If you have an IP-enabled security camera, you can download some free, open-source software from GitHub and boom—you have a fully functional automated license plate reader, reports ArsTechnica .
Matt Hill, OpenALPR's founder, told Ars technica "I'm a big privacy advocate... now you've got LPR just in the hands of the government, which isn't a good thing."
Will "they" like it when "we" have a crowdsourced database of where and when congressmen, judges and cops go throughout their work day?
Does this level the playing field? Open yet another can of worms? Both?
Related Stories
A bill in the California Senate would allow drivers to cover their license plates when parked to prevent automated license plate readers from reading them. Law enforcement (or somebody else) would have to manually lift the cover to obtain the license plate number:
If the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a San Diego-based Republican state senator have their way, it will soon become legal for Californians to cover their license plates while parked as a way to thwart automated license plate readers.
[...] As written, the new senate bill would allow for law enforcement to manually lift a cover, or flap, as a way to manually inspect a plate number. The idea is not only to prevent dragnet license plate data collection by law enforcement, but also by private companies. A California company, Vigilant Solutions, is believed to have the largest private ALPR database in America, with billions of records.
Ars is unaware of a commercially available product that would allow a license plate to be easily blocked in this fashion. A man in Florida was arrested earlier this year for using a miniature black screen that could be activated via remote control as a way to block his plate number when he passed through automated toll booths.
The new bill will come up before the California State Senate Transportation and Housing Committee on Tuesday, May 9—the first stop in the legislative process.
The California Police Chiefs Association has already filed its opposition to the bill. In a letter to Sen. Joel Anderson, the group argued that the bill would only benefit one group: "those who are trying to evade law enforcement and detection." Similarly, the bill has faced resistance from the California Public Parking Association, among other groups.
Related:
DHS Wants a National License Plate Tracking System
Debt Collectors Fight Privacy Advocates Over License Plate Readers
Arizona City Using Fake Cacti to Hide License Plate Cameras
Louisiana Governor Vetoes License Plate Reader Bill, Citing Privacy Concerns.
Open Source License Plate Reader: Little Brother Strikes Back!
Federal Agents Enlisted Local Police to Scan License Plates at Gun Shows
Amazon Wants to Scan Your License Plate
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @07:38PM
______
| bag | cat
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(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Sunday December 06 2015, @08:07PM
Little brother strikes back? Really?
How is this anything like a "strike back"? Putting tracking into the hands of everybody doesn't make it more palatable.
While we may not have an expectation of privacy in public, people have a right to go about their daily business in public without constant surveillance and monitoring. There is a big difference between being casually seen in public by your fellow citizens and being tracked everywhere you go by private networks of cameras.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Sunday December 06 2015, @08:22PM
Thing is, there WILL be constant surveillance and monitoring. It's kind of like the people who wish nobody had guns and so try to outlaw them. Since it is unavoidable that some will have them, it's necessary that all have access.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 06 2015, @08:38PM
I don't like your comparison. I don't like the implications of what you say. But, damn, maybe you're right. That's going to take a little thinking. Is it possible that to defend against surveillance, I have to be part of the surveillance network? I need to learn how to use it, and put it to my own best advantage? I need to learn how it really works, and how it can be misused, so that I can turn it around to my use?
I guess that also, when it is being misused against me, I need to be able to see that, so that I can help to prevent that misuse?
Sounds like a twisted world. But, it's probably not much more twisted than the old world. Back in past centuries, they had things like trial by fire, trial by water, and other silly twisted shit. Tomorrow, it will be trial by video evidence?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @08:44PM
I'm putting my money on trial by trolling comment sections.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday December 08 2015, @02:38AM
No, it wouldn't, IF we made the politicians (law makers) and executives (pay the politicians to make their laws) live in a fish bowl. When a politician CAN'T get away to a private bathroom stall to test "a wide stance" with a random dude, when a politician CAN'T get away with a little vaykay with a Congressional Page, when an executive cannot make a single statement without social media fallout, brand tarnishing etc. you will see change so fast your head will spin .
The answer is to make them live as transparently as they're forcing us to. Only we can live with the transparency. They'll die in a week when exposed to the sunlight.
This is an extremely good idea, but I would want triggers in the system to track "dedicated targets". Just like the no-fly list being secretive and difficult to get delisted from, the public list of targets we monitor (to give them 0% privacy in life) all trigger multiple, random, and nearly automated information feeds. Want to "follow" the sex lives of your politicians? You can now! You want to know the second they arrive at a Target so you can approach them and ask random appropriation committee questions? You can NOW!
Bwahahahahah..... This is the best idea since sliced bread. Make all those assholes live in a fish bowl for every second they deny and attack our privacy. Make them live the wisdom of "be careful what you ask for, you might get it". I positively just know that we would see astounding reductions in corporate crime, political corruption, bribery, etc. the moment we engaged in a mass 1% surveillance system.
Fuck surveillance on the 99%! Do it to the 1% and see what crimes we could stop.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday December 06 2015, @08:41PM
You've not made a coherent case that other having networks of plate readers lends any level of parity.
It's not really similar to a weapon.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Sunday December 06 2015, @08:48PM
Deranged criminal in San Bernardino attacks, kills 14, wounds 21
Deranged criminal in London-Leytonstone attacks, wounds 3
But yes, a gun culture is good, and all deranged criminals buy as many guns as they want with the general public standing up for their rights. Freedom!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @09:09PM
Oooh oooh, now compare Paris!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday December 06 2015, @09:37PM
Meanwhile, since October, at least 102 Palestinians have been killed wielding KNIFE against Israeli citizens.
You really can't carry this anti gun rant very far before you run up against the fact that the gun is irrelevant.
You can't keep insisting that everyone that mounts an attack was "deranged", with the implication that they should not have been allowed to buy a gun because the derangement was so obvious to everyone around them.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by isostatic on Sunday December 06 2015, @11:22PM
1) I'm unaware what makes a rant, please point out the key phrases in the observation that makes it worthy of the term?
> speak or shout at length in an angry, impassioned way.
2) "at least 102 Palestinians have been killed wielding KNIFE against Israeli citizens"
Wikipedia says that 109 have been killled, but only 64 were attackers (who were the others?). They also say that these attacks killed 20 Israelis. How many Israelis would be dead if they'd had guns instead of knives?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday December 06 2015, @10:12PM
The issue is that there is the 2nd Amendment and rather than attempt a straight up honest repeal of it, it will just gets eaten up at the corners till it no longer exists. Even if you hate guns, you have to recognize that doing away with the constitution in this manner, like we've come to realize has been done with the 4th Amendment, means you have no protections whatsoever. So instead of crying about the fact that people can legally own guns, and trying to undermine the Constitution and Bill of Rights to correct that issue, propose an amendment to repeal the 2nd Amendment.
Any other method is a de facto repeal of everything and a sure fire way to make sure we live under a completely unfettered government, one that even now shoots dead 400 people per year: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/police-killings-data/14060357/ [usatoday.com] Take a police force like that and put it in the hands of politicians unrestrained by any Constitutional boundaries, and you have death squads. In other words, don't fuck with the Constitution -- if you want to make guns illegal, do that via the Constitutionally sanctioned process which means repealing the 2nd Amendment.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday December 06 2015, @10:41PM
if you want to make guns illegal, do that via the Constitutionally sanctioned process
Same result. When government has nothing to fear, tyranny just comes quicker.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Monday December 07 2015, @05:09AM
if you want to make guns illegal, do that via the Constitutionally sanctioned process
Same result. When government has nothing to fear, tyranny just comes quicker.
And what is it that you think government has to fear from civilian gun ownership?
Let's not even get into the armaments that the Federal government, or even state national guardsmen have.
In most locations, local cops have enough guns, armor and armored vehicles to take on just about anyone with even automatic weapons. And if they can't, there's the state and federal boys. If you think you can hold off the government with guns, you're lying to yourself and others, friend.
Because no one with half a brain (including those authoritarian gub'mint Joes) really believes that any civilian group can hold territory against them.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday December 07 2015, @06:30AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States_who_died_in_office [wikipedia.org]
Eventually there comes a tyrant so nasty that the Military will remember their oath.
Here, let me refresh your memory:
http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/oaths.html [army.mil]
The wordings of the current oath of enlistment and oath for commissioned officers are as follows:
"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).
"I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God." (DA Form 71, 1 August 1959, for officers.)
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Monday December 07 2015, @10:45AM
You miss my point rather completely, sir.
Which is that the government really doesn't care if you have your long guns and/or hand guns, or even some military style MP5s, AR-15s and the like.
Should we get to the point where we have a significant number of mutinous (for *whatever* reason) military personnel, the government may well have an issue. Especially since local and state guys will likely go off the reservation long before the regular military.
All that said, no one is going to take your precious gun(s) away Frojack. Just relax. Sleep with it tonight. Caress it lovingly and call it by name. It will help.
TFA isn't even about guns. It's about the ridiculous idea that we could somehow use crowdsourcing to "get back at" those who are spying on us.
In any case, we can try to limit the amount of mass surveillance being used against us. Personally, I think we should start with our town/county/city councils and convince those folks (you know, our neighbors) that cameras everywhere and license plate readers are useful in certain circumstances, but often just trample on our rights. Once we get some local legislation limiting the use of such stuff, as well as some sane retention and disclosure standards, we can move outward from there.
Fantasy is really powerful, and is pretty much always better than reality. That said, I recommend against raising a militia and storming the statehouse or the White House or mostly anywhere else. As your mother should have (and likely tried) taught you, "use your words, Frojack!"
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 07 2015, @02:08PM
People who argue against gun ownership in the United States often make the point you are, that even an AR-15 doesn't matter so much against a military that can drop daisy cutters (or whatever much more powerful armament). But you and they ought to pause and reflect how much difficulty the US military has had in defeating similarly armed adversaries in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria. And those are in places where most of the American military and public don't much care if you have to kill 100 innocent children to get 1 bad guy.
Now consider an American military that is tasked with suppressing a rebellious citizenry in its own country. Is a fighter pilot from Des Moines, Iowa really going to be willing to strafe his own neighborhood? What bomber crew will obey orders to carpet bomb suburban Philadelphia? Maybe some would, but not most. Given too many of those orders, and the images of American children lying dead and dismembered in the street because some asshole in Washington DC ordered it, and most American generals would turn those guns on the politicians and the bankers that control them in a hot hurry.
There are other considerations, too, like angry patriots seizing those bases and warehouses full of big, bad weapons and destroying lines of supply for that military and all the other things that go along with guerilla warfare, but you get the picture.
It does matter very much that American citizens have guns.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @03:10PM
If the soldiers and police had that much of a conscience why would you need guns to resist them?
Wouldn't killing unarmed people weigh more on your conscience than killing someone pointing a gun at you or your group/tribe members?
(Score: 2) by Tramii on Monday December 07 2015, @05:21PM
Because it's far far far easier to pressure people into arresting innocent civilians than it is to kill them. If the innocent and oppressed don't have weapons, you can use "less-than-lethal" weapons to arrest them. If you have a family locked in their house, you just bash in the front door. If instead they are armed with handguns and rifles, now it's not so simple. Now the cops have to decide if it's really worth murdering the whole family over a stupid/selfish/immoral law.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday December 08 2015, @12:43AM
You seem to think people will have an inate view of what's right. It won't work like that. The government knows propaganda -- they have to do it well to get into government in the first place, it's evolution, survival of the fittest.
The average american will believe what the government needs them to believe, which means that when the government comes for $GROUP the rest of the country will believe that's the right move. The government may even put up a show of being reluctant, just before they put 70,000 Americans in concentration camps.
How did an armed population go then when it came to defending the constitution?
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday December 07 2015, @08:53PM
I said:
Which is that the government really doesn't care if you have your long guns and/or hand guns, or even some military style MP5s, AR-15s and the like.
How you get from there to patriots storming government facilities is beyond me.
What's more, just off the top of my head, I came up with five places where the government suppressed armed citizenry without those folks' neighbors providing any support. Waco [wikipedia.org], Ruby Ridge [wikipedia.org], Attica [wikipedia.org], Watts [google.com] and Little Rock [wikipedia.org].
You can call people sheep or cowards or blind to the truth, but in fact, most folks in the United States (unlike places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) believe in our system of government.
Yes, our rights are being curtailed. Yes, our government representatives seem to be wallowing in filthy lucre from those who wish to twist our nation to its own ends. But at the end of the day, the vast majority of Americans believe in and support our constitutional republic.
As Churchill (at least it is most often attributed to him) succinctly put it, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."
I'm not an apologist for government and corporate intrusions into our privacy, nor am I sanguine (see what I did there?) about the prospects for fixing things in the near term.
However, AFAICT we're very far away from any sort of widespread civil insurrection in the U.S. and aside from the epidemic of local/state police murdering unarmed people, the government isn't engaged in (despite the paranoid Jade Helm [wikipedia.org] fantasies) in using the military to suppress dissent or anything else in the U.S.
In fact, aside from the (I believe) unconstitutional "constitution free zones" around border crossings, ports and airports, the Posse Comitatus Act [wikipedia.org] is not being broken.
If you think I'm wrong, please provide me with some evidence. N.B., hysterical ramblings from the blogosphere or talk radio aren't evidence.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 08 2015, @05:56AM
Now consider an American military that is tasked with suppressing a rebellious citizenry in its own country. Is a fighter pilot from Des Moines, Iowa really going to be willing to strafe his own neighborhood? What bomber crew will obey orders to carpet bomb suburban Philadelphia? Maybe some would, but not most.
This.
Those that would, would quickly find themselves at the receiving end of incoming from soldiers that could actually REMEMBER their oath.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @03:06PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States_who_died_in_office
Eventually there comes a tyrant so nasty that the Military will remember their oath.
1) And how the fuck does people shooting presidents help? They still do shitty stuff and they already have term limits. If you think the real power would put up with stuff like "term limits" you're silly. The President is responsible for some stuff but much of the real power has moved elsewhere. Go look at who really is responsible for most of those laws and treaties.
2) Term limits are undemocratic and so is assassination of leaders.
3) The people in the USA don't seem to be so good at picking good leaders with their votes. Who really thinks they will do better picking good leaders with their guns?
4) If you pick your leaders by "most firepower" instead of "most votes" it gets quite hard to change the leader later on- since he would have the "most firepower" and by then he would have eliminated most of the major challengers already. That's why most violent revolutions lead to Dictatorships.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @03:13PM
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday December 06 2015, @11:24PM
The issue is that there is the 2nd Amendment
No it's not. The issue here is a gun culture in the US that dates back 400 years. The 2nd amendment is a symptom of that culture, and attacking the symptoms rarely works.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 07 2015, @12:23AM
"attacking the symptoms rarely works."
I agree. So, the solution would be to kill off all the progressives who happen to be hoplophobes? I could learn to like your thinking . . .
(Score: 5, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Monday December 07 2015, @02:15AM
Right now, you're rights to privacy, freedom of speech/religion/press, to a public trial, and guns are all protected by the same document. You fuck with that document on one issue, you fuck with it on all issues. The history doesn't matter -- the issue is whether the government is or is not bound by the Constitution.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @02:47AM
Except that this innate "fundamental" right for a person to own a gun goes back a whopping 30 to 40 years. For the previous several hundred years before that the 2nd was a "dead" amendment, meaning that the courts at all levels agreed on what it meant and that there wasn't any challenges based upon it. It wasn't until the NRA pumped millions and millions of dollars into lobbying, sponsoring "2nd Amendment" law professorships, etc. that suddenly there was this epiphany in this dead amendment. A Chief Justice who served for a good deal of the 20th century called the NRA actions a fraud perpetuated on the people.
It is really pathetic to hear people buy into this "fundamental protection" that has been recognized as such for, what, four years now?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday December 07 2015, @02:51AM
Liar.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Monday December 07 2015, @03:22AM
This is completely revisionist history and has no basis in fact.
In the era when cannons were the highest level of sophisticated siege weaponry, citizens can and did own them for their own purposes and militia. In fact the truth is the polar opposite of what you stated: it wasn't until comparatively recently (1934 - registration and taxation; 1986 - significantly more burden before purchase) that there was any limitation whatsoever on the private ownership and use of weapons of practically any sort.
If you want to play, we're going to play with facts. Your move.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @06:30AM
Wow. "No basis in fact." You mean the NRA didn't fund a professorship [gmu.edu] to "educate people about the 2nd Amendment"?
Do you mean that former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative judge mind you, didn't describe the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun a fraud on the American public [wikipedia.org]?
You mean it wasn't a dead amendment [brennancenter.org]:
I've got lots of "facts" [pace.edu] (see footnote #3 for instance). Just what the fuck do you have for "facts"? I've got law journals. I've got historians. I'VE GOT A FUCKING CHIEF JUSTICE. What the fuck do you have?
"we're going to play with facts" Are you really that full of yourself? You ain't got shit. It isn't my move, because you're not even in the game, junior.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @06:40AM
What the fuck do you have?
The constitution. When the second amendment mentions "the people", it is describing an individual right, just as it did in many other instances. The mere fact that it mentions a well-regulated militia as one reason it was written does not mean that the right hinges on that reason and that reason alone. That was just one justification given.
You're making a mistake here. That the government routinely did not follow the constitution in the past (and still does not do so) does not mean we should continue that tradition. Even the founders violated the constitution in some ways, but we should not follow their example.
If you want the second amendment changed, the only honest way is a constitutional amendment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @03:26AM
> the issue is whether the government is or is not bound by the Constitution.
Such absolutism. Seems like that sort of attitude has been in the news a lot recently.
In case you haven't noticed, the constitution has been interpreted and reinterpreted ever since it was first ratified. That's human nature - no document is sufficiently complete to cover all real-world cases, otherwise the document would be of infinite length. So, the "fuck with that document" train left the station a long time ago and really, anyone who thought it wouldn't was delusional.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday December 07 2015, @03:36AM
The constitution is not an unchanging document; that's why it can be amended. If the government wants powers the constitution did not grant it, it needs to write a constitutional amendment. A government that violates the highest law of the land is not legitimate; it's more akin to a group of thugs that uses force to get its way.
So no, we don't need to cover all real-world cases, because the document can be amended. There is some ambiguity that gives us some wiggle room, but the government has gone far beyond that in many instances and is simply violating the constitution with impunity.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday December 07 2015, @05:00AM
I agree that the train of constitution fuckers left the station years ago and its riders are presently so high on coke and v.iagra that the future of America as constitutional republic is basically hopeless -- especially so when the people the constitution is designed to protect are so willing to roll over and take it up the butt sans lube.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @09:45PM
It's kind of like the people who wish nobody had guns and so try to outlaw them. Since it is unavoidable that some will have them, it's necessary that all have access.
What a myopic american-centric perspective. The rest of the 1st world doesn't have the same level of problem with gun violence as the US does. Throwing up your hands with an "all or nothing" excuse is to utterly fail to understand how people actually live their lives. Yes it is technically impossible to eliminate all guns and all surveillance, but that doesn't mean there aren't drastic steps that can be taken to vastly improve the situation. Perfect is the enemy of the good.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday December 07 2015, @02:46AM
Okay, I'll bite. How do you propose we take surveillance and guns out of the hands of the government?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @03:29AM
The government is purely a creation of laws. We need to put in place laws that control it' use of surveillance. The same way we have laws that prevent the government from just taking citizen's property and murdering people in the dead of night. To argue otherwise is to simply give up on the concept of democracy, you would be advocating a return to monarchy or oligarchy or some other non-representative form of government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @03:33AM
The same way we have laws that prevent the government from just taking citizen's property and murdering people in the dead of night.
In the US, the former is called assert forfeiture, and the latter happens because of the drug war. We should work to fix these issues, but the point is, they are not yet fixed, or at least not in the US.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @04:37AM
Who cares about that point? The war on drugs and asset forfeiture are both creations of law. They can be uncreated by law as well. Focus, man, focus!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @05:10AM
No, they are violations of law. Asset forfeiture, as often practiced, is a complete violation of the constitution. The drug war often uses unconstitutional methods as well. What we need is accountability for those who break the law and the politicians create the unconstitutional laws and policies. Instead, if the courts care about the constitution at all, the offending laws or policies simply get overturned, but the enforcers and creators of those laws and policies are never punished.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @12:54PM
Sounds like you are endorsing a government that is rule of man not rule of law. Good luck with that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @02:42PM
Just the opposite. I want the government to follow the constitution, which is the highest law of the land. I want those in the government who violate the constitution to be punished for doing so. That's the rule of law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @03:09PM
So you are telling me that the solution is to use laws?
Where have I heard that before?
Oh. It was my post that you said was wrong.
You dumbass.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 07 2015, @02:10PM
I favor hanging. That would send a clear message.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @03:07PM
Because public executions have totally eliminated corruption in China...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday December 07 2015, @02:39AM
Thing is, there WILL be constant surveillance and monitoring.
Then there will be no democracy; not even the small amount that we have now. Stop with this defeatist attitude. It's entirely possible to limit or ban the government's use of a specific technology. By giving up, you reduce the chances of success to zero and become part of the problem.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday December 07 2015, @02:49AM
Go ahead and ban it, they'll do it anyway. Do you think the three letter agencies will let us actually limit their powers? Just look at recent news if you're not sure.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday December 07 2015, @03:30AM
Go ahead and ban it, they'll do it anyway.
Just like slavery continues in the US to this day or how Jim Crow laws never vanished. No one said it's going to be an easy battle, but to pretend that positive change is impossible is simply demonstrably false.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Monday December 07 2015, @04:48AM
The thing with surveillance is that as technology progresses it can only get cheaper and easier. Panopticon is inevitable; the only fair thing is if access to it is equal.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday December 07 2015, @05:06AM
The thing with surveillance is that as technology progresses it can only get cheaper and easier.
The government, however, relies on taxpayer dollars, and humans must be hired to do the work for them. Banning or limiting bad government surveillance is a lot easier than trying to disarm a country of 300 million people. It's a lot easier for random individuals to hide their guns than it is for the government to hide massive surveillance operations.
Panopticon is inevitable
With that attitude, yes.
the only fair thing is if access to it is equal.
A solution that allows for the demise of privacy is not acceptable.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday December 07 2015, @05:54AM
Privacy is already dead. The surveillance that the government has been doing was already illegal, and that didn't stop them from doing it. Those people they hired did what they were told regardless of the constitution, probably thinking it was for the greater good.
Do you have a plan that would actually prevent people from spying on each other? Attempting to do it by law relies on people following that law, which history repeatedly has shown doesn't work. People do what they can get away with. To paraphrase: outlaw surveillance and only outlaws will have surveillance. The only way I can think of to enforce a ban on surveillance would require extensive surveillance to find out who's violating the ban.
So again, serious question, do you have a workable plan to stop surveillance?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday December 07 2015, @06:31AM
Privacy is already dead.
It's really not. You're exaggerating. Even with the high levels of surveillance we have today, the government is neither omnipotent nor omnipresent. There are still many things it cannot see or hear, or at least not on a massive scale. We are not yet at the point where privacy is dead, and even if it was, that would be just another reason to fight to improve the situation. I'm not aware of the government having the capability to break all forms of encryption, monitor everything that goes on inside all homes, and monitor every conversation even if it takes place in real life, so privacy is far from dead.
The surveillance that the government has been doing was already illegal, and that didn't stop them from doing it.
Because there is no actual punishment for violating the constitution. The politicians who signed off on the unconstitutional laws and policies, as well as the people conducting the surveillance and everyone working for the NSA, should be put in prison. If there were actual punishments for violating the highest law of the land, this would likely reduce the chances of massive surveillance occurring.
Here's the thing: The NSA was caught violating he constitution and the politicians and employees responsible for this have not been punished. The NSA failed to keep its activities secret, so what we have to do is punish them (both low-level workers and the ones in charge) for their actions.
Attempting to do it by law relies on people following that law, which history repeatedly has shown doesn't work.
Laws that aren't properly enforced or don't apply to the situation at hand don't work. There are plenty of laws and constitutional amendments that have improved many awful situations throughout the country's history, so there is no reason to think it's impossible to improve the situation now. Laws against murder might not stop murder, but not having them and having no way to punish murderers would make the situation even worse. And an individual murderer is nothing compared to the scale of mass surveillance.
To paraphrase: outlaw surveillance and only outlaws will have surveillance.
I want to enforce the constitution to stop *mass* surveillance. Mass surveillance requires a great deal more resources and human workers in order to pull off, so it's harder to hide effectively. Again, this is different from trying to disarm an entire populace.
The only way I can think of to enforce a ban on surveillance would require extensive surveillance to find out who's violating the ban.
Although they might be few, there will probably always be people like Snowden who will try to alert us of the government's wrongdoing. The problem here is not that we don't know that the surveillance is occurring; it's that we are not holding the lawbreakers accountable.
So again, serious question, do you have a workable plan to stop surveillance?
For license plate readers and red light cameras, we should simply completely ban the government's use of them. No chance of surveillance if they don't have the equipment to pull it off. Allow no taxpayer dollars to be spent on their massive surveillance, challenge the government in court at every turn, destroy the surveillance equipment if necessary, and if and when the courts finally get the point, properly punish the government lawbreakers for trying to overthrow our constitutional form of government. Your local government is also easier to influence, so license plate readers and such should be easier to challenge.
We'll probably have to rely on whistleblowers in the end, and then we have to punish the government when it breaks the law, which we aren't doing currently.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday December 07 2015, @01:20PM
Acknowledged.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday December 07 2015, @06:34AM
So again, serious question, do you have a workable plan to stop surveillance?
i believe the issue is mass surveillance, not your run of the mill surveillance. however, there are wheels in motion to stop mass surveillance. it's slow, it will take years if not decades but it's merely a matter of time. the system works, it's just slow on a human timescale. while it's nice to think we can demand someone fork over a master plan to solve all of societies ills, it's best to remember that society is the plan to solve societies ills.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 07 2015, @02:11PM
You're right. That's why the top echelons of those agencies need to be sent to live in Guantanamo. If they think it's cool to tear our country apart from the inside, they need to go.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Sunday December 06 2015, @08:26PM
As the summary implied, we'd need a list of government officials, lobbyists etc. and their plate numbers. The software could be implemented to discard all data not white-listed. (As open source, this could be reverted by individuals, but if the project leads on to collect information only for specific numbers, I guess majority would keep it that way. Although there is a risk of neighborhood-wannabe-cops feeding in lists of former sexual offenders.)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday December 06 2015, @08:36PM
As the summary implied, we'd need a list of government officials, lobbyists etc. and their plate numbers.
Those are far from the only people that one might want to monitor. But they are also the people that would have no problem getting their plates changed for no other reason than that plate having appeared in some public database.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Adamsjas on Sunday December 06 2015, @08:30PM
Obtaining license plate information is still pretty difficult. Joe Citizen is pretty well frozen out of this information unless you have an insurance claim (your insurance company can get it, but you usually can't).
Building a database would be slow and painful, (unless there were a lot of state DMV data breaches).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @09:12PM
Actually it is farily easy. Sometimes it costs a couple of bucks and you often have to at least name the License Number and Make and Model. I know for a fact you can do this in at least these states: Washington, Nebraska, Colorado, and Michigan. Its all public records my friend.
Ohh and on top of it in many states you can even purchase others driving records for a few bucks. Wow timmy has had a lot of speeding tickets. Its all public records.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @02:44AM
The government doesn't care one bit about your privacy, of course. They just want to exploit the information and sell everything to the highest bidder. Such transparency!
Lots of things that shouldn't be public records seem to be. That needs to be fixed.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Sunday December 06 2015, @09:30PM
For EVERYONE, yes. Generally police and government vehicles typically follow an easily recognizable plate scheme though, at least, where I'm from.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @08:34PM
Not a fan of history or just young?
Once upon a time when VHS tapes still existed the government claimed they could demand the rental video history of anyone without a warrant. This went on with the courts doing their damnedest to lick the boots of congresscritters and police officers until someone started releasing the rental video history of legislators. Overnight a new law was in place and the whole thing is over.
The same has a high likelihood of happening here. Cops, prosecutors, judges, and politicians love following the minutiae of their lessers. They hate it when people do it to them.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday December 06 2015, @09:55PM
Cops, prosecutors, judges, and politicians love following the minutiae of their lessers. They hate it when people do it to them.
Apparently the AC can't even understand the logical outcome of his own argument.
Joe Citizen will be forbidden to obtain lists of license plates, or to distribute such lists, but the police will have no such restrictions.
That is EXACTLY what happened in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act>Video Privay Case [wikipedia.org]. The police can still obtain such lists, and still without a warrant, simply a NSL letter. Nothing has change.
So you seem to be rooting for the Status Quo.
Also, the guy [newrepublic.com] that wrote about Bork's viewing habits never published the list. He just poked a little fun at a few titles. Seems your memory isn't all that good as to what actually happened. Not a fan of history, or just old?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @10:47PM
The butthurt is strong with the immature jackoff. Same as usual.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @11:06PM
A liberal without a cause? I did not posit my "rooting", there was no opinion on the morality of this action by me. You asked a question:
I answered it.
If you wish to refute my reasoning;
1. Wikipedia is not a valid source for an educated audience and it will be ignored as it should be.
2. A "news" source owned by Chris Hughes is definitely worse than wikipedia.
3. You will have to refute the reasoning, not just the technicalities to convince anyone. Sure NSL gets around any need for any warrant anywhere until SCOTUS gets a hearing on them. That has as little to do with the original point and detracts from rational, cool-headed discussion just like your other hyperbolic statements and ad hominem.
Perhaps you need to take a break, calm your anger, and start again here. [philosophypages.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @09:41PM
> How is this anything like a "strike back"? Putting tracking into the hands of everybody doesn't make it more palatable.
It is a strike back when someone puts a camera in front of the police station to figure out which vehicles are unmarked and/or privately owned by police and then uses that database to keep waze updated with the locations of all police vehicles. I can think of other more political uses - like scanning the parking lots for the plates politicians to see how often they visit motels in their home towns...
Admittedly the guy running the service doesn't seem to grasp how this information can be used to make ANPR unpalatable to the ruling class. But if they aren't going to legislate better privacy protections, then the only option left is to give them a heaping helping of their own dogfood.
(Score: 3, Touché) by inertnet on Sunday December 06 2015, @09:48PM
I wonder how long your website will last if you start showing the whereabouts of government vehicles live on it.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday December 06 2015, @10:17PM
1. The data to support tracking is in the hands of the various levels of government. To make this "available" is going to require either giving up ALL privacy, or a massive hack, resulting in a massive loss of privacy.
2. Collecting data on the cars passing *your* cameras tells you some stuff about patterns of movement of those cars.
Without the linked data, that is all you have.
3. Sharing your collected data set with others means giving it to the Government as well.. See point 1.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 06 2015, @10:25PM
Depends on how far you want to share it, 5 or 6 plate tracking cameras in a small neighborhood could do some very interesting things with local sharing of their plate data - no government involvement required.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday December 06 2015, @10:51PM
Very interesting?
Really? Such as?
Can you see anything GOOD coming out of this? Other than some miscreant knowing exactly when each home is not occupied, I fail to see any value in this.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 07 2015, @12:31AM
The miscreants aren't in control of the cameras or the data - if you don't trust someone, don't share data with them.
These people who trust each other could cover the neighborhood entrances/exits and a few spots inside, collect data and bank it just like any evil government agency, then when questions arise like: "I think that landscaper came back and stole my deer camera." you could answer them with data instead of guessing. If a pattern problem is emerging like petty theft, drunk and disorderly, etc. you can get out in front of it and call the cops when the problem enters the neighborhood instead of waiting for a repeat of the bad behavior to be observed before calling. Just the presence of the system would be a deterrent, like car and house alarms, but this one doesn't have to make annoying noises to have a positive effect.
Personally, I don't have the time to sit on the porch and make notes about every vehicle passing my front lawn, but there have always been people who do. Training our computers to do it for us gives much of the same benefits as a live neighborhood watch, with a dramatic reduction in personal time investment.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @02:53AM
Training our computers to do it for us gives much of the same benefits as a live neighborhood watch, with a dramatic reduction in personal time investment.
With a loss of privacy, too. Now, how could there be a loss of privacy if someone else was already doing the job of neighborhood watch? Because human brains are fallible, they tend to forget things. Furthermore, license plate readers tend to be far more accurate and less costly, which actually does make a huge difference when it comes to privacy. Finally, these license plate readers will record the data, and all the people who have access to the data will be able to see it; this is different from a human merely sharing information with a few people because that takes time and it less accurate, while this data can be easily shared with countless people and there is little chance of the equipment "forgetting" anything.
At the very least, license plate reader usage by the government should be completely banned; they are necessarily tools of mass surveillance, which makes them unconstitutional.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 07 2015, @11:12PM
I've lived in neighborhoods with "live watch" (retirement community... waaaay too much time on their hands) - they're mostly harmless, but can get out of hand and often do exceed their basic mandate of "keeping watch" and get into snooping, needless judgement, and there was that kid that got shot in Florida... All in all, I'd rather have a database with timestamps and plate numbers, instead of a 73 yo veteran with undiagnosed PTSD and a personal arsenal in his garage that nobody knows about keeping watch on the neighborhood.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 07 2015, @11:26PM
Agree that it is mass surveillance and unconstitutional. I do hope that the court that hears the case will be liberal enough to shut the government collection and sharing down, keeping the data where it belongs - fragmented and hard to access in the hands of private citizens, corporations and security firms; any of which who decide to aggregate the data and share it on a scale of "mass surveillance" should also be shut down. Do I think we'll have a court that liberal in the next 50 years? Probably not.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Monday December 07 2015, @03:43AM
But, if you want to know who stole what, wouldn't simple off the shelf surveillance cameras work much better than recording license plates?
Recording every plate into and out of a neighborhood then trying to guess which took your stuff, by trying to tie it to the time you finally noticed something missing seems like a rather obtuse method.
he miscreants aren't in control of the cameras or the data
You are probably right about that, even though its open source, we know thieves would never go to that much trouble.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 07 2015, @11:23PM
In my particular experience, I had a security (actually wildlife) camera in my (wooded) backyard - with 16 months of history, I had seen exactly 3 human beings on it. Myself a few times while checking the installation, my neighbor once chasing her dog, and a landscaper with a giant tattoo on his arm going back into the woods, to take a piss I'd guess, about a week before the camera disappeared. With license plate reader data, you could look at the week's history, check the irregulars (likely less than 10) and check them against the workers doing the landscaping, and at least have some actionable data to tell the cops besides: "It was there, then it was gone, and yeah about a week earlier a suspicious character walked by..."
Like any data gathering method, it's not so great for a single instance, but if the moron decides that the neighborhood is easy pickings and keeps coming back, you can nail him on the 2nd or 3rd instance, much faster than with security cameras or dogs that bark at every damn armadillo that walks by.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 07 2015, @02:16PM
No, this proposal is good and will work. Why? The government and elites like to pass laws that don't apply to them. They like everyone else's freedoms to vanish while their own are maximized. But give citizens the means to level the playing field, and they quickly start singing a different song.
The government and the elites must start to experience the repercussions of what they have already inflicted on the rest of us.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 08 2015, @06:07AM
Again, not a single person here, including you, explains how this levels the playing field!
So you happen to note that the judge drives to lunch at the strip joint every day. Then What?
Start following him around? Get arrested for stalking?
In the mean time you've captured my plates. I might frequent the same place.
Is your quest to get some dirt on a judge so important you get to violate everyone's privacy JUST TO PROVE A POINT?
Screw you!
More is not better.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 08 2015, @12:11PM
Another poster already said it, to air the dirty laundry they don't want aired. Knowing their locations can help uncover that. For an idea of how that would work from there, consider the case of Ashley Madison and the people who lost their jobs when it was revealed they used that service.
It also helps to level the playing field by de-anonymizing them. They like to exercise their power from a place of anonymity, and this little brother project helps with that. The more general statement is, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 08 2015, @07:45PM
They like to exercise their power from a place of anonymity,
You can't exercise much power from a place of anonymity. Everybody knows who has the power.
But even if you could exercise your power from anonymity, is that a crime? What gives you the right to strip that away?
We can't, as a nation, nay, as an entire civilization, agree that the government has such a right, yet now you want to allow every person to have the right to violate everyone else's privacy? To what end? Nothing will be improved.
Ashley Madison ended up being a bunch of men trolling other men. WHO the fuck cares? You sound like you are on some kind of religious vendetta or something, to impose your own set of values on the rest of us, just because you can. What the fuck is wrong with you? Who was it in your life that failed to teach you any morals?
The general statement is keep your nose out of my business.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 08 2015, @08:43PM
You're missing the point, frojack. The powerful will not understand the value of the right to privacy, and legislate accordingly, until they have been stripped of theirs. So the Little Brother project does not aim to destroy privacy for everyone forever, but to drive the lesson home to the powerful.
To put it in terms I know you understand, if the government wants to take away our guns, then they too must lose theirs. So long as they keep theirs, we keep ours too. This is giving us the same weapons they already have. I believe, and you may or may not share this belief, that the freedom of the people is greatest when the government fears the people.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 08 2015, @10:00PM
No I am not missing the point. You and others have been spouting the same damn thing over and over.
It won't work, and the damage you inflict on society as a whole will be far greater than the damage inflicted on the fat cats.
The ends don't justify the means.
Why: Because Nothing will be accomplished other than to impoverish all of us.
Seriously, what jurisdiction is going to stop using plate readers just because somebody figured out how to do it privately?
Did government swear off encrypted communications just because it became available to the public?
Did the government swear off CCTV just because private security cams became popular?
Has embarrassing the government or the corporate powerful ever, even once, caused any of them to change their ways?
You aren't thinking past the "spite factor". You are destroying the village to save it.
The idea is out there, so it will end up being done by a few hackers. But it will be totally ineffective, and just as
likely to engender more government regulations and prohibitions than less.
And the damage is to all of us not just the fat cats you imagine quaking in their boots over this.
Further it will backfire. Since every citizen can do this with a raspberry pi and a $5 camera chip, why
should the government be forbidden to do it?
You are a dreamer. This approach has never once succeeded.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 09 2015, @12:42AM
You're right. Let's leave the power to spy on everyone and everything exclusively in the hands of scumbags in corporations and governments. Let's remove all power to know stuff they don't want us to know, because everyone knows transparency in government never works. Let's not know who's paying off whom. Let's allow what we know to be purely a product of image consultants and spinmeisters, because disclosure changes nothing.
That's rather the world we have had, and now we're starting to have the means as citizens to level the playing field. We tried wishing the problem of government criminality away, but that hasn't worked because nobody in government is listening to the citizens anymore. Projects like Little Brother are an attempt to cause them to change course so we don't have to resort to more drastic measures. As such I say we try it. Unless you favor skipping over nonviolent compulsion? I hope you aren't arguing for the status quo, because that's roundly, soundly broken.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday December 09 2015, @12:52AM
You're right. Let's leave the power to spy on everyone and everything exclusively in the hands of scumbags in corporations and governments.
Then UN-ELECT them, and elect someone who will pass laws out-lawing the practices you object to. Put your legislators on notice that they will either vote for these laws or you will remove them from power via the Ballot.
Attack them with the same spy tools and they will pass laws against that, or more likely they will just laugh at you as you tilt endlessly at that windmill with a raspberry pi at the end of your lance. Little Brother? You men little bother. I mean, it would be funny if it weren't so sad that you think this will make a difference.
You do know that government officials and anyone else who can show evidence of a threat against them can get an unlisted license plate don't you? Its in your state law. Look it up.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @10:56PM
Real time location of all police vehicles online.
Bonus: Names and home addresses of all the officers.