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Anyone with a camera and $5 can now have a license plate reader:
Automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), software that allows computers to separate and analyze license plates from camera footage, could soon become ubiquitous in American neighborhoods thanks to a company called Rekor Systems. On Thursday, the firm started selling a product called Watchman. The $5 per month subscription allows homeowners to add the company's OpenALPR software to almost any home security camera.
[...] there are a couple of limitations to the $5 package. The software won't automatically log every single license that passes your home. As a homeowner, you'll also won't be able to obtain someone's name, address and location history from their license plate. That's a feature only law enforcement can access.
[...] privacy advocates fear the technology could be easily abused by both homeowners and law enforcement agencies to erode the privacy of innocent people further. And advocates have good reason to be skeptical of companies like Rekor. Amazon's Ring security service spent the majority of 2019 defending its partnerships with law enforcement agencies. In one instance, a report from Motherboard showed that the company had coached police on how to convince homeowners to hand over their Ring camera footage without a warrant. Similarly, it's easy to imagine a context in which police agencies could abuse the widespread proliferation of technology like OpenALPR.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @04:22PM (6 children)
Look, cops already have this stuff. What is the problem with giving it to the people? Leveling the playing field might even take us closer to the Libertarian-straw-man's private law enforcement paradise.
The thing that makes license plate readers dangerous is the possibility that a widespread network of cameras could track someone's every movement. The agencies we should be worried about, the MI5/NSA types, already have that. This is about local cops, who don't need this kind of technology to target someone.
(aside: most bad actions by cops these days are due to improper snap judgements, i.e. assuming a black dude is a criminal without knowing anything about him; if anything, pervasive surveillance is more likely to give them the paper trail to show that he actually leads a pretty normal life)
We need to stop pretending that we can do anything to stop law enforcement from encroaching on every bit of our lives. Even if they don't own the equipment, they are just a conversation away from co-opting some corporate overlord's network.
No, we should applaud when law enforcement technology becomes accessible to the masses. Just think how well you could defend yourself, from the gub'ment, with cameras that can track squad cars and other surveillance technology pointed at them and their stooges.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @07:28PM
i've thought of tracking cops with their car computer's wireless connections, but not license plates. good idea. the sooner the better.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @08:13PM
This is a private for profit company storing all these plate records, and explicitly not giving much access back to paying peons but providing it to cops. Or, you're not gaining the advantage you think you are but tipping the scale further against yourself.
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Saturday February 01 2020, @12:09AM (1 child)
The problem is you will never level the playing field. At most you will be given the plate numbers you see while feeding your camera's input into the company's system, and they're making you pay to do it.
Meanwhile, the company will charge the police even more so they can see a larger view of the data in the system they've built. Only the company itself will ever truly have a complete picture, and they'll make money off every single byte of data coming in and going out.
If you want to stop pretending, don't fool yourself into thinking what we have is anything close to what the cops have. Especially since this is all going on while we pay to turn over everything we see from our front porch to a company that sucks out more of our money when they siphon it off from the police.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:36PM
Officers Ask Map App To Remove Police Tracking [npr.org]
NYPD Demands Removal of DUI Checkpoints From Waze App, Google Refuses [soylentnews.org]
Denver police radios go silent to the public as department switches to encrypted transmissions [denverpost.com]
The Waze craze: Legal insight into LE concerns surrounding popular Google app [policeone.com]
The cops get antsy at even minor attempts to level the playing field. That suggests people are on the right track.
It's likely that license plate databases will just be completely leaked out at some point, allowing you to download it and get local access to partially accurate information. I'll assert that this information could be useful to normal folks. Think drug dealer/user vehicles prowling the neighborhood at 2 A.M. You could also attempt to combine it with sex offender registry data or other public records. Only one household per street needs the technical skills, and they can share whatever they learn with neighbors if they want to.
Object and license plate detection is obviously possible with the hardware we have now, and it can be done with free software if people want to pursue that. The OpenALPR company is potentially scummy with the way they have represented themselves, but you can apparently download an open source version [wikipedia.org] of their software and just fork that as required.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:12AM (1 child)
The problem is that cops have the stuff. Take it away from them instead of spreading the mass surveillance even further.
Which is why all forms of mass surveillance must be banned, and data collection must be severely limited.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:44PM
You just won't get the policy solutions you want in the post-9/11 environment, unless you can successfully overthrow the government.
Democratized technological solutions are possible. We've already seen how public smartphone recordings can put police officers in prison or exonerate their targets. There is a need for independent recordings even when officers start wearing their own body cameras.
You can do your own "surveillance", license plate reading, etc. with equipment that does not touch a corporate network.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]