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posted by martyb on Sunday December 06 2015, @07:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the goose-and-gander dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 08 2015, @07:45PM

    by frojack (1554) on Tuesday December 08 2015, @07:45PM (#273589) Journal

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 08 2015, @08:43PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday December 08 2015, @08:43PM (#273611) Journal

    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.

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    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 08 2015, @10:00PM

      by frojack (1554) on Tuesday December 08 2015, @10:00PM (#273655) Journal

      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.

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      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 09 2015, @12:42AM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday December 09 2015, @12:42AM (#273730) Journal

        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.

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        Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday December 09 2015, @12:52AM

          by frojack (1554) on Wednesday December 09 2015, @12:52AM (#273733) Journal

          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.

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