Repo man cameras

Yesterday our local PCA group had its monthly breakfast--meet at the local Panera, have a bite, and chat. While saying our goodbyes in the parking lot, a nondescript car did a few laps of the entire lot. At each corner of the car sat a camera system.

"Repo man cameras?" I said to the person I was talking to.

"I think you're right," he replied.

The kicker: The guy I was talking to teaches criminology at an Orlando college. Before that, he was a detective.

We had a nice talk about the subject. Where is that data stored? Who has access to it? Where is the presumption of innocence before checking our plates?

His take-home point: If a police officer drove through the same parking lot and ran all of our plates, we'd be down in the chief's office screaming bloody murder. Yet no one else there seemed to notice or care about the repo man cameras.

They remind me of a roadgoing version of the "gargoyles" from Snow Crash. Except they've apparently found a way to make actual money at it.

From what I've read, the police already have automatic license plate reading software connected to on-board cameras. Runs the plate automatically of any car they're behind. Tells them if the registration is expired for a quick ticket/$ (at least here in PA where registration is an annual expense).

I work in casino.. every place but the hotel rooms and rest rooms has a camera. I get a little blasé towards them.. but something like that would have been walking outside to see what he wanted

Umm... The police have license plate readers that are WAAY more advanced than reading the car in from of them. Local cops have readers that can read an entire parking lot at once- up to 1000 cars.

In GA, even a 1 day lapse in insurance automatically generates a registration revocation. Police scan cars for registration violations. Driving an unregistered car can get you arrested.

My wife was arrested recently for this. Her insurance had lapsed 1 day- check crossed in the mail. But it had generated a suspension of her registration (even though that was paid for). The registration does not automatically renew once the insurance is settled. She didn't know about the suspension until she was arrested. Car was impounded, and cost me $500 plus towing and storage to get her out.

Dawson GA. It is a heck of a windfall for the local coffers.

Yeah there are police cars (at least in the UK, don't know if they have them in the US) and fixed ALPR cameras that do this already. Plus if you leave home with your cell phone then that tracks everywhere you go - the system has to know this to work, all the telco has to do is save the data.

We are living in a full-on sci-fi dystopia, and most Gen. Y'ers are some sort of cyberpunk character.

In reply to SVreX:

How does the state know your insurance has lapsed?

In reply to SVreX:

The one's the State LEOs use in AR aren't that advanced, they read the standard state issued 6 character license plates fine, but they can't decipher the specialty plates. In other words...

They can read/decipher this:

But stack two characters vertically like 90% of our "special" tags do, and the camera system has no clue what that "1st" character is.

Allegedly the state legislature is actually addressing the issue during the next session, more so the fact that we've got about 100 special plate options from all kinds of schools, organizations, and charities and the LEO's camera system is useless on them, so LEOs are pushing to cap the number of special plates, or do something to decrease their prevalence. If AR's default plate wasn't so ugly there probably wouldn't be so many special plates on the the road. We've got 4-H or Razorback plates on all of our vehicles.

Advocate for the Devil says: If you are in a public place, it is perfectly legal for me to take a photograph of you (with certain exceptions such as minors).

Why should your license tag be different?

Privacy? That's so 20th century...

SVreX wrote: Umm... The police have license plate readers that are WAAY more advanced than reading the car in from of them. Local cops have readers that can read an entire parking lot at once- up to 1000 cars.

The police, you can argue, are a public institution. What about a private company doing the same thing? Could they then post your travelings online? "Hey, everyone, look where Paul was at 11:38 on Tuesday."

And I agree, privacy is so 20th century.

bgkast wrote: In reply to SVreX: How does the state know your insurance has lapsed?

Because GA requires the insurance companies to notify the state immediately. They are wired together.

David S. Wallens wrote:

SVreX wrote: Umm... The police have license plate readers that are WAAY more advanced than reading the car in from of them. Local cops have readers that can read an entire parking lot at once- up to 1000 cars.

The police, you can argue, are a public institution. What about a private company doing the same thing? Could they then post your travelings online? "Hey, everyone, look where Paul was at 11:38 on Tuesday." And I agree, privacy is so 20th century.

Who says Google isn't already doing it?

I'm not sure I understand your question. I believe the Constituion protects us from our government, but not necessarily from private companies.

Government is held to a higher standard than private, not the other way around.

So yes, I think they can gather it, AND sell it. (Not that I like it)

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/repo-men-tracking-car-26702375

Wasn't aware of all that.

I got pulled over for a bad inspection sticker. When I asked how he saw the sticker in the windshield, from behind me, he said it automatically came up on his computer. So he pulled me over, and gave me a warning. I got a new sticker later that day.

When it becomes illegal to take pictures of publically displayed things like license plates, they will also have to outlaw iPhones, Flickr, and Instagram.

Companies have been figuring out how to make money from people taking pictures for quite a while now.

Of its like the system I looked at it's not saving everyone's plate. You enter the plates you are looking for and it lets you know if there is a match. The parking management company where I park for the train has this system. They enter all the valid permit holders and as they troll the lots and garages it flags all the cars that don't belong for ticketing.

If the cops can tell if I have insurance and reg-o, why the hell does Illinois make you put a sticker on the plate, paper in the glove box, and carry around stupid little insurance cards?

Appleseed wrote: If the cops can tell if I have insurance and reg-o, why the hell does Illinois make you put a sticker on the plate, paper in the glove box, and carry around stupid little insurance cards?

Because the laws do not keep pace with the technology.

Legislators rarely repeal laws. Those things are outdated, but the laws are still on the books.

Besides, that gives local law enforcement additional opportunities to raise local revenues. Support your local community and stop complaining.

I was unfortunately involved in one of the early wide-scale law enforcement adoptions of ALPR technology a number of years ago and it makes me kind of uncomfortable, honestly. While it is true that you are in a public place and we have no expectation of privacy, we have technology today that can process amounts of data that would have been unimaginable in 1791 to produce results that would have been similarly unbelievable. Basically, by combing through the public and private ALPR databases -- for which there are approximately ZERO data retention regulations -- a fairly run-of-the-mill compute cluster can provide a travel profile of your car while simultaneously cross-referencing the travel profile of other vehicles. Basically, we all have a tail that logs where we go at pretty much all times.

The officer in charge of the ALPR project I was working with had a couple very specific scenarios that he wanted to use the technology for. One of them was that if he knew that there were drugs coming in to town every Thursday from a city to the north-west, he could filter the ALPR captures on the main highways that came from that direction for any plates that showed up on more than one Thursday and then go knock on their doors. Sounds way too much like East Germany for my liking...

1) My wife always freaks out when she forgets her wallet while driving. I always tell her "the cop can pull up your picture and license information when you give him your name."

2) The sad thing about ALPR technology (and big data used in law enforcement) is that it really doesn't do anything to stop random violence, murders, or burglary. Like the example used above, it is used more for drug enforcement and registration/inspection infractions, which are great at turning up drug offenses.

I just read an article in the paper where people were getting speeding tickets based on the Fast Pass tolling system. Drive through the next Fast Pass tolling station location too soon, you get a ticket.

That's not actually new, just a different method. For years I always made sure I stopped for at least a potty break at the centers on the West Virginia & Pennsylvania Turnpikes. The time at the last tool booth was printed on your card. Too quick an arrival at the next tollbooth equaled a ticket.

Do any of you Privacy Advocates carry a cell phone? If you do, you are already paying a ton of money to be tracked 24/7. Whether in your own home or anywhere else.

tr8todd wrote: I got pulled over for a bad inspection sticker. When I asked how he saw the sticker in the windshield, from behind me, he said it automatically came up on his computer. So he pulled me over, and gave me a warning. I got a new sticker later that day.

Did you ask him whether reading his computer while driving constituted "distracted driving?"

I wish they'd link the insurance and registration in my state. The number of uninsured keeps my premiums amongst the highest in the country. Although you have to have proof of insurance to register your car, many folks make the first payment, get the card, then drop the insurance immediately.

Datsun1500 wrote: If you are in a public place, you have no right to privacy, and can be photographed at will. The same can be said for your vehicle. The companies that collect that data sell mostly to private detectives, not the police.

The "problem" here is that technology is doing what technology does and making transaction costs cheaper. There are lots of things in the world that are and have always been public information, it's just that up until fairly recently it was difficult, time consuming and/or expensive to gather all of that public information together.

Want to know where someone is 24/7? It used to be you needed to hire a private investigator to follow them around -- that's perfectly legal, it just costs a lot of money. Now you can use ALPR and ubiquitous cameras to track everyone everywhere they go in public. Nothing has changed in principle, it's just become easy/cheap. The same thing happens with all kind of public records. There are companies who publish mug shots from arrest records on their web site and then charge people to take them down, for example.