Traffic cameras expose your location through parking apps

The gist of it: I can subscribe to location updates for any license plate that I want, without knowledge or consent from the owner of that car.

Finally. Publish it all. Tracking of every vehicle, visible for everyone.<p>It has been that way with aircraft for a long time. Pilots, however, are such a minority that noone really cares.<p>Now that everyone is impacted, regulation might get updated (or someone might spend the time to identify existing regulation that prohibits this), and that would extend to other vehicles than those with wheels.

As long as privacy is not a granted right that enables you to sue offenders, there&#x27;s not much you can do. The EU has at least started to realize the issue but giving the speed of technology vs. the pace of administration, it might be a losing battle.

At this point I’m carrying so many electronic devices with me or at home that I’ve give up on going out of my way to prevent getting tracked. My best effort is to trust Apple doesn’t sell me out.

The DB5 in Goldfinger (1964) had revolving licence plates.<p>A cursory Google search comes up with some shady websites that sell similar tech, but it would be a nice DIY project to make a licence plate screen that can be changed on the fly (e-ink based maybe).<p>Has anyone tried it?

Just another reason to preference walking and cycling.

&gt; Certain tollroad systems, such as France&#x27;s Bip &amp; Go télépéage, require a physical Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag to be present in the car for authentication purposes.<p>Only if you want to pass the toll &#x2F; &quot;télépéage&quot; without having to stop for paying &quot;manually&quot; (using a credit card of whatever).<p>I&#x27;ve got one and now you can pass most tolls without stopping (but you need to slow down to about 30 km&#x2F;h &#x2F;&#x2F; 20 mph).

In my country, the EasyPark app seems to have taken a lot of the market. Almost every parking space I see now has it as an option, including spaces owned by the city. Thankfully, they currently still support paying with cash, but machines often don&#x27;t return change and only accept coins, so they can be inconvenient.<p>It&#x27;s shocking to compare the privacy aspect of the app: instead of anonymously throwing some coins into a machine and putting a slip on your dashboard, the app needs: your phone number, your plate number, your credit card details and full GPS access. They&#x27;re not hiding this: It&#x27;s explained in their GDPR privacy notice that they track and store your phone location and travel routes even when you&#x27;re not using a parking space.<p>On top of that, you also pay more for parking when using the app, since they take some percentage commission of the parking cost (apparently depending on your account options, but I never got far enough with the app to find this out)

With the rise of automated license plate readers and tracking databases, we MUST recognize this truth: License Plates Considered Harmful (to privacy and 4th Amendment rights).<p>No, I&#x27;m not joking. If we&#x27;re not going to put <i>serious</i> legal restrictions and penalties on this kind of tracking, the only other viable option is to eliminate license plates entirely.<p>Here in Austin, there is at least one sane City Councilman who is pushing for a maximum 3 minute retention time for license plate scan event data. I expect that would get pushed to 30-180 minutes in reality, but there is no justification for any longer than that...

I&#x27;m surprised my idea from 10 yrs ago hasn&#x27;t been monetized. It was an lcd cover that could be made in license plate size, with a remote controller which could dim&#x2F;darken&#x2F;blackout the cover. Or in Deluxe mode, activate lines randomly which would result in a different number. Then again... somebody is out front in this technology space. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newsweek.com&#x2F;what-are-digital-license-plates-how-do-they-work-1717039" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newsweek.com&#x2F;what-are-digital-license-plates-how...</a>

This came up in a thread elsewhere about the severe increase in vehicle thefts in the Portland area. These thefts are not actively investigated by the police, so it would be nice if the owner of a vehicle could get relevant data for the movement&#x2F;location of the stolen vehicle.<p>Anybody here ever worked with their local PD to get access to the ALPR data? Seems like the work to do it would be more political&#x2F;bureaucratic than technical.

Theoretically, could this same principle be borrowed by the open source community… to create a database that tracks and updates the location of police, government, military, and high status individual vehicles?<p>I’m thinking of a decentralized, Web3, IPFS-like distributed database, but instead of file storage, it’s real-time geolocation with OSM on the backend.

Would the solution no be to simply allow people to pay for parking twice? There&#x27;s already nothing stopping you from getting two parking slips at a machine. Just start another parking session for each user and track them independently.

Don&#x27;t be fooled. The purpose of mass surveillance has always been coercion. If you can&#x27;t see how this is going to be abused just give it a bit more thought.

What happens if I fill out the form BUT I am an easypark user? Does it delete my account?

I remember the police claiming they had this tech (license plate recognition) for average speed tracking while it did not work. It also didn’t work but was claimed to work for some toll roads. It helped as people slowed down and paid toll but it didn’t work; it started working years after installing it.

It could be easily fixed by having to get a physical OTP from an automated kiosk in the car park to add the license plate to the app.

As soon as you put a huge identification plate on your vehicle there’s no expectation of privacy.