn't be a story? It should be! We should have a higher standard for the people with guns and a badge on the street.
- LocalH 6mo ago
  Flock is the problem too because their system is enabling the rights violations to scale up.
  - tcp_handshaker 6mo ago
    Its by design. By using a third party, they can get around the 4th amendment.
    - LocalH 6mo ago
      Using a third-party to bypass legal restrictions should in and of itself be considered willful and knowledgeable intent to violate the Constitution under color of law, regardless of the specific actions taken
    - _DeadFred_ 6mo ago
      How are they not an 'agent of the state' and how does the 4th not apply? If the government asked for the scan/info on the vehicle, they are acting on behalf of the government? https://www.fletc.gov/audio/definition-government-agent-under-4th-amendment-mp3 https://www.fletc.gov/audio/definition-government-agent-unde...
      - 6mo ago

virissimo 6mo ago

It's not insane at all to return both in a lookup. The "reporting person" will often be wrong about slight variations when calling in a license plate and the downside of errors are asymmetric: it is much more dangerous for the officer to think a driver doesn't have a warrant when they do versus thinking they have a warrant when they don't.

zamadatix 6mo ago
The insane part is trying to solve the problems created by homoglyphs in post-assignment. What's the need to allow both `O` and `0` on a plate if it's supposed to be hard to tell apart anyway? Say there was some reason to want to both characters, why allow assigning a new plate which would match with an existing assignment? It's just a loss of time, resources, and safety for both law enforcement and everyone else to allow duplicate matches to be a possibility.
- LocalH 6mo ago
  The funny thing is that disambiguation of glyphs in a font is a solved problem. Slash the zeroes, wide serifs on the capital i, etc. They just...don't do so in these states where it is still a problem.
  - zehaeva 6mo ago
    It's also a a problem because not all states are the same, some don't allow O, some do. Some allow 0, some don't! The cameras need to be able to read both.
    - mrlonglong 6mo ago
      In the UK this issue was recognised decades ago. They only allow certain letters and numbers in specific places on the registration plates.
LocalH 6mo ago
Let's just arrest everyone then - I'm sure they've committed a crime of some kind during their life. We're approximately halfway down the slippery slope, and I don't see any way out other than hard revolution, which is very touchy talk on the internet. Ultimately it's all modern capitalism's fault, else there would be much less incentive for these companies to fuel what is rapidly becoming the effective Fourth Reich

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

AlexandrB 6mo ago

The insane practice was allowing "O" and "0" to be used in license plate numbers in the first place. Once you do that, you're stuck dealing with the fallout of trying to distinguish confusing glyphs at distance on a moving vehicle. Many places omit letters that can be confused like this for good reason - e.g. Ontario plates can't have the letters G, I, O, Q, and U.

harwoodr 6mo ago
My Ontario green plate starts with GV...
- philipwhiuk 6mo ago
  I imagine it's unambiguous because it's a specific length so it can ONLY be a G.
bloak 6mo ago
In the font used for British number plates O and 0 are identical and 1 and I are identical. This link might work for an example: https://www.dafont.com/uk-number-plate.font?text=OO01+III https://www.dafont.com/uk-number-plate.font?text=OO01+III Software that handles number plates needs to take account of this. Not all of it does but the glyphs being identical makes it quite clear where the responsibility lies.
- philipwhiuk 6mo ago
  Isn't the British solution to only allow certain combinations so this is always unambiguous? e.g. a prior car we had was FE51 WOC - the O can't be a 0 because of the format requirements. Similarly the 1 can't be an I.

ragall 6mo ago

[dead]

munk-a 6mo ago

I simply don't understand why our legal system needs a non-deterministic agent injected into it. What value are we trying to capture that isn't already delivered by our overbearing amount of surveillance.

LocalH 6mo ago
The ability to do less actual work and still get arrests
- dylan604 6mo ago
  the question does not really seem like a good faith question. if people on this forum can't see a reason why someone would want to use AI to make their life easier is kind of hypocritical. what, it's only good for techbros to use it, but other's can't? we know that pretty much every police agency is understaffed and those working are humans and would like to make their job easier/faster/more successful just like everyone else. unfortunately, they are running into the same thing techbros are in that AI is an oversold bill of goods that can actually cause more work than without it. and i'm saying this that has a very strong skepticism about the status of current policing.
  - LocalH 6mo ago
    There are a lot of people here who are against any so-called modern "AI" I'm kinda one of them ELIZA they are not
    - antonvs 6mo ago
      ELIZA was a trivially simple hardcoded chatbot, that mainly reflected your statements back at you as questions, so it's not clear what you mean by that comparison. If you were looking for an impressive example of early AI, SHRDLU would be it.

TheMagicHorsey 6mo ago

Law enforcement being lazy, dumb, and incompetent is not an unpredictable bug. Its predictable. The smartest human capital does not go into law enforcement in this country. They go to other industries. Flock needs to have procedures for whitelisting plates when errors are discovered because these kinds of issues are very common.

LocalH 6mo ago
Yes, in fact, it's possible to be too smart to be a cop

scottlamb 6mo ago

> Paraphrasing the crux of the issue: "It's regular practice in Colorado to list license plates with both versions, the one with 'O's and the other with Zeros in the warrant list." Insane. Practice. Agree. > As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI, but "law enforcement has an insane lazy practice" doesn't make for a very good headline anymore. Flock allows them to execute their intent at scale. That's a regression, unless it leads to the realization their intent is harmful and stupid. (Lots of other reasons Flock is bad too.)

api 6mo ago
The inability of governments to perfectly enforce laws and regulations shields us from their incompetence and corruption to some extent.
- LocalH 6mo ago
  And they think AI will allow them to approach that perfection, when in reality it's worse than actual police investigation

amanaplanacanal 6mo ago

Why the heck are they using both O and 0 on their license plates? Seems like a recipe for this kind of failure.

mitthrowaway2 6mo ago
Or at least, enforce a totally unambiguous font, like slashed zero!
- rtkwe 6mo ago
  Doesn't solve the issue until all 48/50 states have the same standard.
  - dylan604 6mo ago
    interesting. i never new a fraction of something could be considered all.
    - kajman 6mo ago
      I think the assumption is most criminals won't bother to bring cars from Hawaii or Alaska if they don't follow along.
      - rtkwe 6mo ago
        Yeah Alaska plates are fairly rare so you could maybe get away with them not adopting the standard. Hawaii plates are EXTREMELY rare because of the cost of freighting a car over and there's no real reason to register a car in Hawaii that I'm aware of. [0] [0] I'm thinking here of places like Montana which attracts a fair number of out of state registrations to avoid sales and registration taxes in some states. PS don't try this most states already consider this and you're often violating the sales tax laws if the car doesn't leave the state within a few days of purchase.
zehaeva 6mo ago
The cameras that they have to read plates in a lot of different conditions and various states of cleanliness. Some states allow O and some states allow 0, and some states don't care. Combine the two issues and cops get lazy and want to check the plate with both the 0 and O just to "make sure". The cameras also confuse D and Q with 0 and O. And 5 & S, and 2 & Z, and 6 & G, and 8 & B.

thaumasiotes 6mo ago

> As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI, but "law enforcement has an insane lazy practice" doesn't make for a very good headline anymore. That practice isn't insane. It's what you'd always want. To the extent that it causes problems, you'd want to fix the practice that doesn't make sense, which is using an alphabet for license plates that contains both O and 0.

kajman 6mo ago
I personally don't want people violently dragged out of their cars at gunpoint when they don't actually have warrants.
- thaumasiotes 6mo ago
  So?
  - kajman 6mo ago
    Maybe the practice is what you would always want. Not me.
    - thaumasiotes 6mo ago
      "The practice" in my comment is in fact what you, personally, would always want. Any other practice would have no way to work. "The practice" in your comment is unrelated. Is there a reason you brought it up?

matheusmoreira 6mo ago

https://xkcd.com/1105/ https://xkcd.com/1105/

zehaeva 6mo ago
There truly is an xkcd for everything.
LeifCarrotson 6mo ago
Unfortunately, there are a lot of squad cars and they don't have post-its, they have ALPRs that flag all possible combinations of 1 and I for arrest.

Zigurd 6mo ago

Except that's not an excuse. What it really means is that potential matches have extremely low confidence, and shouldn't be reported as matches.

NoSalt 6mo ago

Wow ... how would you like to get arrested in front of friends and family simply because you had an 'O' instead of a '0', or vice versa?

dualvariable 6mo ago

> "It's regular practice in Colorado to list license plates with both versions, the one with 'O's and the other with Zeros in the warrant list." That is a suspicion of what might be the problem. And he's facing a Kafkaesque problem that in order to get him removed from the list they need to know who the warrant is for, but he also can't find out who the warrant is for. Someone can clearly figure this out and help to get it fixed, but he's been unable to talk to a person that has the ability and authorization to query the system to figure it out for him. We really need some anti-Kafka laws in this country so that if you wind up any sort of list like this, including bans from companies like Apple/Google/Meta/etc, that you have the right to know why and to appeal, and that they must not by default assume that you're a fraudster and refuse to speak with you.

tcp_handshaker 6mo ago
>> And he's facing a Kafkaesque problem Dont forget the comment from the local police... "We can remove him from our list...we cant do anything about others list"

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

josefresco 6mo ago

No it still relates to the cameras. When you hook up incompetence with automation bad things happen quickly an in far great numbers. Incompetence alone, if isolated or kept from spreading viraly is far less damaging.

devilbunny 6mo ago

For why, just glance at this. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fddhjxwfnjkyg1.jpeg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fd... (It's a Dungeon Crawler Carl-themed license plate.) Look carefully at the sticker at the top right. The tag is actually MONGON0, but it is far from obvious that the last character is a zero at a quick glance unless you are very familiar with the typeface used in Tennessee license plates. The logical solution is to forbid issuing plates that could be misinterpreted. If MONGONO exists, then you can't have M0NG0N0 or other permutation of O's and 0's.

tzs 6mo ago

The net is telling me that since 1975 the license plate format in Colorado is XXX-XNN where Xs are letters and Ns are digits. Having a plate entered into the watch list with multiple times with all variations of substituting Os for 0s and 0s for Os should not cause a problem. That suggests that this involves a plate that does not come from the normal sequence you get when you let the state choose your plate. It looks like most of their collector and special use plates also should be safe [1]. That's probably why we haven't heard of a lot of people running into this. It seems you probably would have to have a vanity plate that includes 0 or O, and someone else would have to have a vanity plate that differs from yours only by changing 0s to Os or vice versa. [1] https://dmv.colorado.gov/other-license-plates https://dmv.colorado.gov/other-license-plates

jjav 6mo ago

> As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI Obviously not true, but with nuance. This shows the problem with bad practices at infinite scale. Maybe they always conflated 0 with O. Not great, but if it was done manually it came up as a problem almost never. Still not great if someone got caught up in it, but it was not a widespread problem. Add a layer of ever-present spying on literally everyone and suddenly what was a footnote of a problem is a major issue.