Cops Released a Car’s Travel History to a Total Stranger
In a rare instance of too much transparency, an Ohio police department released the precise movements of a particular vehicle in response to a public records request, showing just how invasive license plate reading technology can be.
Holy shit. So you can just ask for anyone's plate and the police will hand it out. That's what their response says.
As long as you follow the correct protocol and get the right staffer handling your request and live in Ohio.
Other states have privacy controls that would block this from happening without explicit sign-off.
That's so bizarre.
In my country, only police can look up a licence plate, and only on official business - cops have lost their jobs for looking up friends, family and ex-girlfriend's licenses.
This is why license plates are so short, so no one gets the custom plate car'); DROP TABLE surveillanceState;
"Oh yes, little Dropmobile we call it."
Hmmm wonder if you could make it work with bumberstickers? Like have the custom plate P TABLE and then complete on ether side?
The government knows where you live and where you go pretty much all the time when you're in a car. That includes your lifted pickup truck and your minivan covered top to bottom with words.
All yous conspiracy nuts out there, let's advocate for better bike and passenger train infrastructure and walkable cities, to make it harder for governments to know where you are and track what you do, thanks.
Cameras already exist and facial recognition is getting better all the time. It won't matter soon enough whether you're in a car or on foot.
I highly doubt the government knows where I go:
That said, I totality agree with your assessment. We need better pedestrian, cycling, and mass transit infrastructure. The problem is that pretty much nobody campaigns on that. Rs campaign on fiscal issues, Ds campaign on "culture" issues, and neither deliver on their promises anyway. I want more trains and more pedestrian/cycling infra, but neither party seems to care...
But do you sanitize and vet your carrier data?
Triangulation using cellphone towers is not unheard of and they can subpoena it.
Then again, a national state actor going against a private entity is rare and the private entity will often lose.
Same thing with my home cameras, I use unifi because it's easy and the data is stored locally. That way the police can't subpoena Amazon or any of the big companies for their cloud data.
I'm being very facetious. Privacy is a losing battle. You fuckup once, you negate a lot of hard work.
-Sent on my stock Google Pixel lmfao
red light and speed cameras are illegal in my state
License plate readers are not covered by those two bans. Trust me, they are everywhere in the states, and the technology/software to set them up is so easy, that a private citizen who was bored was able to build one. The various governments have much nicer setups.
- red light and speed cameras are illegal in my state
This doesn’t ban license plate reader cameras. My state also bans red light and speed cameras, but automatic license plate readers are 100% legal. I have seen the ALPL systems firsthand, and know they’re in use. You wouldn’t even notice them, because they’re mounted on traffic lights and power lines. It’s not like red light cameras, where they have a blatantly obvious giant camera box.
My local municipality 100% uses ALPLs, and has referenced them in a number of arrests recently. They’re mostly used for Amber Alert situations, where police already have a description of what to look for. In these cases, the ALPL will basically allow them to track the car in real time, without even needing to follow the car. Because they simply get updates every time the car passes an intersection, so they can set up a stop ahead of where the person is traveling.
Eh. Makes more sense to make this kind of surveillance illegal.
You're right. I was hoping conspiracy nuts wouldn't be looking for the obvious solution.
Do you carry a phone?
I do. It runs GrapheneOS, though.
EDIT: Yes I know about triangulation via cell signal. If the cops start looking for me I can leave it at home.
They know where I am in my 1986 Fiero? In an area where the nearest traffic camera is at least 50 kms away? Where the police don't show even if you call them?
Would I ride a train, sure but they are all freight haulers now and would you believe it even easier to track?
And my bicycle? its great, love it. but I am not able to make my 250km commute on it and although I have used it in the winter -50c is not conducive to cycling.
There is a record of you being the owner of a 1986 Fiero. Nobody needs to know the make, colour and serial number of your bike unless you register it in a system to ensure it's not stolen.
US and Canadian Intercity trains have upped security since 9/11 like everything so there is more tracking than before. You can still buy tickets with cash at least. Denser cities make it easier to blend in the crowds.
And yeah my last car had no always connected tech bullshit, and if you live in a remote area then of course, mass-transit isn't for you. Rural folks do also advocate for better city planning because it helps keep suburbanites out. Extreme cold and heat (beyond +/- 40 deg C) makes it hard but most winters and summers it can work
Boo to paywall posts.
This is like walking into a newsagents and saying "Boo to paid newspapers"
Paywalls are as easy to bypass as it is to steal the newspaper and run away
Fair enough, in this instance the author is the cofounder, so while I'll leave my comment to not hide that I've been corrected, he's well within his rights to charge for his work.
What gets me is the more and more I see of this: https://lemm.ee/comment/12593815, where The Atlantic paywalls an article copublished with the authors public blog.
People like Doctorow are fortunate to have built their followings before you could game Google, but I wish there was a way to identify sources of content to overcome that, and drive traffic and ad revenue to the source, vs revenue to them via an intermediary.
Investigations have given way to inquisitions.
Cops killing people while arresting them is the 21st century version of "Trial By Ordeal".
And at some point when we tie the violence police levy on the populace to those same police libidos & their need for violence prior to sexual activity we will see what kind of twisted world we have become.
Shooting and beating people is literally cop viagra. And if you take away any part of their equation of sex and death they will threaten to quit then sulk and "quiet quit" just like the people they use to validate their oppression.
I believe that where I live the license plate numbers would also not be considered personal information. This might work here too, if a different exemption was not claimed, although I'm not aware of anyone using this technology near me.
