I'm curious - how exactly would one refute the following argument put forth by data brokers and repo agents?<p>> <i>But Digital Recognition and other so-called “data brokers” who collect plate scans are fighting Hecht’s bill, arguing that repo agents are not invading privacy when they scan a license plate, which is available for all to see. The data brokers do not disclose the owner of the plates, they point out, though customers such as banks, insurers, and private investigators have ready access to that information.</i>
Terrifying startup prospect: Imagine a small dashcam-like consumer device that was able to perform the same type of license plate recognition coupled with GPS location. A data collection company could provide these devices for free or at a low cost to anyone, and then pay drivers for every license plate scan their box sends in.<p>Obvious downfall: someone will figure out how to spoof a GPS signal and randomly generate license plate images on a computer monitor and make a bunch of money for uploading junk data.
I think the first commenter on the site said it all :<p>"the systematic exploitation of private personal information by corporations and government is the modus operandi of a surveillance / police state.<p>Already this is being abused for corporate espionage, political benefit, and a host of criminal enterprises.<p>The manufactured pretext that all these erosions of privacy are ok because "we found bad guys" has been the same bogus justification for every single abuse known to history.<p>A simple extension of this illegal principle in practice means privacy and Constitutionally protected rights are null and void.<p>Jobs! Fraud! Crime!<p>"We'll keep you safe!" "We'll save insurance companies money!" "We'll catch criminals!"<p>They don't mention that they'll abuse this in an untold array of intrusions and privacy violations... for their commercial and political benefit."
I am simply against any law that would prohibit the public from this type of information and restrict it to only law enforcement.<p>If its not right for a public company to assemble such records it should be doubly wrong for law enforcement. I tire of passing the police cars festooned with cameras pointing in every direction. What guarantee do we have that the data is any safer in their hands? We don't and the reason is that a law that might offer protection today doesn't have to be in that form tomorrow or after some obscure judge rules otherwise.<p>So I am all for it on the grounds it puts on equal footing with government officials. We should be able to track them too which is most likely the real reason there is a law coming to prevent gathering by private individuals or companies
I really, really want to say that I think this technology is a bad idea. But I don't.
I don't think that the technology is the problem here, as Digital Recognition said they are not _technically_ invading privacy since the license plates are available for everyone to see. And if you outlaw it, whats stopping a few crooks organizing their own underground data collection and selling the stuff on a black market? Rather, I'd prefer to see a different way of "licensing" cars. Maybe some kind of RFID chip that can only be read by law enforcement? I know its quite unlikely something like this will ever happen, but anyway.
I think the article nails it on the head when it talks about technology getting ahead of social/legal controls.<p>I'm sure when license plates were devised, no one thought ahead to the day a single unregulated for-profit company could automate the scanning and geolocation of many millions of vehicles a year.
"ban most uses of license plate readers, ... making exceptions only for law enforcement, toll collection, and parking regulation."<p>That is the worst thing. Either allow everyone or no one. Giving more and more capability to special interests is how we have gotten into being a surveillance state and become very unbalanced authority / responsibility between different segments of society.
Is this discussion any different than the one we had a couple decades ago when credit/debit cards went from occasional use to primary currency? There was <i>huge</i> outcry about how everyone would be tracked, how every purchase you made could be aggregated and monitored and tracked and sold and leveraged, how personal problems could arise when a spouse or lawyer saw inappropriate purchases on bank card records, etc etc. Today, we still acknowledge those problems - while using those cards, having just given in to the sheer convenience of its regardless of the data mining that occurs.<p>I still think the killer app for Google Glass type products is face & license-plate recognition, aggregating data and pulling it up for you a la augmented reality all the time. The devices & services would be cheap unto free by companies accumulating that data.
This is quite interesting. On the one hand, I do understand that autoloans are very easy to default on. So there should be some method for loan companies to get these vehicles back. However, I also think that loan companies should more carefully screen their applicants. Of course, that would mean that loan companies make less money on loans and fees, and that they lose money on reselling cars that are already partially paid for. So I'm conflicted. But I don't think that the mass collection of data is the way to go, ever. And I wonder about the legality of putting up a "fuzzy" license plate. Say if your plate number is 123-AB12G or whatever, you simply write on a piece of cardboard "One Two Three Dash Aye BEE One Two Gee." I'm sure there's legislation against that, though.
This information is all public, it is only becoming more searchable and cross referenceable by computers.<p>Where have we seen that before? Many years ago when facebook first revealed the Newsfeed. There was a huge backlash, to which Mark Z personally wrote to all users, "Relax, breathe, we hear you." He went on to explain that all the info in the newsfeed was already public, just better accessible to us for consumption.<p>The inexorable march of technology proceeded unabated. The next few years produced the slogan "privacy is dead" on the social networks. So many people now post mundane details of their lives IN ORDER for others to read and to collect "likes".<p>Fast-forward to last year: Graph Search comes out, to help us all find what we're looking for using only the data available to us, and facebook doing the searching. No big splash this time. The graph search is arguable much more dangerous to privacy than ever:<p><a href="http://gawker.com/5978327/men-interested-in-men-in-tehran-and-other-dangerous-real-facebook-graph-searches" rel="nofollow">http://gawker.com/5978327/men-interested-in-men-in-tehran-an...</a><p>And the inexorable march of technology continues. Remember - it's not that you're caught on camera in a public place that's scary. It's that later, all the information can be cross referenced and mined for any purpose.<p>Should I write a blog post about this?
Eventually, our new found love for collecting lots and lots of data about everyone and everything would come back to haunt us, making some billionaires and a vast majority living under surveillance. Sketchy but probable.
Easy fix: pay for access to the DB and a few others like it, plot the movements of congresscritters, judges, DAs, et al. and publish. The brokers will be swimming in injunctions by the end of the week.
Would be awesome if someone reverse-engineer it: an app that alerts you when a repo truck is around the corner. Imagine all those pissed off truck owners being angry that their publicly available information has been scanned and delivered via alert system to someone trying to hide from a repo truck.
It's interesting that in a software world the difference between good and bad systems can be a single bit, leave debug=true and accidentally record all your keystrokes, or your wifi packets, or store info permanently instead of temporarily.
And unfortunately, the data brokers can even argue that the system includes an identity reset just like iOS - just request a new plate from your state...<p>However, this won't work, as linking the two records is trivial via DMV records...
I see a potential market for a mechanical device that automatically covers up the license plate when the car is parked & turned off.<p>Pull into parking space in the mall. Cover up your license plate. Or, better yet, put an image of random numbers.<p>Ta da!
the privacy as we know it has been obsoleted by technology, just like many other things in the past and will be in the future.<p>Instead of trying to save terminally ill patient - privacy - we need to look into the future. The real fight is who owns the data, not whether the data is collected. For example can we just force that all the data anybody has about anybody is to be public?