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DHS Wants a National License Plate Tracking System

posted by Dopefish on Sunday February 23 2014, @10:00AM   
from the party-like-it's-1984 dept.

siliconwafer writes "The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is looking to acquire a vehicle license plate tracking system, to be used at the national level. According to the solicitation obtained by the Washington Post, commercial readers, supplied by a private company, would scan the plate of vehicles and store them in a "National License Plate Recognition" (NLPR) database. This is already being done at the state level, and privacy advocates are up in arms, with EFF and ACLU suing California over their automatic plate readers. Now that this has potential to become a broad and national program."

[ED Note: "Shortly after the Washington Post broke the story on the national plate reading system, it appears the DHS has shelved their plans for the tracking system, by order of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, at least in the interim."]

• Re:How to tell the state from the plate? Re:How to tell the state from the plate? (Score: 2, Interesting) by hankwang on Sunday February 23 2014, @05:54PM

  by hankwang (100) on Sunday February 23 2014, @05:54PM (#5249) Homepage

  Each state has a unique combination of text color and background color on the plate.

  Unique? If you click a few pages on Wikipedia Category:Vehicle registration plates of the United States [wikipedia.org], that is not the impression that I get; for most states, there are several different color combinations depending on the year of issuing. Black or dark blue on white seems to be pretty common.

  • Virginia: dark blue serif on white [wikipedia.org]
  • South Carolina: black on white [wikipedia.org]
  • California: dark blue on white [wikipedia.org]
  • Maine: black on white [wikipedia.org]

  (Not a systematic search, just some random clicks).

  Anyway, doing the recognition based on colors doesn't sound like a wise idea, since it should also work when it's dark (infrared flashlight). Recognizing small details might also be troublesome since there may be some motion blur.

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• Re:How to tell the state from the plate? (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday February 23 2014, @06:54PM

  by mhajicek (51) on Sunday February 23 2014, @06:54PM (#5272)

  Thanks, I stand corrected.

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  The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek

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