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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.-
plate number is tied to a VIN which describes the make/model. (sir, this is a
wendystoyota. 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
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…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.
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We’re probably decades away from them countering with anything meaningful like that unless large swaths of people start doing it.
I’ve heard there are hyper-reflective stickers you can put on/near the plate that basically blind a traffic camera’s view when trying to read it
What you need are two things: a sunflexzone IR reflecting cover behind a ghostplate cover. The second one turns black when photographed at an angle such as a stoplight camera.
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.
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.
those covers do not effect license plate cameras.
the only people this prevents from viewing the numbers are pedestrians and other drivers.
Wow this article goes into the nuance. And it terrified me.
a big thank you for your comment. comments like these really do help me to not skip worthwhile articles.
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.
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.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
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.
But a digital gun database is unconstitutional?
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.
So what you’re saying we create a Credit Score system, but for guns. Might just work 🧐
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
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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.
Federal civil rights lawsuit: any%
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.
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!
This is old news from a decade ago, before the US public was aware how the police had long been fabricating probable cause (and gunning down Americans by the hundreds) and SCOTUS had been carving out exceptions to the fourth and fifth amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
Then Trump won in 2016 and we saw what it looked like under mask-off tyranny. And now we’re one election away from one-party autocracy.
The police state is here. It always was. 🌍👨🚀🧑🚀🔫
before… SCOTUS had been carving out exceptions to the fourth and fifth amendments
They’ve been doing that shit since the country was founded. The fourth and fifth amendments only exist if you’re a rich person and the cops need an excuse not to investigate you.
And now we’re one election away from one-party autocracy.
Pretty this was is also
It always was. 🌍👨🚀🧑🚀🔫
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?
They already do this to flag potential traffickers. I’m not sure what we want has anything to do with what happens.
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.
Time for a bobby drop table sticker
QR code sticker-bomb
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.
Track-me-not, automobile edition.
Maybe the crazies with an absolute mountain of nonsense obstructing their rear windshield and all over their bumper are the ones who are right?
I wish we could elect people we trust
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.
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).
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.
Not a single cannabis store that I know of in the US accepts credit card. They’re all cash only because the banks don’t want any part of it. (Technically it’s still federally illegal, and they don’t want to get in trouble as national business)
I have seen many run it as an ATM transaction rounded to the nearest dollar and refund the change in cash. I saw this in two states.
Having said that. I love cash only businesses. Visa and the other CC companies have way too much power. We should all go back to cash tomorrow, but we won’t.
I ran a business, not weed related, that was cash only for the better part of 5 years. When I started taking cards I made sure cash and bitcoin were also options. The only downside was going to the bank every week to grab stacks of small bills for change. The upside was never having to deal with credit cards and every payment settling instantly when the cash changed hands. Under $100, cash is king.
Why under $100?
Simply because most people won’t walk around with $100+ in their wallet. If you are specifically going to pay for something I guess cash is king until it hits 30-40lbs and gets harder to carry.
Not a single cannabis store that I know of in the US accepts credit card.
False. Went to one in June, 2024, in New York City, right around Time’s Square, and the guy behind the counter asked if I was paying via cash, debit, or credit.
I asked him about the credit option, and he said Visa has started working with some dispensaries and offering their credit services for payment. I even mentioned it to a dispensary employee in Maine (they only accept cash), and he said the same thing: Visa is the only one that’s barely starting to offer credit service for dispensaries.
That person was reporting their experience. It’s not false that they have not seen it. I haven’t, either.
Lots of “stores” sell “weed” (delta 8) and that’s not illegal for credit cards.
You are not buying real weed from a real dispensary in the US with a credit card, yet. One day, but if you aren’t paying cash, that’s a red flag.
Yep, that must be why I walked into a dispensary, that sold only recreational and medicinal marijuana to adults aged 21+, that checked all IDs at the door, and reverified them by the cashier. Then, after completing my transaction using a debit card, and having my aforementioned conversation with the cashier, who was wearing the identification as is required by all states with recreational marijuana on a lantern around their neck, and proceeded to leave with legitimate marijuana…
I know delta 8 and all those substitutes. This was a legitimate dispensary advertising and using Visa for credit transactions for their purchases.
Hence why I said they’re very barely doing so, but Visa appears to at least be starting to, and that your statement of “no store selling marijuana will use a credit care” was false.
Ahhh, debit. Not credit.
My point still stands.
Ah yes, the freedom of owning a car.
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.
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.
Drive around with a permanent bike rack in the way of your tail plate. No front plates.
Some states require front plates.
Blocking a plate with a bike rack isn’t a bad idea, except - a) the rack will wear your paint, b) any automated toll collection based on license plate reading will also be blocked. Probably NBD once in while, but if someone regularly skips tolls and is caught it’s gonna hurt. They just had a toll-skipper sting near me where they caught a crapton of people who regularly skipped tolls with license plate blockers and temp tags. They lost their cars instantly, a few got slapped with 6-figure fines and fees, and I imagine jail time might be on the menu for some.
Ours apparently does, but nobody follows that law, and I’ve never seen it enforced.
- a - easy fix, drive a beater
- b - the only tolls in my area use a sensor
If you didn’t want to use a tracking sensor for tolls, can’t you just pay cash? Whenever I visit Florida, that’s what I do. It sucks when the machine is busted, but then I just chuck my change at it and go.
I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to intentionally hide your plates
But is it illegal to intentionally always be ready to carry bikes?
I mean if you’re planning on doing all these weird work arounds, just get a fake plate/mess with your old plates so the letters are more difficult to read.
A bike rack maintains plausible deniability.
Messing with your plates or getting fake plates could land you in court.
Exactly. Cops hate plate obfuscation and will probably pull you over on that alone. Having a bike rack? They’ll probably let it slide.
this will make them more likely to pull you over: each license plate will add to the number of potential cars under a warrant. Imo just don’t use a car to commit crimes or get a ride.
