From Trump campaign signs to Planned Parenthood bumper stickers, license plate readers around the US are creating searchable databases that reveal Americans’ political leanings and more.

From Trump campaign signs to Planned Parenthood bumper stickers, license plate readers around the US are creating searchable databases that reveal Americans’ political leanings and more.

  • Shortstack@reddthat.comEnglish
    1192·
    2 months ago

    Alright! Dystopian nightmare timeline is a go!

    I especially like the part where cops are reported to heavily abuse these databases for personal agendas or to share with criminals. Truly ACAB

    This is a very good reason to maintain the appearance of neutrality while facing your local community

    This might even be an argument for putting those smoked opaque covers on your license plates even if it’s questionably legal. There’s more than a few people out there with definitely not legal smoked covers to the point you literally can’t read their plates unless you’re tailgating them, and cops don’t give a shit because nobody is ever pulled over for illegal mods. I’d wager that the cameras can’t read them either if you can’t at 10 yards

    • nnullzz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      621·
      2 months ago

      The real dystopian nightmare is the one where everyone conforms and acts neutral out of fear. That’s how we really lose who we are and any sense of improving the situation.

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
        81·
        2 months ago

        There are other ways to resist, esp in the days of the internet.

        Modern tech permits state actors to obtain real life information about your where abouts. This tech now appears to be percolating to street police. There is a lot of abuse already happening but we are several big cases away before the daddy sam tryied to reign this shit in, if ever.

        Point being got to be careful when dealing with the state or other quasi state insinuations as such corporation. Remember when Chevron got a lawyer with some bullshit criminal conviction with a private prosecutors as retaliation about his work on case against them in LatAm?

    • qprimed@lemmy.mlEnglish
      18·
      2 months ago

      I’d wager that the cameras can’t read them either if you can’t at 10 yards

      I might not take a bet on that. most license plates use reflective paint to aid in this. it would surprise me if paint and cameras are not tuned to at least one non human-visible wavelength.

      polarized plate covers, specialized spray coatings, etc may work, but I am not betting my freedom on it. time to go bond style and get rotating plates.

      • notfromhere@lemmy.mlEnglish
        7·
        2 months ago

        What about a thin e-ink layer plus led layer display that fits over the plate and would block the plate while displaying a digital plate over it? May need a few rounds of evolution there but might work

        • qprimed@lemmy.mlEnglish
          9·
          2 months ago

          very cool idea. they will counter with RFID or turn the plate into the equiv of a qrcode. store a cryptographically secure hash of the plate number and you pretty much put an end to that, no?. if I cant get a crypto signed version of your plate, flag the the car as a scofflaw (or worse) and track it as it travels in other ways. I think we are pretty much screwed without a change in laws.

          with anti-women laws in some of these states, this is terrifying.

          • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            5·
            2 months ago

            You could just copy others signed codes, so you would also need some sort of totp system.
            Then you could still place some camera capturing and streaming plates of parked cars in real time, so you’d either need 2 way communication with the license plates, where the cameraa tell them to show a code for some specific nonce, and which you could then potentially still stream so would also need severe latency checks, or you would have to get way more reliable gps and make that part of the totp.

            • qprimed@lemmy.mlEnglish
              6·
              2 months ago

              • plate number is tied to a VIN which describes the make/model. (sir, this is a wendys toyota. where is the honda?)

              • replies not required from the plate - plate has a specialized qrcode printed across the entire plate (infrared reflector?) with an identifier (lic + other public info?) and signed with an RSA keypair - reader can authenticate the information and a qrcode read counts as a verifiably good read

              • …or just ship RFID tags in the yearly inspection stickers - same cryptographic concept

              none of this is hard or costly. only impediment is public rejection and we all know that can be managed.

          • notfromhere@lemmy.mlEnglish
            4·
            2 months ago

            We’re probably decades away from them countering with anything meaningful like that unless large swaths of people start doing it.

    • JoYo@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      those covers do not effect license plate cameras.

      the only people this prevents from viewing the numbers are pedestrians and other drivers.

    • Landless2029@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      I wonder if it would be illegal to put IR lights around your plate to blind the camera …

      Gears turning…

      Yep. Then automatic tolls and traffic cams can’t track you. Cop would pull you over real quick.

      • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        71·
        2 months ago

        If you rtfa you’d see there is already an easy workaround for this. You just need to be driving faster than 150mph and the camera can’t read the plate.

        Also, this isn’t what the article is about. I think it bad enough there is a network of cops and scumbags (guess that’s redundant) recording all this LP data into the DRN network, but it’s being abused to go well beyond LP data as a free for all search of acquired imagery.

    • qprimed@lemmy.mlEnglish
      24·
      2 months ago

      a big thank you for your comment. comments like these really do help me to not skip worthwhile articles.

  • SacredHeartAttack@lemmy.worldEnglish
    481·
    2 months ago

    I’ve never wanted to post signs in my yard or put stickers on my bumpers because I didn’t want PEOPLE judging me. And people are judgmental. Now I’m glad I had that opinion because we have to worry about computers logging us so we can be judged in the future for whatever weird reason someone comes up with?

    What happened to freedoms in America? It’s easy for a government to strip them after the people stop believing in them being important. Corporations are making free thought and self expression unimportant and dangerous and the gov’t will have no choice but to curb our freedoms in response. And we will cheer it on. I hate this shit.

    • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      2 months ago

      We got attacked and then in fear gave away our freedoms for the promise of more protections. There were people blowing the whistle each time but we ignored them. Patriot Act. Lobbying to not consider social platforms news aggregates. Lobbying to not pay news outlets, Lobbying to weaken anti-trust laws. Lobbying to kill legislation protecting children online. Lobbying against legislation to protect user privacy. Lobbying for the use of tech like facial recognition.

      This kind of thing has been happening for ages.

      • Seleni@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        2 months ago

        Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      What happened to freedoms in America? It’s easy for a government to strip them after the people stop believing in them being important.

      Add to that how much more difficult (and time consuming and expensive) it is to build/rebuild than it is to destroy and you’ve got a real problem on your hands.

    • PriorityMotif@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      Only for the government. The workaround for mass warrantless surveillance is to contract a private company. Since you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public, it’s not illegal to take a picture of your car as it drives by. You could do the same thing, just go outside your local police station and take pictures of the cars and write down the license plates and times they go by. Nobody will bother you because it’s perfectly legal and the police obviously won’t care that you’re doing it because it’s not illegal and they will thank you for making them feel safer.

      • lepinkainen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        2 months ago

        So what you’re saying we create a Credit Score system, but for guns. Might just work 🧐

        • PriorityMotif@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          2 months ago

          Since those cameras are so easy to deploy, it would be trivial to place them near gun stores and gun ranges, and other places frequented by gun owners, it’s not a gun registry though. It’s simply four catching criminals and for the children’s safety of course. If you go against the police you are un-American

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        police obviously won’t care

        Unless you’re taking pictures of police vehicles, in which case they definitely care. Still not illegal, but they’ll most likely harass you for it.

        But hey, you can make a living suing police departments, there are worse things to spend your time on.

  • IMNOTCRAZYINSTITUTION@lemmy.worldEnglish
    39·
    2 months ago

    this kind of thing is why I do not advertise my politics at all. no bumper stickers or yard signs or campaign t shirts. im even registered without a party so you can’t look up my affiliation. and I don’t talk politics on the internet because nothing is truly anonymous. if someone wants to come after you they will be able to find you with enough effort.

    • shastaxc@lemm.eeEnglish
      14·
      2 months ago

      Sounds like you’re not loyal enough to The Party. If you were a good citizen, you wouldn’t have anything to hide. Throw him in the gulag!

  • mctoasterson@reddthat.comEnglish
    37·
    2 months ago

    This is and has been a big deal for a while. Do we really want easily trackable movements on every major road? What happens when they start feeding that data into federal fusion centers for cataloging and storage “just in case” they need it later?

    What happens when a regime that criminalizes dissent has access to realtime vehicular and individual (via mobile phone) tracking data?

    • Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      101·
      2 months ago

      They already do this to flag potential traffickers. I’m not sure what we want has anything to do with what happens.

    • PriorityMotif@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23·
      2 months ago

      If I ever get the chance I’m going to use it to take people’s guns away and go after vehicles with modified emissions systems.

  • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.eeEnglish
    22·
    2 months ago

    Mount an e-ink display with a rotating slideshow of different images on your car until they have a record of your car having thousands of different bumper stickers.

  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    2 months ago

    there’s a town nearby with dispensaries that have some amazing deals. there also happen to be three red light cams and two license plate readers the have been reported to give their information to out of state agencies and ICE on the two other stoplights in town. You can’t convince me that’s not some kind of honeypot.

    • Stonewyvvern@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      2 months ago

      They literally scan your ID when you buy green in my state. They already know who you are and where you live. The cameras are to keep people honest (intimidated).

      • tempest@lemmy.caEnglish
        7·
        2 months ago

        I mean in addition to all that even if they didn’t scan your id of you pay with anything but cash then the credit card company or bank knows and can be made to give up that info pretty easily.

  • LesserAbe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    2 months ago

    Yeah that’s pretty dystopian. Something worse hasn’t been done with it probably just because many bad actors haven’t been aware its an option.

    • PriorityMotif@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      2 months ago

      If you could access the database, then you could put a camera near an electronic billboard and then serve personalized ads to people as they drive down the road.