Submitted by an Anonymous Coward:
https://www.wired.com/story/license-plate-readers-political-signs-bumper-stickers/
AI-powered cameras on cars and trucks have been used to capture images of political signs, individuals wearing T-shirts with text, and vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers. The data, reviewed by WIRED, shows how a tool originally designed for traffic enforcement has evolved into a system capable of monitoring 'speech' protected by the US Constitution.
[...] Another image taken on a different day by a different vehicle shows a "Steelworkers for Harris-Walz" sign stuck in the lawn in front of someone's home. A construction worker, with his face unblurred, is pictured near another Harris sign. Other photos show Trump and Biden (including "Fuck Biden") bumper stickers on the back of trucks and cars across America. One photo, taken in November 2023, shows a partially torn bumper sticker supporting the Obama-Biden lineup.
These images were generated by AI-powered cameras mounted on cars and trucks, initially designed to capture license plates, but which are now photographing political lawn signs outside private homes, individuals wearing T-shirts with text, and vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers—all while recording the precise locations of these observations.
The detailed photographs all surfaced in search results produced by DRN Data, a license-plate-recognition (LPR) company owned by Motorola Solutions. The LPR system can be used by private investigators, repossession agents, and insurance companies. However, files shared with WIRED by artist Julia Weist show that those with access to the LPR system can search for common phrases or names, such as those of politicians, and be served with photographs where the search term is present, even if it is not displayed on license plates. The research also reveals the extent to which surveillance is happening on a mass scale in the quiet streets of America, and how people's personal political views and homes can be recorded into vast databases that can be queried.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @01:21AM (9 children)
Just over at the other site there was an article about Cops using facial recognition (https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/07/cops_love_facial_recognition_and/ [theregister.com]), at times against the laws of their locale, to search for people. I was just thinking that it's such a shining example of the cop-state that is the United States.
The I click over to this tab, refresh, and everyone and everything is tracked 100% of the time by everyone and oh the cops too.
Honestly, the United States just seems more like .... hell on earth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @02:11AM (8 children)
Compared to what?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @03:57AM
Compared to 20, 30, 40 years ago.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @04:16AM (6 children)
It's pretty much everything that everyone says they hate about China, right?
The only difference that I see between the US as it is now and China as it is now is: China engages in more corporate espionage, and the US engages in more governmental subterfuge.
Social scores? Oh like credit scores, social justice, no-fly list? You can't even know your "score" if you're on the no-fly list or not. Sure, you can go ahead and work-around things, but wtf?
genocide? Class, social, racial, drug warfare has been a part of the US for decades.
Oppression? The middle class keeps shrinking, the rich keep getting richer, and the poor keep getting poorer (and beaten down for it). In fact, China might be better off in this respect.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Tuesday October 08, @07:40AM
In China it's run by the government.
In the US it's run by the megacorps.
Cyberpunk is now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @10:28AM (3 children)
Also while both have elections the US has Two Parties, China has One Party.
Yeah I know both actually have "other parties" but whatever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @04:03PM (2 children)
One Party, two faces, the American audience is more diverse than China's
(Score: 2) by gawdonblue on Tuesday October 08, @08:35PM (1 child)
And you know this, because?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @09:51PM
The US is made up of immigrants from all over the world. China, not so much, not a lot of Africans and Europeans migrated over there. Most of the ancestry was born there, not a lot of variety in the phenotype outside the border regions.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @04:00PM
Yeah, well, maybe things will get better when we recognize we are doing all this to ourselves, just by letting it happen. We suffer from learned helplessness. Unlike China, the elephant in the room is our vote. The power is ours to squander
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @01:46AM (19 children)
So, if people post signs, don't they want other people to see them?
(Score: 4, Touché) by vux984 on Tuesday October 08, @01:53AM (18 children)
They want people to see the signs. Read them, and perhaps sway their opinion on something a little. That's it. They didn't sign up to participate in a giant database of where the signs were seen, and who was displaying them to create a big-brother-style profile on the person who put the sign up.
What do you think is hard to understand?
(Score: 5, Touché) by hopdevil on Tuesday October 08, @02:08AM (17 children)
Pretty sure there is/should be no expectation of privacy on public speech
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @02:24AM (14 children)
Yet it's illegal to record the audio of two people speaking in public, without them being aware of it. Huh.
Maybe, in fact, it *is* reasonable to expect privacy on speech that happens in public.
How would you feel about having every word that you ever uttered transcribed and put in a book, Words of Hopdevil, in the country's library, OCR'd and made available for everyone, everywhere to search and consider?
Most people would be *highly uncomfortable* with that, to probably a vomiting degree.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @02:38AM (7 children)
Everything went downhill when man started to record past events. Don't know if the same suspicions about privacy arose back then
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @10:03PM (6 children)
Offtopic
We clearly have a moderator here that does not understand English.
It is unfortunate that pointing out this fact will also be modded down
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday October 08, @11:03PM (5 children)
Perhaps people are trying to tell you something...?
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @11:31PM (4 children)
Then they should put it in words that are human readable. Otherwise they're full of it. The post was not offtopic. The message being sent is just drive-by bullshit, a form of trolling while contributing nothing of value.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09, @05:13PM (3 children)
I modded you offtopic because your initial comment was completely so, and your complaints about same are similarly offtopic.
Say something on topic (I won't hold my breath) and I'll stop modding you offtopic*.
*This comment is offtopic too. Would some kind soul please mod it as such?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10, @11:41PM
It was not. You just didn't get it. You are just being an abusive asshole with your political down mods. Lucky for you there is no real karma/justice to smite your ass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11, @06:54PM (1 child)
Hmm, too bad you don't lose modding privileges for this abuse.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday October 11, @07:01PM
See my reply here [soylentnews.org].
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @04:52AM (2 children)
This varies widely state-to-state. Depending on the jurisdiction, it's completely legal, legal with consent of one party, or required that both parties consent to be legal.
(Score: 2) by Username on Tuesday October 08, @01:42PM (1 child)
It should be legal to record audio. Need proof of harassment, stalking, false rape claims, whatever.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @07:01PM
Found the stalking rapist what wants to discredit their victims.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday October 08, @09:00AM (1 child)
Two people? What about three? From your context you seem to be referring to a conversation between two people that happens to take place in a public space. That's fair enough. It is very different however from a person (or two or three) standing on a soapbox and making a speech to a crowd. Having a bumper sticker or a sign on your house is equivalent to making a speech to a crowd because you intend random strangers to get your message.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @10:31AM
But apparently AI etc should make it easier to exclude the copyrighted content.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 08, @02:40PM
"Everyone, everywhere" here being someone with an angle - police looking for a scapegoat or a marketing firm looking for fresh eyeball. Imagine being targeted for criminal prosecution or scams because you said the wrong thing by a fridge. What they don't know can't hurt you.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by vux984 on Tuesday October 08, @07:09PM (1 child)
You still seem to not understand. Nobody is saying the "speech" is private. It's right there on the sign, in public, and intended for the public to see. Nobody is suggesting you shouldn't see the sign. Go ahead and take a picture of the sign if you want. Nobody objects to that either.
But the meta-data around that sign, especially in bulk aggregate, connected to every other bit of meta data being collected in bulk aggregate IS a privacy issue.
For example, lets say you were friends with someone who lived with a person who placed that sign up, and visited that friend from time to time. Now in some database somewhere, your face is being tagged, and associated with that sign. Maybe some years later you were in a passenger of a car with bumper sticker with a similar message. On your profile. Maybe you visited the library while some protestors were there raising an issue. Maybe you went to a movie that was thematically related. Perhaps you had a college classmate who became significant in some way. All dumped into your profile.
Then 10 years later, that political view that you don't even have is "problematic" in some way.
The owner of the car with a bumper sticker, and that friends roomate with the sign, those protestors, that classmate etc are all experiencing fallout from their actions. Serves them right! Right? Really?
But then you get denied credit, or a job, or a security clearance, you'll never know why. You too are a 2nd class citizen now, and even if you find out why, you'll have no recourse to fix it. You've been tagged multiple times with people and events associated this problematic view over the years too. Serves you right. Actions have consequences. Right? Even you? Really??
You might not have an expectation that all this data collected on all the worlds cameras "in public" be afforded certain privacy protections from being used in aggregate like this. But you SHOULD have that expectation. The implications are profoundly negative. And after all, if it was just you that I built this profile on, it'd be stalking and harrassment, even if you were out "in public"...but if I do it to the entire population of the country, then its ok?!
(Score: 2) by hopdevil on Wednesday October 09, @04:05PM
You make some really good points, and I don't disagree that in a more ideal, privacy oriented society, there SHOULD be an expectation of privacy from mass surveillance and aggregation.. but in the world as it is now, it isn't the case. Sorry, that just isn't the society most of us live in.
And if there is a place in the world where this is true I'd be interested to know where.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday October 08, @09:28AM (4 children)
Are not license plates standardized in shape, size and format? Some minor changes in colouration perhaps between different states and age. But should it not be fairly trivial for a system to delete everything that isn't a proper plate? All this extra crud in the system is just bad data.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Deep Blue on Tuesday October 08, @11:13AM
Right, what exactly is the "AI" doing in this equation? License plate cameras have existed before "AI" and i would think you'd slap on the "AI" to make it better to recognise the plates, not make it randomly image all the rest of the crap.
But obviously if you want to use it wrong, then i guess the "AI" is for OCR:ing the rest of the crap, not just the plates.
It's bad for the people, because it might label you e.g. a supporter for something/someone forever, even if situations change and you can change your mind. And you can't change the lable, because you don't even know you are on some random DB.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 09, @04:01AM (2 children)
Exactly why are we tracking my license plate, even absent any other data, if I have not committed a traffic violation (or perhaps served as a getaway car) ??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday October 09, @05:41AM (1 child)
In the UK similar 'tracking' has proven useful when, for example, a child has been abducted or a crime has recently been committed and a vehicle involved in the crime is being sought. This requires tracking data that will have been collected prior to the police knowing that it would subsequently be required. The data might have been collected for acceptable reasons e.g. traffic control, speeding offences etc, The data can be searched to find vehicles that are now known to be involved but whose whereabouts are unknown. Perhaps the vehicle has already been abandoned and therefore will not show up on any tracking from this point forward. However, historic data (even by a few minutes or hours) can provide a direction of travel, or perhaps identify the change of vehicle once the original vehicle was abandoned.
The sooner police can begin searching for a vehicle identified by a witness report, the smaller an area that needs to be searched. If they only begin tracking once they have been given the witness report that describes the vehicle - which may be hours or even days after the crime has been committed - they already have a far more difficult task.
It always surprises me that people feel that tracking vehicles is so unacceptable but they also carry a device that can enable the tracking of individual people and they keep it in their pocket. If the police can reconcile mobile phone data with wanted vehicle tracking they can sometimes identify the people involved. Yes I know that 'phones can be switched off but experience has shown that, in the UK at least, the majority of people committing crimes do NOT switch their phones off. Go figure...
Note I am not advocating increased surveillance. But if the information is already being collected for perfectly justifiable reasons then it should, in my opinion, be fully exploited when possible. I suspect that my opinion will be unpopular.
There are several comments in recent discussions saying that nobody can expect privacy when they are doing something in public. Why doesn't that include driving a vehicle?
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 09, @08:27AM
That is true, it's been done here in the US too (to retrieve a child, or whatever). Still not a good reason for mass surveillance.
Yeah, given the "sweet spot" for criminal behavior is IQ85, that they do braindead stuff is understandable. One I heard about tried to turn in something he'd stolen for the reward. At the cop shop. How about you just sign the confession up front and cut the middleman...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by srobert on Tuesday October 08, @02:26PM (2 children)
All sorts of nefarious actors can get all sorts of information from your license plate. Yet, it my state, I couldn't use a license plate number to get any information from the DMV or police about the driver who sideswiped my truck damaging the tail light and fender and ripping off half his bumper, because of privacy laws. That was a year ago I still have half his bumper. I'd like to return it, but the cops told me I'd pretty much have to hire a private detective to find out who owned the vehicle. They're too busy to pursue a minor damage hit and run.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 08, @04:04PM
My sister was intentionally rammed by a driver while biking to work. The cops arrived quickly, witnesses confirmed her version of events, she had both a description of the vehicle and part of the license plate.
And the cops decided to do ... Absolutely nothing. My sister wasn't seriously injured because she managed to maneuver out of the worst of it, so an intentional vehicular assault wasn't considered a real problem in the cop's eyes.
Cops aren't there to protect the public.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Wednesday October 09, @02:00AM
It's getting more and more complicated. I don't like the distinction between "civil" and "criminal" situations. If I steal from a store, I'm a criminal? But if it's proven that someone is looking at a phone and crashes, it's not criminal?
Cops pretty much only deal with criminal cases. Civil damages just aren't their domain.
Long complicated back story, but a few years ago I was in a situation where someone did something criminal, so I called the local DA. They told me I had to take it to civil court, and if I won, they'd look into it. Even though I had solid evidence of criminal stuff. Crazy "legal" "justice" system we have.
I'm not aware of any "privacy laws". As far as I can tell, the cops just don't care and don't want to help you. A few states allow you to file a private criminal complaint. IE, no need for police / DA involvement.
I highly recommend everyone buy a dashcam. Preferably also with rear facing camera. I'm pretty sure "hit and run" is criminal, but without video evidence the hit and run person might be able to defend themselves. IANAL but I believe you must identify someone in court to be able to win a case. So even with a dashcam you might not be able to prove who was driving.
But you might if you can get the evidence the cops have access to. A work friend was recently stopped by a cop (he's a bit of a nut driver). The cop asked him a lot of questions, including where he was coming from. It's not their business, but it's not a good time to be difficult. Anyway, work friend gave evasive answers and the cop told him he was lying, and showed him a tablet with a history of where he had just been, and very clear pics of his face in the car. The surveillance state is here, now.