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License Plate Tracking for the Average Citizen

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Jul 25, 2006 12:22 PM
from the i-spy-with-my-many-eyes dept.
Privacy Technology
Wired News is reporting that big-brother license plate tracking systems may soon be available to the average citizen. Privacy advocates, however, worry that personal information and associated movement could be used inappropriately by marketing companies. From the article: "Bucholz, who designed some of the first mobile license plate reading, or LPR, equipment, gave a presentation at the 2006 National Institute of Justice conference here last week laying out a vision of the future in which LPR does everything from helping insurance companies find missing cars to letting retail chains chart customer migrations. It could also let a nosy citizen with enough cash find out if the mayor is having an affair, he says."
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  • Big brother here we come! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IntelliAdmin (941633) * on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:23PM (#15777140) Homepage
    Wow. This is really big brother. Essentially they put these on top of cop cars an the thing just starts searching 360 for license plates and drops them in the system. The trick would be to have enough police cars fitted with them to give back good data. Also it would not help track the car if it were in someone's garage.

    Good Excerpt from the article:

    LPR cameras, which are usually around the size of a can of tomato sauce, can be mounted on police cruisers and powered by cigarette lighters. As the car moves, the camera bounces infrared light off other vehicles' license plates. The camera reads the plates and feeds them to a laptop in real time, where information from an FBI or local database can tell an officer if the car is hot. Some systems can read up to 60 plates per second, and they work at highway speeds and acute angles.

    Free Windows Admin Tools [intelliadmin.com]

    • Re:Big brother here we come! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Jordan Catalano (915885) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:34PM (#15777248) Homepage
      In other news, sales of IR-blocking plastic films skyrocket.

      Buy one, get a tin-foil hat free.
    • I believe that in England they have spread these things everywhere there is a traffic light. The idea is to make sure that people pay local road use taxes and obey traffic rules, such as speed limits and traffic lights.
    • I cannot wait for this information to be easy and cheap to obtain. Imagine how much better GPS navigation systems would be if they always had real time data of traffic patterns, even if you live in a small midwestern town.

      Everyone seams to complain about information like this being used for marketing reasons, but I for one think that is probably the best use for it. I like the idea of marketing companies actually targeting me with things I may want, instead of crap I would never use because they do not ha

      • I agree (Score:4, Insightful)

        by x2A (858210) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @01:13PM (#15777591)
        Without marketing information, we blanket-market... that is, put flyers/posters, web banners, use pay-per-clicks etc, *everywhere*. It's a gamble, and most people who see the ads aren't going to be interested in them, but it's all you can do.

        However, with better marketing information, we cut out all the places we know people aren't going to be interested. The result: less pointless adverts everywhere.

        I wouldn't get car insurance circulars through my door, millions of pizza delivery ads, or loads v14gr4 spam, -if only- they knew I wasn't interested in them.

        Proper marketing information helps *all parties involved*. Unfortunately so many people have a deluded sense of grandure and think "omg they're watching *me*" like there's someone with a telescope watching and giggling everytime you fart. No company has that much time! It's usually done statistically.

      • Re:Big brother here we come! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by CreatureComfort (741652) * on Tuesday July 25 2006, @01:36PM (#15777774)

        Yeah, this is great. Now I'll be able to track down the information on that little mf'r that cut me off on the freeway this morning and key his car. Hey, and how about that hot blonde number I saw at the red light? I'm sure she wouldn't mind me showing up at her home or job and hitting on her. And if she turns me down, well, I know where she lives. I know, let's reverse this and make it real time! Then I can track where the owners of a house are while I "browse" through their belongings, and get warning when they get within 5 miles.

        Isn't this fun? I bet I could come up with great uses for this tech all day long.

        • Re:Big brother here we come! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by SydShamino (547793) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @02:16PM (#15778217)
          The following is SARCASTIC JEST meant to show how this can be abused:

          "Dude, I'm just gonna wire this up outside of the local adult video store, and post a real-time list of people who visit, with their name and address. I could probably make this a for-profit service, where folks sign up their spouses' tags and I message them when they visit. Or I can link it to public official records, and snap a photo or video if a politician's car shows up."
        • any information we are able to gain from their program usage only helps us give them a better product.

          You are incorrect. It helps you gain a greater profit, which is not reinvested in the product.

          Actually you are incorrect. I was not just talking about greater profit, I am talking about actual features added. By knowing what parts of the program people use the most, we can find what areas to spend the most development time on. Instead of just listening to the loudest complainers, we can help all of our c
        • You could just ask your customers about the information you need. Oh, wait, that's too intrusive. Ok, go ahead and spy on them.

          Actually, asking our customers is faaaaar more intrusive. Who wants to have phone calls from every company they buy from to fill out surveys? And it usually is not as good of information anyway.

          Most customers have no idea what they want. They want 20 more buttons on the screen, but they also think the screen is too "busy" looking. They never do actual analysis of what parts of t
    • We'd be sitting here marvelling at their innovation and wondering how we ever lived without it.
    • Police already do that on their own - when they are just driving around, they do plate searches on vehicles that are doing something suspicious, look suspicious, are driving late at night, racial profiling, etc. For whatever reason they want, basically. They can't pull you over without you doing something illegal, however, so unless your plate has something illegal associated with it, it's the same as ever.

      I imagine this automated system is more intended to be an aid to the police officer rather than a comp
      • They just drive around doing their normal rigamarole, and then the little beeper goes off and says "See that car up there? It was reported stolen this morning".

        Um, then what? The police get to just confiscate your car because some "magic box" says so?

    • Re:Big brother here we come! (Score:5, Funny)

      by dr_dank (472072) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @01:17PM (#15777627) Homepage Journal
      LPR cameras, which are usually around the size of a can of tomato sauce, can be mounted on police cruisers and powered by cigarette lighters

      With a mental image of a cop wielding a jar of Ragu while his partner shovels in Bic lighters to keep it going, I have hard time taking this seriously.
    • Oh, so you mean I just need to put an IR filter over my tag? Since we can't SEE IR with our eyes, we just have a high-pass light filter on our tags such that police can view them with their eyes, but not this pesky tomato-suace spy cam. 1.) Post SCARY article about possible big brother tracking you everywhere 2.) Market ir filters for tags... 3.) Charge 4x market value to /.TFHC (slashdot tin foil hats club) 4.) Profit~!!!!
    • This is, technically, big brother - it is the technology to make this process cheaper (the process is already possible and available to anyone - just stand on a corner and collect information).

      There is no big reason to fear this any more than there is reason to fear the fact that the phone company has a record of every phone call you've ever made. They have, undoubtedly, used that information internally in research projects to form network diagrams and could very well do the 6-degrees game if they felt so inclined.

      I can see how it might be profitable to know where I've been, and where and when I might not be at home/work/etc. This will certainly cause me to think more about personal security. But it won't shed light on any activities that I don't want people to know about.

      In small towns everyone knew about everyone else, and still kept quiet and were civil - within reason - because they all had to live together. I think this notion of "public privacy" where one should be able to go to the store without anyone knowing is a relatively new desire, and quite frankly many, if not most, fears of losing it are overblown.

      But think about the possibilities if this technology - I'll call this "public neutrality" where I, as an endpoint user of the public space am not restricted from what I can and cannot record and analyze.

      I've been thinking about this technology for some time. What I'd like to have is a HUD, this license plate reader, and an internet connection. Then we simply need to develop CML - car markup language.

      Above every car messages about that car from other drivers are displayed, not unlike photo tags.
      Litterer
      Doesn't signal
      Has gun
      Tailgater
      Cell phoner stoner
      Plain stupid
      etc.
      Then we can do the same with facial recognition systems.

      Use GPS, a 3 axis magnetometer, and a 3 axis accelerometer and you can mark up buildings and other physically stationary objects.

      Then - and this is the next cool bit - you build all this into a flashlight. But the flashlight is actually a miniature handheld projecter. You can actually shine it around without wearing a HUD and it'll paint the tags on whatever you're pointing at for everyone else to see. You could print the "loser" on someone's forehead.

      Of course, I've just described several patentable ideas. They are now public domain, assuming they have not yet been applied for. So go out and make them already!

      In the rare chance that someone needs to use this as prior art in 10-20 years, contact me at http://ubasics.com [ubasics.com]. If you want me to build them, contact me sooner.

      And if someone is curious about where my car is or has been for the last while, no need to spend thousands of dollars on cameras, just check out my tracking system [ubasics.com]. (please note that it is active only during testing periods. Go back a few thousand points and you'll find my trip to Georgia and Alabama. Let me know if you can determine which of my relatives I visited and how I'm related - that would be interesting detective work.)

      -Adam

  • Stalkers' Boon (Score:4, Insightful)

    by anagama (611277) <thepotter@yahoCOWo.com minus herbivore> on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:26PM (#15777166) Homepage
    And for stalkers out there, make it easy to establish a victims common route. I can't see how finding a stolen car here and there could possibly outweigh the negative implications of this technology.

    • And it gets worse. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by khasim (1285) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:34PM (#15777249)
      All it would take is for someone to start offering info on license plates for price. Buy a couple of these and just cruise around, collecting plates and GPS coordinates (with a date/time stamp).

      See a cute girl in a bar? Just get her plate number when she leaves. The cough up the cash and you can find where her car is normally seen. Like where she lives and where she works.

      You know, I'd rather take my chances that my car won't be recovered (most of them are stolen for "joy rides" anyway and the most of the rest are chopped) or that someone without insurance will crash into me.

      And yes, once the technology is available, SOMEONE will sell the info it gathers.
      • won't be made readily available to the general public

        Are you under the impression that something must be "made" readily available to the general public for it to be readily available to the general public?

        It's disturbing enough for it to be available to the general non-public.

      • Not the point (Score:5, Interesting)

        by A nonymous Coward (7548) * on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:36PM (#15777264)
        The point of TFA is that these are becoming cheap enough to allow ordinary people to set them up, not just the cops.

        I want this stuff made available to the general public. I don't want it to be the private data of the cops, or the politicians who control the cops. I want everybody to be able to snoop on those politicians just as they snoop on the people they want to control.
      • "I am guessing the data they record with these cameras won't be made readily available to the general public. The police arnt going to be release what cars drive by them every day."

        Yeah, but, what's to stop enterprising Joe Hacker, public citizen, from setting up IR cameras to scan for plates most anywhere...establish his own website to publish patterns..either freely or for sale.

  • Warning warning warning! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:26PM (#15777168)
    Your license plate number is currently being broadcast TO THE WORLD!

    Punch the monkey to find out how to protect yourself.

  • Neat trick (Score:5, Funny)

    by Junior J. Junior III (192702) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:27PM (#15777175) Homepage
    I had no idea LPR had such capabilities. Let's see HP JetDirect do this!

    Now if only someone can code an extension that will tell me where I left my car keys...

  • Public places are ... public (Score:3, Informative)

    by kwerle (39371) <kurt@CircleW.org> on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:29PM (#15777202) Homepage Journal
    As you (or the vehicle licensed to you) move though public places, your movements may be noted. That's all there is to it.

    Nothing to see here. Move along.
    • ...so you drive around with your name, SSN, home address, and phone number written on your car?
      • ...so you drive around with your name, SSN, home address, and phone number written on your car?

        No, but my vehicle happens to be registered to me. My driver's license lists my home address. My vehicle is also often parked at my home address (do the math). My telephone number is available in (reverse lookup as well) the yellow pages.

        But that has nothing to do with this technology. This just let's people capture your license plate. So what's your point?

    • As you (or the vehicle licensed to you) move though public places, your movements may be noted. That's all there is to it.

      And if there were someone hanging out in a public place, making notes of what vehicles he sees, that would be one thing. Someone would be sure to call the cops to report a "possible terrorist" who is casing the place.

      But with this technology, someone can record the plate numbers without his actions being noticed.

      And once you remove the possiblity of the surveillance being observed, you o

      • Up until now though, it wasn't possible to track you throughout the city with a device on your car.

        Sigh. A camera with OCR software isn't that big an idea. The notion that it wasn't possible is a little naiive - as is the idea that this is the first time it's happened.

        This is the first time it's been AVAILABLE to you and me for cheap.

        I'm sure you'd be quite annoyed if someone was following you around all day. This is no different. People may see I go to the grocery store, but I don't feel like anyone has
  • I see this moreso being used by places like McDonalds. They could track who buys what when going through the drive thru. Then they could see you ordering and using your past history target you on foods you've ordered before and may be more likely to order again.
    • And when McDonalds decides to sell my information to the local health clubs, i can get call/emails/letters asking if I enjoyed my Big Mac last Tuesday and did I know I can work off those calories at Bob's gym.

      I think if I found out a place was using it, I would drive right by.

  • This is damned good stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by A nonymous Coward (7548) * on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:32PM (#15777231)
    I love this kind of stuff. Right now, power to snoop is in the hands of the rich and powerful. If the mayor of Dallas gets a bug up his butt about a neighbor he doesn't like, or a competing politician bothers him enough, he has a lot more resources at his control than the neighbor or opponent. But when things like this become available to the average joe, there's will be a lot more people interested in where the mayor's car goes than the other way round.

    Same with public cameras. Once we get cameras all over the place, whether controlled by private citizens, or whether public cameras which everyone can see instead of just the cops, a lot more ordinary joes will be observing the rich and powerful than vice versa.

    The Colt revolver was the great equalizer of the 1800s, making the average person just as deadly as those who had the time to practice swordsmanship. Computer cameras like these license plate readers and public webcams will be the great equalizer of the 2000s. I relish the equalization of power these will bring.
    • The Colt revolver was the great equalizer of the 1800s, making the average person just as deadly as those who had the time to practice swordsmanship. Computer cameras like these license plate readers and public webcams will be the great equalizer of the 2000s. I relish the equalization of power these will bring.
      There's this voice nagging me in the back of my head about some "cold war"...
    • Sorry, but you're wrong. It will be illegal for the average citizen to track government officals like this. National security and all. Read Orwell to see what a survelance society is like.
    • >But when things like this become available to the average joe,
      >there's will be a lot more people interested in where the mayor's
      >car goes than the other way round.

      I'm sure the people in power will make sure that certain license plates are exempted from being displayed.

      Steve
    • The Colt revolver was the great equalizer of the 1800s, making the average person just as deadly as those who had the time to practice swordsmanship.


      "Fear no man, no matter what his size. Just call on me, in time of need, and I will equalize." - ~1870s ad for the Colt Peacemaker

  • Foot, meet bullet. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tackhead (54550) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:34PM (#15777250)
    > "Bucholz, who designed some of the first mobile license plate reading, or LPR, equipment, gave a presentation at the 2006 National Institute of Justice conference here last week laying out a vision of the future in which LPR does everything from helping insurance companies find missing cars to letting retail chains chart customer migrations. It could also let a nosy citizen with enough cash find out if the mayor is having an affair, he says."

    CFO: You dumbass! The mayor is the guy who signs the check! You just terrified our entire customer base!
    Bucholz: ...b-but I said "with enough cash". It's not like just any citizen could use i-
    CFO: NO! Remember your mantra. "Citizen is to sheep as Mayor is to farmer." Nothing more. Nothing less. Go now. Do not speak to me again until you've meditated upon your mantra for another week.

  • I must admit I didn't RTA, but couldn't this system be defeated by louvres? Particularly those made of tin foil?

    Or, if you don't want to get too technical, how about some dirt?
  • Five years ago, I was working for an insurance company. One of my more boring jobs was entering registration plates / number plates as they're called here, into a massive database that was to be shared among all the insurance companies, the police, and the government agencies. It contained the VIN (Vehicle Identity Number - engraved on the chassis and engine I believe), the number plate, make, model and colour.

    Not quite public information, but I remember doing a few searches on friends and relatives ca

  • Everything old is new again (Score:3, Interesting)

    by swid27 (869237) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:41PM (#15777316) Homepage
    Until very recently (5-7 years ago), companies in rural areas of the U.S. (well, in rural Nebraska, at least) would give away books that contained:
    • Two maps of the county: one showing the ownership of land parcels, the other showed residences (with the names of the current occupants)
    • A complete listing of license plates in that county.
    The license plate listing section of theses books went away because of privacy concerns. I guess that didn't last very long...

  • Captcha (Score:4, Funny)

    by bobthemuse (574400) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:41PM (#15777317)
    Sweet.... I wonder if I can have my plate # pressed similar to a captcha [wikipedia.org]. Let them scan all they want....

  • Or if.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Itninja (937614) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:44PM (#15777338) Homepage
    "The next step is connecting the technology to databases that will tell cops whether a sexual offender has failed to register in the state or is loitering too close to a school, or whether a driver has an outstanding warrant. It could also snag you if you're uninsured, if your license expired last week or even if your library books are overdue."

    ...or if members of your church started going to the local mosque. Or if your employees started shopping at the competition. Or if a pastor spent a little too time consoling the local widows....

  • Police Already Use Info Inappropriately (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheGreatDonkey (779189) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @12:46PM (#15777350)
    License plate information is already used inappropriately by police officers. This past weekend, 3 Boston Police officers were arrested on a string of charges. One of them includes, "In conversations with his associates, he was proud of his ability to spot easy marks for identity theft: He ran the license plate numbers of expensive cars he encountered in routine traffic stops through police systems to get to the owners' private information. With the help of a worker at a local bank, he picked off those with the best credit ratings." (Article found at http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/art icles/2006/07/22/pulidos_club_offered_sex_drugs_pr osecutors_say/ [boston.com]).

    I can't see this information becoming more easily accessible the least bit comforting or reassuring.

    • He ran the license plate numbers of expensive cars he encountered in routine traffic stops through police systems to get to the owners' private information. With the help of a worker at a local bank, he picked off those with the best credit ratings.

      Now wait a minute. There are two separate issues here.

      The police officer has every right to run cars' license plates through the police systems and pull up the owners' private information, including names, addresses, ages, and driving/criminal records. However, t

  • Tracking for Profit - Paparazzi Style (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PIPBoy3000 (619296) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @01:00PM (#15777466)
    I can't wait until someone sets up a bounty system for this. Essentially people would buy and mount one of these on their cars and drive around "interesting" areas. License plates would be tracked and sent to a central database with a GPS and time stamp. You could then purchase tracking information for certain license plates, with a portion of the proceeds going back to the original owner.

    Essentially you'd end up with "bounty hunters" cruising bad parts of town looking for stolen vehicles and the like. On the other end, you'd have people driving around L.A. and New York, trying to figure out which celebrity is staying and whose home for the night.

    Think of it as Little Brother.

  • Easy defeat? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hotspotbloc (767418) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @01:32PM (#15777734) Homepage Journal
    Couldn't you just set up a few IR LEDs around the plate (or one big one drilled into the center of the plate) to flood out the picture? I'm guessing these systems use a camera that normally records in the IR spectrum by default. It can't be that easy but ...

    • Re:Easy defeat? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Cheeze (12756) on Tuesday July 25 2006, @02:08PM (#15778138) Homepage
      they have this spray that you can buy that eliminates the reflective qualities of the plate, making your numbers/letters near invisible.

      there's another one that makes it all reflective, so a camera flash will be blinded out.
      • Hair spray can do the same thing. You also could run the plate through a quick etching dip. Unfortunataly most states have laws about altering plates. I suspect a couple of nasty IR LEDs attached near the regular license lights might be enough to mess up a camera without running afoul of the law.
      • I checked out the Manufacturer's website. They linked to several results of deployments on http://www.g2tactics.com/glavid.html [g2tactics.com]. On the first day of deployment, there were 8 "hits", one of which was a false positive since the vehicle was mistakenly in the NCIC database. This is a 12.5% defect rate, which is horrendous. Of course, larger samples are needed, but I can see a lot of unhappy motorists becuase of this.
          • That's one extra stop every time that particular car is scanned. I bet it's easier to get off the No-Fly list than it is to get a mistaken entry removed from the NCIC. Stories abound of people being arrested over and over on the same erroneous warrants. Isn't this going to be fun...
              • ...the enhanced system is no more prone to false positives than the system of calling in to dispatch ...

                I agree, it isn't, but now the Police can make mistakes at a much higher rate. As they say in IT, it has a "scaling problem". Now, put it in the hands of private citizens and corporations too, and there will be a lot of complications since their databases probably won't be any less error prone.

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