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Transportation Technology

Automatic License Plate Readers Are Making Getaway Cars Extinct (qz.com) 147

Posted by msmash from the off-you-go-away dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: On Tuesday, Sept. 10, the Total Choice Credit Union in Laplace, Louisiana was robbed. At approximately 3:06 pm, a man in his early thirties walked in wearing jeans, a white shirt, sunglasses, and a brown dreadlock wig, according to a now-unsealed complaint filed last month in US federal court. He passed a handwritten note to one of the tellers which read: "ROBBERY. I DON'T WANT TO (HURT) OR (KILL) YOU OR ANYONE IN HERE SO I AM GOING TO GIVE YOU (FIVE SECONDS) TO (EMPTY) YOUR (REGISTER)." The teller handed over more than $7,000 to the thief, who fled on foot. Investigators canvassed the area for nearby surveillance cameras that might have picked up any clues. They found one with footage of an "older model white single-cab pickup truck stopped in the area directly behind the bank," a minute or two before the robbery went down. That's when cops turned to a tool that has rendered the concept of a getaway car all but obsolete -- the national network of automated license plate readers. These are fixed cameras with sensors that can be found in on utility poles, streetlights, overpasses, in police cars, even within traffic cones and digital speed display signs that show drivers how fast they're going.

The technology, known as ALPR, can clock roughly 2,000 plates a minute, on vehicles traveling up to 120 mph. Each license plate is photographed and the date, time, and location are recorded. Law enforcement can access a target's movements in real time, or mine the data later to track a suspect's daily patterns. ALPR systems cast an incredibly wide net that has made it far easier for cops to catch criminals. The method has also drawn harsh criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and privacy advocates as "a technology deployed with too few rules," and "a form of mass surveillance." There are few accurate estimates of the exact number of ALPRs across the US, which is a hodgepodge of local, state, and federal and tribal license plate readers.
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Automatic License Plate Readers Are Making Getaway Cars Extinct More

Automatic License Plate Readers Are Making Getaway Cars Extinct

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  • Making getaway cars extinct? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Synonymous Cowered ( 6159202 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @08:17PM (#59281422)
    Stolen cars. Stolen plates. Lets see ALPR's deal with those. Getaway cars aren't extinct. They just need to evolve.

    • Re:Making getaway cars extinct? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by postbigbang ( 761081 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @08:21PM (#59281430)

      No, the entire infrastructure needs to get stuffed.

      I was on the way home from the movies, and got pulled over. I had transferred a plate from one car to the one I was driving a week before at the local motor vehicles branch.

      The guy came towards my window, 9mm out, and asked me to step out of the car. After a conversation showing the paperwork, he re-holstered his manhood and swore loudly walking back to his patrol car. Twenty minutes later, after verifying everything, he "let me go". Yes, he has an ALPR on his dash that sourced a database that hadn't been updated.

        Fuck that shit.

      • Re: Making getaway cars extinct? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by astrofurter ( 5464356 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @01:45AM (#59282244)

        "guy came towards my window, 9mm out"

        And cops wonder why decent upstanding citizens no longer respect the police. Because they act like gangster thugs, that's why.

        • I understand weapon identification. Because you believe that rapid weapon identification is related to being "gangsta thugs" you've both slimed and prejudged me. Fuck you, too, bro.

          Your hypocratic BS and privilege are showing.

        • How does saying the cop acted like a gangster thug slime you?? You're the one at whom he needlessly brandished his weapon. In fact I implied you are a decent upstanding citizen.

        • "guy came towards my window, 9mm out"

          And cops wonder why decent upstanding citizens no longer respect the police. Because they act like gangster thugs, that's why.

          Would you? I mean America, the nation which worships Jesus and the 9mm, would you approach a suspected stolen vehicle with a suspected criminal inside who more than likely owns a gun unarmed?

          The problem is not the police being thugs, it's that your entire society has made people act like thugs to each other.

        • And cops wonder why decent upstanding citizens no longer respect the police. Because they act like gangster thugs, that's why.

          Cops do it because plenty of "gangster thugs" have drawn and shot at cops on routine traffic stops.

          And remember, it's not like he made an illegal turn on red or failed to signal and he had weapon drawn on him for that. He was flagged as driving a stolen car, a crime with a higher likelihood for violence.

      • Yep because a database update wasn't done the entire system needs to be thrown out. In other news we should turn the internet off because of trolling.

    • What's the problem?

      Tracking and recovering stolen cars yet another benefit; check the cameras where the victim reports the thing stolen and you might even find your perp

      • No problem, it just goes to show that getaway cars have to evolve, and have evolved. Most common scenario over here: robbers steal a fast car (Audi RS6 are popular, so popular that one gang involved in ATM robberies was refered to as "the Audi gang"). They quickly use it as a getaway car (often before the owner even knows it is missing). The car is found burned out in an abandoned area (where there are no cameras). It is extremely rare for criminals to be traced through getaway cars.

    • Don't people just take an Uber to get away these days?

      • Re:Making getaway cars extinct? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @09:02PM (#59281538)

        Don't people just take an Uber to get away these days?

        If you really want to rob a bank, get a job there and do it from the inside.

        Even better, pick a softer target.

        If your crime requires you to point a gun at people, you are going to do hard time. Do you really want to risk 20 years in prison for $7000?

        • If your crime requires you to point a gun at people, you are going to do hard time. Do you really want to risk 20 years in prison for $7000?

          The article didn't say anything about him carrying a gun-- he just handed the teller a note.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Nehmo ( 757404 )

            If your crime requires you to point a gun at people, you are going to do hard time. Do you really want to risk 20 years in prison for $7000?

            The article didn't say anything about him carrying a gun-- he just handed the teller a note.

            I personally know a guy* who put his finger in a small brown paper bag and tried to rob a Safeway (food store) in Tucson. He was drunk, and they didn't feel threatened. The store employees chased him on foot until he fell.
            He ended up getting (what amounts to) 11 calendar years, which is lenient for armed robbery in Arizona, USA.
            It doesn't matter if you really have a gun or not. It's armed robbery.

            *He, actually, is a smart guy, and he would never hurt anybody. He was depressed and didn't care what happened t

          • You don't need to have a gun. it's the threat of violence which escalates the penalties for things like bank robbery far above robbing the same amount or more money via embezzling. One is just theft of property. The other is threatening to harm someone's health and well-being. So merely implying you have a means to cause bodily harm (e.g. passing a note which says "pack the bag full of money or else") is enough to give you a harsher sentence.

        • Do the math (Score:2, Informative)

          by alexo ( 9335 )

          Rob a bank, get prison time.
          Own a bank, rob the people, get... a bailout?

    • Exactly, a getaway car typically has many license plates to switch from in its trunk to defeat that. The article is silly. I don't remember where, but I have even seen a concept, implemented or not, where the plate holder was a rotary 3D triangle which would allow you to switch from 3 plates number while driving.

  • tl;dr (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eaglesrule ( 4607947 ) <eaglesrule.pm@me> on Monday October 07, 2019 @08:23PM (#59281438)

    Relax, citizen. Sacrificing privacy is for your own good. We promise.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by wes33 ( 698200 )

      relax citizen, there is no need to show us your papers

      • relax citizen, there is no need to show us your papers

        ... because we're just going to shoot your ass and then go laugh about it over beers.

        • ... because we're just going to shoot your ass and then go laugh about it over beers.

          That's why there's bodycams and dash cameras. There is absolutely nothing wrong with those.

    • Yeah well no one has really shown the negative impacts of such a system. It's why it's hard to sell the idea of privacy, all the complaints sound like anti-government conspiracies.

      • Yeah well no one has really shown the negative impacts of such a system. It's why it's hard to sell the idea of privacy, all the complaints sound like anti-government conspiracies.

        Then even when there are actual precedents of parallel construction thanks to mass surveillance, the beat goes on.

        Failure to learn from history seems to be a great challenge even in the 'information age'.

  • APLRs are making privacy extinct (Score:5, Insightful)

    by l2718 ( 514756 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @08:35PM (#59281482)

    Yes, you can catch a few more criminals by total surveillance. But in return you violate everyone else's privacy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by N1AK ( 864906 )
      Not an issue when the kind of people who support this think there is no everyone else, we're all criminals even if we don't know it yet.

    • But in return you violate everyone else's privacy.

      And the cows go on believing that's a bug, not a feature.

      The ranchers know better.

    • And it somehow does not violate your privacy if someone who just happens to recognize you observes your exit from the bank as you run away with a bag of cash?

      If you are in public then you can expect to be seen.

      There is no expectation that someone should be able to go out in public and not be recognized.

      Putting a car around yourself shouldn't change that. Heck, from every cop show, we know that one of the first questions asked at a crime scene will be "Did you get the license plate number?"

      This

  • Stolen cars (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xkenny13 ( 309849 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @08:43PM (#59281500) Homepage

    So does this mean the cops will actually help me find my stolen car, considering they know exactly where it is/was/went?

    • /bugs bunny picture: "No".

    • Of course not. There is a strict policy that all this new totalitarian technology is ONLY to be used against decent citizens, never to help them.

    • So does this mean the cops will actually help me find my stolen car, considering they know exactly where it is/was/went?

      It didn't actually help catch my stolen car, even when I got notices in the mail that my stolen car drove back and forth across the bridges in the area, each time dinging my Fastrak account because the license plate readers identified it.

  • will have to match.
    Who is that going to be a problem for?
    Criminals and illegal migrants.
    Your ID to drive, license plate and face is going to have to be accepted to drive legally.
  • Soon will be the day where having a license plate that fails to register with ALPR will be probable cause to pull you over.

  • Let's make a public ALPR network. (Score:3)

    by jaa101 ( 627731 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @10:15PM (#59281800)

    Let's make a network of privately owned ALPR cameras set up in people's houses and businesses and even cars. In no time at all we could be monitoring where our politicians and public officials are going. Because information wants to be free. How long do you think it would take for these to be banned ... for everyone except the government.

    Inevitably the cost of the hardware needed to do this is going to come steeply down. The camera part is already dirt cheap but I suspect enough computer vision capability is still pricey. As for software, a quick search found that OpenALPR already exists. Just publish all the data you find on a web page with something like "ALPR" in the page title and let Google index it for everyone.

    • The camera part is already dirt cheap but I suspect enough computer vision capability is still pricey.

      Is $99 [seeedstudio.com] cheap enough for you? That's probably overkill. You could actually train the neural net on that board, not just run it. According to comparative benchmarks [github.com] it can run some image recognition neural nets at better than 25 fps.

  • .....you too can have access for the princely sum of $1,500 a month. For real!
    You just have to know which company to ask.

  • They've released smoked license plate covers. They've released spraypaint that causes glare to confuse speed cameras. Next step is an e-ink license plate that can change its ID at will.

    Criminals will always adapt. It's the legal citizens that need to worry about this level of surveillance technology.

      • The plate can be changed automatically—but not to switch out your license number like you’re a spy racing across international borders—to update the displayed registration data and (theoretically if the State of California approves) display advertisements or other data when the car is stopped.

        Leela: "Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?"
        Fry: "Well sure, but not on our cars' license plates! Only on TV and radio...and in magazines...and movies. And at ball games, on buses, and milk carto

  • We don't have much in the way of surveillance, but thieves are still smart enough to steal license plates from a similar model of car, and then use it one off, and exchange it for another fake plate shortly after the crime - why don't they do this in the US? I learned this, as I have had a few of my plates nicked and used for various activities...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re "why don't they do this in the US?"
      The amount of realtime detail any city/state police can collect is kind of tricky.
      Drive into a city and the city collects on the face, plate (back/front), passengers face, any smartphone thats on..
      Federally a well placed camera set can match the face to the plate to a smartphone that powered on.
      The trick been nobody wants to talk about that much and mention that "side" of an investigation in an open court..
      Better to follow the person and wait for a "crime" protecti

  • Who use their own cars to commit crimes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hipp5 ( 1635263 )

      Who use their own cars to commit crimes.

      The point is not that they can link the car to the database at the DMV and later go knock on the door of the owner. The point is that they can track the car to see where it goes. The network is big enough that the license plate will keep getting flagged as it gets spotted along its route. Doesn't matter if the plate is stolen or if the robber is using their own car; they're using it to track where the car goes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      Hawkins First Law: criminals are stupid. If they had what we fancy "average intelligence", we'd be3 in big trouble . . .

      hawk

  • ...enters the getaway pogo stick!

  • Why? (Score:2)

    by Bert64 ( 520050 )

    The technology, known as ALPR, can clock roughly 2,000 plates a minute, on vehicles traveling up to 120 mph.

    So getaway drivers need to drive faster than 120mph, which i would imagine is not uncommon when someone is trying to flee from the police.

    On the other hand, if you're going to commit a robbery why wouldn't you also use a stolen car and/or stolen plates? The cameras can track the vehicles, but they can't track the fact you've ditched one car and moved to another one, nor can they track the fact you've changed the plates... If the police are relying on the trace of a particular license plate, it's quite easy

  • I've seen the movies (Score:3)

    by Martin S. ( 98249 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @07:48AM (#59282846) Journal

    Bank Robbers drive the getaway car a short distance to a quite area and switch to a clean car or change the false plates.

    Seriously is this sort of Bank Robbery still a thing in the US? Armed bank robbery has largely disappeared in the UK. There are easier ways that get lower sentences like using stolen teleporters or diggers to snatch ATM machines from remote locations.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-... [bbc.co.uk]

  • Unfortunately anything that can transmit from your car can be captured and logged.
    Changing plates is just a visual thing.

    Your phone. Leave at home.
    Your fitness watch etc check.
    Change tags check.
    Cut wires to entertainment system check.
    Cut wires to onstar check.

    You forget https://www.schneier.com/blog/... [schneier.com] to kill TPMS in each wheel?
    Opps

  • Here's the link to the referenced article since it wasn't included in the summary:

    https://qz.com/1722215/technology-is-making-getaway-cars-extinct/

  • Soon there will be subscription services for the data. Then the Private Eye can call it up to see where you have been. Maybe the soon to be Ex-wife will want to know where you have been sleeping. Or the Ex-Husband will want to find his kids. Maybe there will be some crimes along your shortcut home, you will get to explain why you were in that part of town. Or the burglers will want to know when you are far from your home. Gotta pay for those cameras somehow.
  • Take a picture of your bosses license plate and print it out. Then rent a car of the same color and model. Tape the "plate" on. Go run red lights! Print lots of copies of his plate and tape them onto every car like his that you see. Or do it with your own plate and let them try to find you.

  • I actually have an ALPR system (Score:4, Informative)

    by timholman ( 71886 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @01:46PM (#59284398)

    Full disclosure: I installed an ALPR system at my house more than a year ago, after someone did a hit-and-run on my parked car to the tune of $4500 before driving off. About 9,000 cars a week pass by my house, and I run the professional version of OpenALPR on a Dell box with Ubuntu installed, and with the OpenALPR agent running on an Nvidia graphics card. My LPR cameras are Dahua 12X zoom varifocal cameras with exposure settings optimized for license plate capture.

    Since installing my system, I've provided plate numbers and photographs for several vehicles involved in hit-and-runs on my neighbors' vehicles, which they were extremely grateful to receive. I've also assisted the police in the recovery of two stolen cars that were being used by serial burglars hitting cars and houses in my neighborhood, along with the arrest of one of those burglars. It's been a very useful system.

    So a few observations based on my experience with OpenALPR:

    (1) The license plate recognition is quite good, but not perfect. I would estimate >95% accuracy, as dirt, bike racks, trailers, etc. may block part of a plate. But I never rely on the system itself for identification. If necessary, I pull the video footage and verify the plate number by eye, stepping through it frame by frame.

    (2) OpenALPR alerts are extremely fast. If a car in my alert list were to pass by my house, I'd get a text message within a few seconds.

    (3) Vehicle identification is iffy at best. Under good daytime lighting conditions, it is perhaps 70% to 80% accurate. In the dark, it is useless, as exposure settings must be optimized for plate capture, and the car is invisible except for headlights / taillights. Vehicle ID can also be confused if there are two or more vehicles in the image. As for vehicle color, unless it is daylight, you can't rely on OpenALPR to get it right.

    (4) The issues with vehicle identification and color could be alleviated (somewhat) with an additional camera with different exposure settings, but the problem of false positives remains. Having said that, I know from my interactions with the police that they always confirm plate number / vehicle make / model / color before pulling over a vehicle. That is standard procedure, regardless of whatever information I have provided them.

    In reading the comments on this thread, I see lots of "Oh, a smart criminal could do x, y, or z, so LPR is useless." By that logic, we should abandon locks, safes, and alarms, since they don't stop smart burglars. Sure, a true professional criminal can (with enough time and resources) outwit any system. But most criminals are rank amateurs (drunk drivers, gang members, bored teenagers, drug addicts, etc.). They aren't going to be driving a stolen car with a rolling license plate like in some James Bond movie. They aren't even going to bother swapping plates with another car. They just don't think that way.

    In my city, most auto thefts are crimes of opportunity by petty criminals. We have a lot of problems with teenage gang members stealing cars, then driving them around for a week or two to commit crimes before abandoning the vehicles to steal another. I have advocated for the installation of more ALPR cameras do identify and track stolen cars so that they could be recovered within a matter of hours rather than days. Find the car, and usually you also find stolen guns and drugs with the occupants, plus you stop them from committing more crimes (at least until the juvenile justice system lets them walk again).

    Most petty criminals don't bother swapping plates. They are looking to get some quick cash, or score more drugs, or steal something to buy drugs. Just last month, the ALPR system in a city north of me caught several people driving stolen cars, with tags intact. So an ALPR system does work, as I can confirm from personal experience. It's not perfect, but a network of ALPR cameras would have a significant impact on the recovery of stolen cars if implemented in my city. Plus there's the issue of drunk drivers and hit-and-run drivers who could be located, rather than leaving their victims to pay for their crimes.

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