5 ms·

It's too bad current vehicle codes forbid you from obscuring your plate at all at any time, this makes it illegal to hide your identity from would be data colle

It's too bad current vehicle codes forbid you from obscuring your plate at all at any time, this makes it illegal to hide your identity from would be data collectors, which makes protecting yourself very difficult. I suppose you could just go without plates like Steve Jobs did and pay the fix-it tickets you end up getting. Personally, I tend to forget to pay my registration for a solid 6 months before I finally get pulled over for it every year, and it costs me about $35 extra, so if this becomes pervasive, it might be worth considering losing the plates. I'm willing to bet that some officers would even be slightly sympathetic if you explained your reasoning, not that they wouldn't still give you a ticket, but maybe.

redthrowaway 13y ago
>I suppose you could just go without plates like Steve Jobs did and pay the fix-it tickets you end up getting. A minor note, but he never paid any fix-it tickets. IIRC, there's a clause in California's vehicle laws that gives you up to 6 months from the date of purchase to affix plates to a vehicle (although it must still be registered). Jobs just traded in his MB S500 every 6 months for a new one to avoid ever having to put plates on. It's not exactly feasible for the non-billionaires among us.
- codezero 13y ago
  Ah yeah, I think you are correct, very clever. I still think that going with the fix-it ticket route would be feasible for the normal folks. Though I am not sure if they end up raising the price if you repeatedly get the same fix-it ticket, that might be a problem.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    "Strategies" that involve throwing around lots of money, like buying a new car every 6 months, never seem that clever to me.
    - codezero 13y ago
      It depends on what you are optimizing for. In his case, I presume it was privacy.
- chaz 13y ago
  I keep hearing this near-urban legend about him trading cars in frequently (even citing a former Apple security guy), but I'm pretty sure it's not true. You're correct about the plates, but it's 90 days. However, in the Bay Area, there are so many new vehicles that there's no reason to think that a reasonably shiny late-model car isn't within that 90 day period. I drove my new car up and down CA-101 for almost a year without bothering to put them on. You can press your luck for as long as you'd like. The fix-it ticket is a bit of a hassle since you need to find a cop to sign you off. Or you can just pay the significantly higher fine (several hundred I think). Also, for a man who parked in any open handicapped space in the parking lot whenever he wanted, I'm pretty sure he didn't care much about staying strictly within the law. One additional point worth noting that the MB SL55 he drove was last produced in 2006. Yet, here's a photo of his car in 2010 -- an SL55: http://gizmodo.com/5503004/steve-jobs-and-eric-schmidt-spotted-together-again-photos http://gizmodo.com/5503004/steve-jobs-and-eric-schmidt-spott.... Surely he would have traded up to an SL65 if he bought a car from 2006 onward?
  - redthrowaway 13y ago
    You may very well be right. The story certainly has the air of one of the fetishistic tales told about him following his death.
    - daniel-cussen 13y ago
      Not just following his death...before it too.
  - jcrites 13y ago
    The mainstream news reported on this: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-car-apple-ceo-license-plates/story?id=14834608 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-car-apple-ceo-li...
    - dubyah 13y ago
      While it is claimed that he rotated similar leased vehicles, if we were to look up the VIN (WDBSK72F67F124082), we would find that it was registered as a personal vehicle with only one owner for a number of years. http://blog.peschfamily.com/2011/08/steve-jobs.html http://blog.peschfamily.com/2011/08/steve-jobs.html
socillion 13y ago
There are products designed to obscure license plates from mounted cameras while still being visible in most circumstances. I can't vouch for their effectiveness, though, and Mythbusters didn't have any success when they tested some in 2007. http://www.buyradardetectors.com/blog/2009/03/the_great_license_plate_protection_comparison_test_of_2009.aspx http://www.buyradardetectors.com/blog/2009/03/the_great_lice... I wonder if there are other methods that could be used just to break automatic OCR?
- pyre 13y ago
  Some of the products tested on Mythbusters were able to partially obscure the plates. The issue was that it was easy to find the full plate from a partial when you have the DMV database behind you (and a photo which gives you things like color, make and model). Seems like obscuring might be enough to make this a non-starter for private companies though.
  - bigiain 13y ago
    I've heard from a person who works in the civilian section of the traffic enforcement - that while some of the products/tactics being used to obscure plates work against the automated numberplate reading software, that he's never seen one that wouldn't be obvious enough from visial instection, fail for a human operator with a photoshop-like image tweaking interface - he says they can _always_ get enough of a plate to match up with vehicle make/model/colour details. He says the only thing he sees that "works" is flip-up plate holders on motorcycles - and that when they see them, the photos get distributed to the local police who the have a "vehicle of interest" notice for that make/model/colour bike (and jacket/helmet).
    - pyre 13y ago
      I'm not sure how kindly the law would look at you using the plate obscuring products, but these products could be a privacy measure if they are ineffective against law enforcement. The idea being once there is a human involved, the cost goes up. This would drive up the minimum price that these private companies could sell their services for.
mullingitover 13y ago
I live in LA, and I see cars without plates every day, often multiple times a day. When I do, I habitually check for temporary tags. They never, ever have them. It's bizarre--you'd think that driving without plates would be a guaranteed way to get yourself pulled over constantly. How does this work? If getting yourself surveilled by private parties due to your visible license plate becomes a thing, I can see the temptation for people to start removing them in protest.
- chaz 13y ago
  New cars in CA get registrations folded up and affixed to the front windshield [1]. You get your plates in the mail in a couple of weeks and it's up to you to put them on within 90 days of purchase. [1] http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showpost.php?s=27de0586326d630b11c8b51ae0997b98&p=6704888&postcount=11 http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showpost.php?s=27de0586326d...
  - mullingitover 13y ago
    That's what I look for, and on every single car driving without plates (that I've seen for years now) it's not there.
- rdl 13y ago
  It's entirely likely they're not licensed drivers, and that the vehicle isn't registered, and never will be. California seems to semi-intentionally not enforce registration/licenses for political reasons.
res0nat0r 13y ago
But there has never been any expectation of privacy when in public. Especially when it comes to something regulated like driving a car. Should there be some change in the law now forbidding collecting licence plate data because it is easier to do en-masse?
- reeses 13y ago
  That's the question, isn't it? LE uses facial recognition to scan crowds. Now cars are tracked, not using GPS, an observing officer, or a member of the public (who may need to report a crime), but by snarfing video of all the license plates with a geolocated camera, timestamping and OCRing them, and storing the resulting information. The next thing that pops into my head is the fingerprint. Not because it's "easy" to get, but you also have no reasonable expectation of privacy with them. Imagine the embarrassment when "no two fingerprints are alike" is finally disproven as some poor bastard is arrested and charged with a crime committed by another person solely on the basis of his thumbprint.
  - bigiain 13y ago
    It doesn't seem to embarrass prosecutors too much when they jail someone for five months based on "conclusive DNA evidence" - even though the suspect was in hospital with a blood alcohol reading on 0.4 from two hours before the crime to 12 hours afterwards. And who'd been take to hospital by the same ambulance crew that attended the crime later on and moved the victim… You can see where this is going right? - "The paramedics physically moved both Anderson and Kumra, resulting in the inadvertent DNA transfer…" How on earth can someone end up in jail for five months under those circumstances? (Note too, the other suspect jailed for seven months - for, several months before the killing, posting a photo of the future-victim's house to Instagram…) http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2013/06/28/how-innocent-mans-dna-was-found-at-killing-scene/ http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2013/06/28/how-innocent-m...
  - Amadou 13y ago
    Not quite charged, but held for two weeks and only released when someone without an alibi of being on the other side of the planet was found to also have matching prints... http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/21/nation/na-mayfield21 http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/21/nation/na-mayfield21
bigiain 13y ago
I know we're in different jurisdictions, but if I haven't paid my registration, I'm uninsured. Please don't be that uninsured driver…
- codezero 13y ago
  In California, the reverse is true. Your registration becomes revoked when your insurance expires, not the other way around. I am still insured since I pay a private party for coverage and the vehicle code here doesn't have the power to revoke that contract.

redthrowaway 13y ago

>I suppose you could just go without plates like Steve Jobs did and pay the fix-it tickets you end up getting. A minor note, but he never paid any fix-it tickets. IIRC, there's a clause in California's vehicle laws that gives you up to 6 months from the date of purchase to affix plates to a vehicle (although it must still be registered). Jobs just traded in his MB S500 every 6 months for a new one to avoid ever having to put plates on. It's not exactly feasible for the non-billionaires among us.

codezero 13y ago
Ah yeah, I think you are correct, very clever. I still think that going with the fix-it ticket route would be feasible for the normal folks. Though I am not sure if they end up raising the price if you repeatedly get the same fix-it ticket, that might be a problem.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  "Strategies" that involve throwing around lots of money, like buying a new car every 6 months, never seem that clever to me.
  - codezero 13y ago
    It depends on what you are optimizing for. In his case, I presume it was privacy.
chaz 13y ago
I keep hearing this near-urban legend about him trading cars in frequently (even citing a former Apple security guy), but I'm pretty sure it's not true. You're correct about the plates, but it's 90 days. However, in the Bay Area, there are so many new vehicles that there's no reason to think that a reasonably shiny late-model car isn't within that 90 day period. I drove my new car up and down CA-101 for almost a year without bothering to put them on. You can press your luck for as long as you'd like. The fix-it ticket is a bit of a hassle since you need to find a cop to sign you off. Or you can just pay the significantly higher fine (several hundred I think). Also, for a man who parked in any open handicapped space in the parking lot whenever he wanted, I'm pretty sure he didn't care much about staying strictly within the law. One additional point worth noting that the MB SL55 he drove was last produced in 2006. Yet, here's a photo of his car in 2010 -- an SL55: http://gizmodo.com/5503004/steve-jobs-and-eric-schmidt-spotted-together-again-photos http://gizmodo.com/5503004/steve-jobs-and-eric-schmidt-spott.... Surely he would have traded up to an SL65 if he bought a car from 2006 onward?
- redthrowaway 13y ago
  You may very well be right. The story certainly has the air of one of the fetishistic tales told about him following his death.
  - daniel-cussen 13y ago
    Not just following his death...before it too.
- jcrites 13y ago
  The mainstream news reported on this: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-car-apple-ceo-license-plates/story?id=14834608 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-car-apple-ceo-li...
  - dubyah 13y ago
    While it is claimed that he rotated similar leased vehicles, if we were to look up the VIN (WDBSK72F67F124082), we would find that it was registered as a personal vehicle with only one owner for a number of years. http://blog.peschfamily.com/2011/08/steve-jobs.html http://blog.peschfamily.com/2011/08/steve-jobs.html

socillion 13y ago

There are products designed to obscure license plates from mounted cameras while still being visible in most circumstances. I can't vouch for their effectiveness, though, and Mythbusters didn't have any success when they tested some in 2007. http://www.buyradardetectors.com/blog/2009/03/the_great_license_plate_protection_comparison_test_of_2009.aspx http://www.buyradardetectors.com/blog/2009/03/the_great_lice... I wonder if there are other methods that could be used just to break automatic OCR?

pyre 13y ago
Some of the products tested on Mythbusters were able to partially obscure the plates. The issue was that it was easy to find the full plate from a partial when you have the DMV database behind you (and a photo which gives you things like color, make and model). Seems like obscuring might be enough to make this a non-starter for private companies though.
- bigiain 13y ago
  I've heard from a person who works in the civilian section of the traffic enforcement - that while some of the products/tactics being used to obscure plates work against the automated numberplate reading software, that he's never seen one that wouldn't be obvious enough from visial instection, fail for a human operator with a photoshop-like image tweaking interface - he says they can _always_ get enough of a plate to match up with vehicle make/model/colour details. He says the only thing he sees that "works" is flip-up plate holders on motorcycles - and that when they see them, the photos get distributed to the local police who the have a "vehicle of interest" notice for that make/model/colour bike (and jacket/helmet).
  - pyre 13y ago
    I'm not sure how kindly the law would look at you using the plate obscuring products, but these products could be a privacy measure if they are ineffective against law enforcement. The idea being once there is a human involved, the cost goes up. This would drive up the minimum price that these private companies could sell their services for.

mullingitover 13y ago

I live in LA, and I see cars without plates every day, often multiple times a day. When I do, I habitually check for temporary tags. They never, ever have them. It's bizarre--you'd think that driving without plates would be a guaranteed way to get yourself pulled over constantly. How does this work? If getting yourself surveilled by private parties due to your visible license plate becomes a thing, I can see the temptation for people to start removing them in protest.

chaz 13y ago
New cars in CA get registrations folded up and affixed to the front windshield [1]. You get your plates in the mail in a couple of weeks and it's up to you to put them on within 90 days of purchase. [1] http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showpost.php?s=27de0586326d630b11c8b51ae0997b98&p=6704888&postcount=11 http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showpost.php?s=27de0586326d...
- mullingitover 13y ago
  That's what I look for, and on every single car driving without plates (that I've seen for years now) it's not there.
rdl 13y ago
It's entirely likely they're not licensed drivers, and that the vehicle isn't registered, and never will be. California seems to semi-intentionally not enforce registration/licenses for political reasons.

res0nat0r 13y ago

But there has never been any expectation of privacy when in public. Especially when it comes to something regulated like driving a car. Should there be some change in the law now forbidding collecting licence plate data because it is easier to do en-masse?

reeses 13y ago
That's the question, isn't it? LE uses facial recognition to scan crowds. Now cars are tracked, not using GPS, an observing officer, or a member of the public (who may need to report a crime), but by snarfing video of all the license plates with a geolocated camera, timestamping and OCRing them, and storing the resulting information. The next thing that pops into my head is the fingerprint. Not because it's "easy" to get, but you also have no reasonable expectation of privacy with them. Imagine the embarrassment when "no two fingerprints are alike" is finally disproven as some poor bastard is arrested and charged with a crime committed by another person solely on the basis of his thumbprint.
- bigiain 13y ago
  It doesn't seem to embarrass prosecutors too much when they jail someone for five months based on "conclusive DNA evidence" - even though the suspect was in hospital with a blood alcohol reading on 0.4 from two hours before the crime to 12 hours afterwards. And who'd been take to hospital by the same ambulance crew that attended the crime later on and moved the victim… You can see where this is going right? - "The paramedics physically moved both Anderson and Kumra, resulting in the inadvertent DNA transfer…" How on earth can someone end up in jail for five months under those circumstances? (Note too, the other suspect jailed for seven months - for, several months before the killing, posting a photo of the future-victim's house to Instagram…) http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2013/06/28/how-innocent-mans-dna-was-found-at-killing-scene/ http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2013/06/28/how-innocent-m...
- Amadou 13y ago
  Not quite charged, but held for two weeks and only released when someone without an alibi of being on the other side of the planet was found to also have matching prints... http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/21/nation/na-mayfield21 http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/21/nation/na-mayfield21

bigiain 13y ago

I know we're in different jurisdictions, but if I haven't paid my registration, I'm uninsured. Please don't be that uninsured driver…

codezero 13y ago
In California, the reverse is true. Your registration becomes revoked when your insurance expires, not the other way around. I am still insured since I pay a private party for coverage and the vehicle code here doesn't have the power to revoke that contract.