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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday March 25 2015, @07:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the trust-no-one dept.

Ars Technica used a public records request to obtain a large dataset of license plate scans from 33 License Plate Readers (LPRs) in Oakland, California:

OAKLAND, Calif.—If you have driven in Oakland any time in the last few years, chances are good that the cops know where you’ve been, thanks to their 33 automated license plate readers (LPRs).

Now Ars knows too.

In response to a public records request, we obtained the entire LPR dataset of the Oakland Police Department (OPD), including more than 4.6 million reads of over 1.1 million unique plates between December 23, 2010 and May 31, 2014. The dataset is likely one of the largest ever publicly released in the United States—perhaps in the world.

After analyzing this data with a custom-built visualization tool, Ars can definitively demonstrate the data's revelatory potential. Anyone in possession of enough data can often—but not always—make educated guesses about a target’s home or workplace, particularly when someone’s movements are consistent (as with a regular commute).

It seems the cars of police officers, politicians, and others doing the spying should have been captured by the LPRs too. A prize for the first person to separate out what they've been up to...

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by CirclesInSand on Wednesday March 25 2015, @09:56PM

    by CirclesInSand (2899) on Wednesday March 25 2015, @09:56PM (#162538)

    If it turned out that they really didn't have anything socially taboo to hide, I think that would only make me hate them more. I hate superficial righteousness much more than honest hypocrisy.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Thursday March 26 2015, @02:18AM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Thursday March 26 2015, @02:18AM (#162589) Journal

    That sounds very Oscar Wilde ... which got me looking at Oscar Wilde quotes ( http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/o/oscar_wilde.html [brainyquote.com] ):

    • Exactly on point:
    • I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
    • A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
    • Not an exact match, but shares some similarity:
    • Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
    • Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
    • The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
    • OT but funny:
    • America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by CirclesInSand on Thursday March 26 2015, @05:18AM

      by CirclesInSand (2899) on Thursday March 26 2015, @05:18AM (#162610)

      Nice list. The one that came to my mind, and which I think more people would recall, is CS Lewis:

      Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

      Although my personal favorite quote on this topic is succinctly from Blade of the Immortal by Samura Hiroaki, originally in Japanese:

      It is those who believe themselves righteous that destroy nations, and those who see the evil within that rise up and save their country.