3 ms·

Drudge headline just linked to a similar article: http://news.yahoo.com/driving-somewhere-theres-govt-record-140052644.html http://news.yahoo.com/driving-somewh

by swamp40 13y ago

Drudge headline just linked to a similar article: http://news.yahoo.com/driving-somewhere-theres-govt-record-140052644.html http://news.yahoo.com/driving-somewhere-theres-govt-record-1... It says the police cars can tag the location of 7K plates during a normal shift without burdening the officers at all. Doesn't sound like too much, but multiply that by about 10,000 (Chicagoland) and two shifts and it adds up fast. Also here in Chicago, they have an "Open Road Tolling" system that grabs your plate # on the fly at 80 mph. Then they mail you a ticket if the plate # doesn't match with a valid iPass (wireless box in most everyone's car). The thing is, there's no way to tell which car in a group has the iPass - so they must have to run every plate thru their database and match it up with valid iPasses. That means the Illinois tollway is grabbing and analyzing say 20 million plates and timestamps every day. If all that data is stored indefinitely - wow.

joering2 13y ago
I submitted it to HN minutes ago, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6057968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6057968 It seems to be a new scandal brewing. Surprises me how long it took. I recall in 2009 in Clearwater Florida when a Sherrif car had a gun-type looking devices pointing all 4 sides of the car. I asked what it was and he told me when he drives this thing picks up license plates and raises two alerts (if any): 1) if the tag is expired, OR if the owner of the car has a DL suspended/etc. If #2 then the picture of driver pops up and he visually checks if gender/look matches... if not, then he ignores the alert.
- swamp40 13y ago
  Good stuff. It's going to take a lot of outrage to get them to give up tools like that. Those are money makers.
  - warmwaffles 13y ago
    Live in fear. Obey!
- DanBC 13y ago
  The UK has had automatic number plate recognition for years; first around Heathrow and the City of London (the financial district, the "square mile", not the entire London city) and then on motorways and elsewhere. We even had a law change to specify the type of fonts you can use for licence plates. I can understand it if they're catching uninsured drivers, or stolen vehicles. But I can't understand why they'd keep it for longer than a month. (I recognize that I'm on the lenient end when I say "a month" and that some people don't want the data to be kept at all.)

by swamp40 13y ago

joering2 13y ago

I submitted it to HN minutes ago, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6057968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6057968 It seems to be a new scandal brewing. Surprises me how long it took. I recall in 2009 in Clearwater Florida when a Sherrif car had a gun-type looking devices pointing all 4 sides of the car. I asked what it was and he told me when he drives this thing picks up license plates and raises two alerts (if any): 1) if the tag is expired, OR if the owner of the car has a DL suspended/etc. If #2 then the picture of driver pops up and he visually checks if gender/look matches... if not, then he ignores the alert.

swamp40 13y ago
Good stuff. It's going to take a lot of outrage to get them to give up tools like that. Those are money makers.
- warmwaffles 13y ago
  Live in fear. Obey!
DanBC 13y ago
The UK has had automatic number plate recognition for years; first around Heathrow and the City of London (the financial district, the "square mile", not the entire London city) and then on motorways and elsewhere. We even had a law change to specify the type of fonts you can use for licence plates. I can understand it if they're catching uninsured drivers, or stolen vehicles. But I can't understand why they'd keep it for longer than a month. (I recognize that I'm on the lenient end when I say "a month" and that some people don't want the data to be kept at all.)