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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:49PM (4 children)
Cops will need to be trained to lift license plate covers. Taxpayers can't afford the unjustifiable expense.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Gaaark on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:16PM
They just need to be told to tazer the cover, then pepper spray it, then yell "down on the ground, down on the ground", then shoot it, then read it it's rights, then tazer it again, shoot it, check if it's black, shoot it again, shoot it again, shoot it again, kick it a few times, shoot it again, check to make sure (with a flashlight) that it IS indeed black, shoot it again.
THEN lift it up to check the plate.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:22PM (1 child)
Cop sues privacy-minded driver over back injury
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:54PM
What about suing the donut provider?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:07AM
Cops wont bother to get out of the car.
https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Powered-License-Plate-Frame/dp/B001TLLZ4E [amazon.com]
These things are quite common.
Usually tied into your ignition so they deploy on the road, and hide your plate when you park.
Not illegal at all when parking on private property. And its not entirely clear if it would be illegal parking on the street.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by arulatas on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:18PM (6 children)
Couldn't they put a set of infrared lights around the plate to block the reading via automated methods? There by not obscuring the plate from visual inspection?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2oYReMaS4A [youtube.com]
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 3, Informative) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:26PM (3 children)
Notice that was filmed in an garage with artificial light.
In full sun, the ambient light will overwhelm the IR light.
(Score: 2) by arulatas on Tuesday May 09 2017, @07:38PM (2 children)
Thanks. I actually looked up some other sources (people not trying to sell you something) after I posted that. I found one that did some tests and they found the LED lighting wouldn't overload the cameras for most infra red LED lighting.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:57PM
Better idea - get vinyl letters in the same font as your license plate and put them on either side. That way your plate is not obscured, but the OCR software will pick up the extra characters and read the 'wrong' plate number. Swap the characters every few weeks/months as you see fit to further frustrate tracking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @09:04AM
Here's another option - an IR-blocking plate cover.
https://sunflexzone.com/products/ir-invisible-plate-anti-alpr-infrared-filtering-cover-north-america-vehicle-covers [sunflexzone.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:27PM
Plate has to be readable when the vehicle is in motion. You're suggesting putting lights on the plate when it doesn't run, which sounds like a DieHard business plan.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:49PM
Unfortunately hoping to get a lens flare like effect doesn't seem to work all [workingsi.com] that well [workingsi.com], even with better LEDs than those crappy rope ones. I think one's best bet would be to have a large area around the plate that is just dumping out a massive amount of IR (think several hundred watts as you would like to have it be a bright or brighter than the sun) and really fuck up the exposure so your plate is underexposed by like 12 stops
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:31PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:32PM (2 children)
argued that the bill would only benefit one group: "those who are trying to evade law enforcement and detection."
Well, them and people who actually care about privacy. The big problem with this that I can see is that they're *keeping* this data. If they're merely looking for stolen cars there's no reason to do that.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:09PM
Hush, we don't exist.
"The big problem with this that I can see is that they're *keeping* this data. If they're merely looking for stolen cars there's no reason to do that."
The reason is simple - bureaucracies NEVER willingly give up ANYTHING. If they are allowed to collect the data it will be virtually impossible to prevent them from keeping the data, and eventually finding other uses for it. Lawful or not.
You can conceivably get a private company to do this - you have to write very harsh contract conditions and this won't happen as things are today, but at least it's conceivably possible. You can't do that with a government bureaucracy. EVEN IF you pass laws with very harsh penalties that apply to them, they will not be consistently enforced against the government itself and will therefore not produce compliance. We have plenty of laws on the books that the government simply ignores already.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:14PM
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:58PM (2 children)
Isn't this a duplicate article? [soylentnews.org] which was published 9.5 hours ago?
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday May 09 2017, @07:00PM
Definitely seems related :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:57PM
That's because of time zones. One story is for Europe, the other is for America, and the one coming up will be fore Australasia.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday May 09 2017, @07:11PM
In principle, I don't mind the police reading my license plate with certain limitations. The automated reader can read my plate, search its local database to ensure that my plate it not deserving of attention, and then discard my plate number. Simple automation of what a human police officer might do. Read plate, check it against list on a clipboard and move on.
License plates are for the purpose of identifying the vehicle.
What I don't accept: the police license reader interrogating a centralized database. That opens the possibility of central collection of all of the plates being read, and by which police unit, and where that police unit is located. Even if the police department doesn't collect this, the NSA might. I would accept that the police server can transmit updated license plate lists out to its units, which then update their local databases. This is no different than a police car having a paper printed list of license plate numbers to look for.
What should be forbidden by law. The reading or collection of license plates by an automated reader by a private organization without some kind of state license to do so for some purpose other than to collect information about me. A legitimate purpose might be for a company to develop and improve license plate reader technology -- but not keep any of the data it read. Troll booths should also not retain license plate numbers for longer than the duration of the time it takes to ensure that you have paid the troll.
Before computers and computer vision systems, none of this was possible. The large scale automation changes things in a way that is significant. The government could keep records of where your vehicle goes. Combined with a cameras everywhere system, they could even keep track of who gets into and out of vehicles and put together a massive picture. Combined it with cell phone information.
Don't put a mindless tool of corporations in the white house; vote ChatGPT for 2024!
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:15PM (4 children)
So the state might pass a law allowing citizens to cover their license plates to prevent the cops (who are employees of the government) from reading them willy-nilly while parked and keeping extensive records on them.
Why not just pass a law forbidding the cops from collecting so much data? Are the cops not bound by state law?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:32PM (3 children)
Not only should the cops not be able to keep license plate data, along with the time and place it was read; private persons or companies should not be allowed to do this either.
Don't put a mindless tool of corporations in the white house; vote ChatGPT for 2024!
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:32PM (2 children)
Ok, but there again, can't that be done by simply passing a law against it? European nations are pretty famous for their data privacy laws; California could do the same thing. Of course, it wouldn't apply nationwide, but it should still have a pretty big effect (since so many companies have operations in CA, and it's to protect CA citizens and residents). And it's a whole lot more realistic to just pass a law, and then use the courts and heavy fines to punish law-breakers, than to expect people to put automatic James-Bond-style license-plate blockers on their cars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @12:02AM (1 child)
Ok, but there again, can't that be done by simply passing a law against it?
Scanning plates is BIG business. Every repo man has a scanner now and they all upload to mega databases that sell that info to other repo men and PIs, police, the DEA, insurance companies, and a bunch of other groups you would never guess.
Thus any such law will engender a huge legal battle involving freedom of speech (the freedom to communicate what you see in public).
I'm all for having that battle, it needs to happen (and Big Data needs to lose badly) but it will not be "simple."
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 10 2017, @02:07PM
I wouldn't mind if Repo men had a local database in their vehicle of which cars they are looking for, including cars that other Repo men are looking for. I wouldn't mind if their scanner read plates, checked them with the list of cars to Repo, and then discarded all plates that are not of interest to any Repo man.
What I want to avoid is anyone building a database of where all cars were at certain times. I don't want anyone being able to later, interrogate some database they built to track the patterns of movement of people.
I think the automation of legitimate reasons to read plates is okay. In order words, to automate what a human might do. A policeman driving around looking for plates that are on a list on a clipboard, and not remembering all the plates he might have looked at which were not on that list. Similarly, a Repo many looking for plates on a list, but not remembering plates he saw that were not on the list. License plates exist to identify the vehicle. And there are legitimate reasons to read them. But never before was it practical to build databases of where cars were spotted at certain location-time coordinates.
In other words, if police are looking for stolen vehicles, suspect vehicles, or vehicles wanted for some other reason (parking tickets), I have no problem making it easier to find them -- as long as it is done in a way that makes it virtually impossible to build a database of where all cars each time a police car or repo cars passes by. I also think that repo menu using this technology should probably need some kind of state license so that the state knows who is lawfully using license plate readers.
Don't put a mindless tool of corporations in the white house; vote ChatGPT for 2024!
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:21PM
Scan my plate to see if my car is stolen? GOOD!! Scan my plate and hang onto it for 24 hours to see if I was involved in a crime? Ok, I guess. Scan my plate and keep the info for 48 hours? Why? Scan my plate and keep that data forever? Oh hell no, Go fuck yourselves.
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