License Plate Readers Are Creating a US-Wide Database of More Than Just Cars (wired.com) 109
Wired reports on "AI-powered cameras mounted on cars and trucks, initially designed to capture license plates, but which are now photographing political lawn signs outside private homes, individuals wearing T-shirts with text, and vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers — all while recordi00ng the precise locations of these observations..."
The detailed photographs all surfaced in search results produced by the systems of DRN Data, a license-plate-recognition (LPR) company owned by Motorola Solutions. The LPR system can be used by private investigators, repossession agents, and insurance companies; a related Motorola business, called Vigilant, gives cops access to the same LPR data. However, files shared with WIRED by artist Julia Weist, who is documenting restricted datasets as part of her work, show how those with access to the LPR system can search for common phrases or names, such as those of politicians, and be served with photographs where the search term is present, even if it is not displayed on license plates... Beyond highlighting the far-reaching nature of LPR technology, which has collected billions of images of license plates, the research also shows how people's personal political views and their homes can be recorded into vast databases that can be queried.
"It really reveals the extent to which surveillance is happening on a mass scale in the quiet streets of America," says Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. "That surveillance is not limited just to license plates, but also to a lot of other potentially very revealing information about people."
DRN, in a statement issued to WIRED, said it complies with "all applicable laws and regulations...." Over more than a decade, DRN has amassed more than 15 billion "vehicle sightings" across the United States, and it claims in its marketing materials that it amasses more than 250 million sightings per month. Images in DRN's commercial database are shared with police using its Vigilant system, but images captured by law enforcement are not shared back into the wider database. The system is partly fueled by DRN "affiliates" who install cameras in their vehicles, such as repossession trucks, and capture license plates as they drive around. Each vehicle can have up to four cameras attached to it, capturing images in all angles. These affiliates earn monthly bonuses and can also receive free cameras and search credits...
"License plate recognition (LPR) technology supports public safety and community services, from helping to find abducted children and stolen vehicles to automating toll collection and lowering insurance premiums by mitigating insurance fraud," Jeremiah Wheeler, the president of DRN, says in a statement... Wheeler did not respond to WIRED's questions about whether there are limits on what can be searched in license plate databases, why images of homes with lawn signs but no vehicles in sight appeared in search results, or if filters are used to reduce such images.
Privacy experts shared their reactions with Wired
The detailed photographs all surfaced in search results produced by the systems of DRN Data, a license-plate-recognition (LPR) company owned by Motorola Solutions. The LPR system can be used by private investigators, repossession agents, and insurance companies; a related Motorola business, called Vigilant, gives cops access to the same LPR data. However, files shared with WIRED by artist Julia Weist, who is documenting restricted datasets as part of her work, show how those with access to the LPR system can search for common phrases or names, such as those of politicians, and be served with photographs where the search term is present, even if it is not displayed on license plates... Beyond highlighting the far-reaching nature of LPR technology, which has collected billions of images of license plates, the research also shows how people's personal political views and their homes can be recorded into vast databases that can be queried.
"It really reveals the extent to which surveillance is happening on a mass scale in the quiet streets of America," says Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. "That surveillance is not limited just to license plates, but also to a lot of other potentially very revealing information about people."
DRN, in a statement issued to WIRED, said it complies with "all applicable laws and regulations...." Over more than a decade, DRN has amassed more than 15 billion "vehicle sightings" across the United States, and it claims in its marketing materials that it amasses more than 250 million sightings per month. Images in DRN's commercial database are shared with police using its Vigilant system, but images captured by law enforcement are not shared back into the wider database. The system is partly fueled by DRN "affiliates" who install cameras in their vehicles, such as repossession trucks, and capture license plates as they drive around. Each vehicle can have up to four cameras attached to it, capturing images in all angles. These affiliates earn monthly bonuses and can also receive free cameras and search credits...
"License plate recognition (LPR) technology supports public safety and community services, from helping to find abducted children and stolen vehicles to automating toll collection and lowering insurance premiums by mitigating insurance fraud," Jeremiah Wheeler, the president of DRN, says in a statement... Wheeler did not respond to WIRED's questions about whether there are limits on what can be searched in license plate databases, why images of homes with lawn signs but no vehicles in sight appeared in search results, or if filters are used to reduce such images.
Privacy experts shared their reactions with Wired
- "Perhaps [people] want to express themselves in their communities, to their neighbors, but they don't necessarily want to be logged into a nationwide database that's accessible to police authorities." — Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union
- "When government or private companies promote license plate readers, they make it sound like the technology is only looking for lawbreakers or people suspected of stealing a car or involved in an amber alert, but that's just not how the technology works. The technology collects everyone's data and stores that data often for immense periods of time." — Dave Maass, an EFF director of investigations
- "The way that the country is set up was to protect citizens from government overreach, but there's not a lot put in place to protect us from private actors who are engaged in business meant to make money." — Nicole McConlogue, associate law professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law (who has researched license-plate-surveillance systems)
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
Precisely (Score:5, Insightful)
"The way that the country is set up was to protect citizens from government overreach, but there's not a lot put in place to protect us from private actors who are engaged in business meant to make money." — Nicole McConlogue, associate law professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law (who has researched license-plate-surveillance systems)
My exact argument the last time this came up.
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Yep. The slipper slope that could turn us into England. We are a nation of people's indoctrinated on the premise that only criminals are arrested, even if that statement out loud seems absurd to us. The average citizen of the US learns the way the world works in small pieces through television drama and will double, even triple down that its all true if that belief is tested.
Until they get caught up in it, in which case, welcome to the inside.
helping find abducted children,reproductive rights (Score:5, Informative)
Be skeptical of the 'benefits' of this type of technology especially when it claims to be 'find abducted children', 'find senior citizens who drove off and got lost', 'find stolen cars' and other appeals.
Wired showing its politics
1) "In data she shared with WIRED, a search for “Planned Parenthood,” for instance, returned stickers on cars, on bumpers, and in windows, both for and against the reproductive health services organization."
2) the search tools could be misused when there is increasing political violence and divisiveness in society.
3) While not linked to license plate data, one law enforcement official in Ohio recently said people should “write down” the addresses of people who display yard signs supporting Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, exemplifying how a searchable database of citizens’ political affiliations could be abused.
4) From the prolicense plate reader company - “License plate recognition (LPR) technology supports public safety and community services, from helping to find abducted children and stolen vehicles to automating toll collection and lowering insurance premiums by mitigating insurance fraud,” Jeremiah Wheeler, the president of DRN
5) CCTV cameras are being equipped with AI to monitor people’s movements and even detect their emotions.
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UK Post Office - Fujitsu Horizon Scandal -
An example of technology being wrong and over 1000 persons put on trial, and 900 convicted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Horizon, an accounting software system developed by Fujitsu. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 subpostmasters were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting based on faulty Horizon data, with about 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Other subpostmasters were prosecuted but not convicted, forced to cover shortfalls caused by Horizon with their own money, or had their contracts terminated."
#5 finding people supporting candidate X (Score:3)
Simply,
1) there is a federal database of anyone who donated to a presidential campaign, congressional campaign, senate campaign, etc.
2) the voting database has a record of which party primary you voted in (identify your party) and when you voted in what elections.
From those two identifying which party a person's house leans towards and how active the person is in politics, etc.....
Wanna know what's really scary? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yep. The slipper slope that could turn us into England. We are a nation of people's indoctrinated on the premise that only criminals are arrested, even if that statement out loud seems absurd to us. The average citizen of the US learns the way the world works in small pieces through television drama and will double, even triple down that its all true if that belief is tested.
Until they get caught up in it, in which case, welcome to the inside.
Erm... I'm from England and have no idea what you're on about.
English people believe in the rule of law and trust the fairness of it's justice system because a lot of measures are taken, and taken very seriously, to prevent miscarriages of justice from occuring. No system is perfect but issues are usually found fairly quickly, when they aren't it's fairly big news over here (See: the post office scandal).
Our perception of the US courts are the opposite and closer to what you describe. Blind faith in t
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Re: Precisely (Score:2)
Every citizen is part of the government and shares the responsibility. It just happens that there are a few elected to execute the will of the people.
If you see it that way then every citizen falls under the constitution, not only the elected officials and government employees.
The way that the anti-abortion movement acts is similar to how Stasi acted in East Germany where every citizen spied on each other.
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We don't have direct democracy, we have representative democracy. The government is the party with the largest majority. The other representatives in parliament are not in the government. At least that's how it works here.
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Now a days, when someone says democracy, they mean representative democracy.
In a Westminster Parliamentary system, it's more accurate to say which ever party has the confidence of Parliament or Legislature forms government. Usually the one with a majority but here a couple of elections ago the party with the largest number of seats had the Throne Speech voted down and the 2nd place party with support from the 3rd place party formed government. The election happening here in a couple of weeks may well see in
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Now a days, when someone says democracy, they mean representative democracy.
Exactly, there are zero countries run by direct democracy, but there's always some chud saying "We DoN't HaVe a dEmOcRacy!!!"
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However they differ, the US and UK systems are not exactly good examples of democracy.
B.t.w, the country where I live the government is controlled by the elected parliament.
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I'm not sure what you mean: in the UK, the government is part of the elected parliament. The biggest problems I see are the first-past-the-post electoral system and excessive executive powers in the legislative leader (prime minister), but those are different issues to what you describe.
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To be fair, it's not doing great against the "government overreach" thing either.
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"The way that the country is set up was to protect citizens from government overreach, but there's not a lot put in place to protect us from private actors who are engaged in business meant to make money." — Nicole McConlogue, associate law professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law (who has researched license-plate-surveillance systems)
My exact argument the last time this came up.
Goes hand-in-hand with most people's thoughts on health insurance. We don't want government death panels, because we're perfectly happy having profit-driven death panels at insurance companies. Trust the great and glorious corporations! They have all our best interests at heart!
Remind me (Score:5, Insightful)
Remind me again, the USA has free speech and the right to association. The East German Stassi would be jealous of this spy-ware.
This is the same as demanding 'good' guys have back-doors to communication systems. While the obvious flaw is, bad guys can open doors too. The dangerous flaw is, the government uses the equipment to commit crimes.
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The East German Stassi would be jealous of this spy-ware.
Yes, they would. Technology has always been an arms race. The Stassi would be jealous of much of our current technology, from smartphones to USB sticks to SD cards.
All technology can be used both for good, and for evil. Thankfully, we do not have a law enforcement system that abuses people like the East Germans did. Instead, we have a steadily declining crime rate (with the exception of a spike that came with the pandemic). As a result of widespread adoption of body cameras, police who break the law are *le
Re:Remind me (Score:4, Informative)
Thankfully, we do not have a law enforcement system that abuses people
Not for lack of trying: https://theportager.com/reside... [theportager.com]
Note that he later said he was "maybe misinterpreted."
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It's true, you will always be able to find cases where some police officer or department acts inappropriately. But this is not the norm. If you think the US police department is corrupt, it's only because you haven't experienced living in a place where *every* officer is on the take, or has a political agenda. This is not that kind of place.
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New York police shooting people [cnn.com] for your safety.
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I don't deny that abuse occurs. It's not possible for any government to be completely free of abuse. But in relative terms, the US police system stands out. If you try to bribe a police officer, you are far more likely to be arrested, than get off Scott free. That alone makes it superior to many police departments around the world. By contrast, the US police force is pretty squeaky clean.
Re: Remind me (Score:1)
We also donâ(TM)t have the socialist government of East Germany. At this point the corporations have access to some data which someone would need to abuse, you then also need the government in place. There is no way to stop someone from recording stuff in public, there is a way to reduce government intrusion in our life. Right now all this seems to have been enabled by government overreach by mandating personalized license plates and the sole purpose of the license plate is to fine you for breaking non
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The answer to all of that is, yes, as long as its not the government and nobody is on your private property. Certain types of imaging such as the ones that go through walls would be more difficult as they require microwaves or other forms of radiation to be beamed onto or interfered with on your property, which would be an encroachment.
Re: Remind me (Score:1)
There has been no right of association in the US since the 1950s. I am caffeine deficient at the moment. Am I misreading, is that supposed to be sarcastic?
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There is a freedom of association specified in the 1st and 14th amendment. It exists only if the US government hasn't black-listed such associations. That is, the US government can criminalize groups and associations. Examples are outlawing the Communist Party and laws burdening worker's associations, AKA unions. So no, it is not a right. Of course, the war on terror did much damage to the freedom of association, returning the country to a 'red'-under-the-bed mentality. Once Bush Jr left office, the p
Re: Remind me (Score:1)
I was more or less considering Shelley v. Kraemer.
Bumper stickers (Score:5, Interesting)
Always wait to put on the bumper stickers until after the election.
Re:Bumper stickers (Score:5, Funny)
How does that old Soviet joke go?
"A man exclaimed, 'The leader is an idiot!' and was overheard by the secret police. As they took him into custody, the man protested that he had been talking about the OLD leader, not the current one. To which the cops replied, 'You can't fool us. WE know who the idiot is.'"
Re: Bumper stickers (Score:5, Funny)
A variation was that he was arrested for revealing a state secret.
Only if Pro-Abortion (Score:2)
"AI-powered cameras mounted on cars and trucks, initially designed to capture license plates, but which are now photographing political lawn signs outside private homes, individuals wearing T-shirts with text, and vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers — all while recordi00ng the precise locations of these observations..."
The real question is how the AI manages to filter out pro-life stickers before recordi00ng--or even photographing--them.
Computer Vision 101 Homework Assignment (Score:3, Interesting)
why images of homes with lawn signs but no vehicles in sight appeared in search results
That's an easy question. Their computer vision algorithms are simply looking for text within rectangles.
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True. However, I think the more implied question is why don't the regulations require that their algorithms can only look for and store information that is only from license plates and their attached vehicle? They could easily set up the algorithms to only detect the specific rectangles and layouts of each various state's license plates. Would probably save them quite a bit of storage space. Following that, why don't the regulations then require everything outside of what is definitely a license plate on a
Re: Computer Vision 101 Homework Assignment (Score:1)
Why regulate them at all? Just remove the problem (the license plate and government regulation) and the problem disappears.
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Maybe 20 years ago getting rid of lcense plates would've been a big help, but nowadays it would only be a short term help.
There was a study like a decade ago using a 10 year ago regular computer and cell phone camera. They took off the UV/IR filters off of some of the cameras. But they were able to quickly and accurately fingerprint cars. Eben if they look to human eyes as clean and identical, they aren't. The UV/IR can see the random differences in paint application and wear on the vehicle. Combining t
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So then the whole kerfuffle about license plate readers is moot. Just reduce government regulation to the point they can't afford the damn cameras.
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Reducing regulations doesn't mean a reduction in budgets.
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You need a reason for your budget, if you have less laws to enforce, you don't need a large budget, every law enacted needs a budget, they are tied together.
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Regulations aren't laws. And while, yes, additional regulations require additional budget to enforce, budgets almost never go back down just because a regulation is no longer being enforced. Just quit while you are ahead, because your logic doesn't work.
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Feel free to violate your local regulations and refuse to remediate them, you will find that eventually you will end up in jail as men with guns come to take you away. So they are laws as violation results in state sponsored violence.
As far as the budget, I am aware of the ratchet effect, but that is not an excuse not to remove some of the regulation. When regulation and enforcement and opportunity cost goes down, the economy goes up as regulation is just a hidden tax, which counter to your argument gives m
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No. It just creates new and different problems.
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Such as, others already pointed out you don't need them for crime fighting as you can fingerprint cars without them. You only need them for red light cameras and parking tickets and other taxes, which is my original point.
There is no need to fund the government to the point they can afford these databases.
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The real problem isn't the government having access to these databases. The problem is that businesses have access to these databases. License plates are important for more than red light cameras, parking tickets, taxes, etc. And without regulations the businesses would just be even more egregious.
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Why would anyone expect privacy for actions done in public?
Why would anyone expect the average American to have a lick of sense?
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If I put a political sign in my yard, I'm pretty sure I want people to see it, and I'm not afraid of people associating me with the political message.
But this isn't your front yard. In general, if I see a car, I don't know who owns it, so one can promote a cause with a bumper sticker, while remaining anonymous. Or rather, I could.
Re: Political Yard Signs (Score:3)
I tried to keep this non-political, but this obsessive fear of the government collecting publicly-available data is a bit excessive.
If I post a political sign in my yard, it's not a mystery who lives there - neighbors know me, the state (city/state/federal) knows I live in the house, as do the utility companies, my ISP, credit cards/banks, and countless others with my address. my front yard is not anonymous.
If I place a bumper sticker on my car, I have a small degree of anonymity, but honestly because I'm r
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I find it interesting that people want to simultaneously proudly show their support of a politician or political position by putting up a yard sign, putting a bumper sticker on their car, or walk around in public wearing a t-shirt YET they don't want anyone to be able to recall their proud support of those politicians/positions - it makes me question their real level of support.
You need to brush up on your history: the US has a proud history of anonymous pamphlets.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
[paywall-free: https://wapo.st/3BzJwKB [wapo.st] ]
https://oll.libertyfund.org/pe... [libertyfund.org]
Re: Political Yard Signs (Score:1)
And you can still pamphlet anonymously. We are talking here about people that go out of their way to show support for a cause, your neighbors already know that you like butt sex by you putting up the rainbow sign, so what is the problem that a camera then recorded it?
It is your first amendment right, the protections for the bill of right is the first amendment and further protections in order of importance are the second and subsequent amendments.
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The real issue, I think is that this "obsessive fear" started around the time one political candidate in particular starting ranting and raving about "punishing" - sic'ing the federal legal system - on anyone who seemed to oppose him. Jailing former officials after the next election.
Basically, in many people's mind, promising to create a new organization of Brown Shirts to terrorize his "opponents".
How can anyone NOT be alarmed by this? Basically weaponizing the First Amendment in order to target the very
Re:Political Yard Signs (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but do you want it in a long-term database that could, for example, then even impact your kid's kids (which may have totally different political views than you) when they apply for a job in 40 years? I doubt that. Refer to what the Nazis did in identifying Jews and other undesirables. Only this time all the nice databases needed to decide who to murder are all pre-prepared, and the whole thing is orders of magnitude easier.
Re:Political Yard Signs (Score:5, Insightful)
The lawn sign data will be used for advanced gerrymandering, guaranteed.
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Very likely. And that is the most benign use.
Re: Political Yard Signs (Score:2)
Really, Nazis?
Do you really think anyone cares about 4 decade old positions your parents held? To what end? That's like saying "your father had a Carter For President sticker on his car, so you can't work here". It's an asinine argument/example.
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You seem to be really stupid. Obviously I am talking about identification techniques and selection approaches used back then that could easily be used again. I am not talking about political positions. But that idea is probably too difficult for you.
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Thank you - you summarized the source of my misgivings before I had consciously identified it.
BTW, for everyone else who's jumping on the "no expectation of privacy in public spaces" bandwagon, please keep in mind that any given "public space" used to be pretty effectively limited by direct foot-and-vehicular traffic. Now, the entire world is visible from everybody's easy chair, and what constitutes "public awareness" and "public access" have grown by a few orders of magnitude.
This huge increase in the scop
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You are welcome.
And yes, "no expectation of privacy in public spaces" is quite a bit different from everybody getting identified, everything recorded and classified and stored forever. Unfortunately, many people are too stupid to understand details and context matter very much and too uneducated to know the precedents.
Re: Political Yard Signs (Score:2)
Refer to what the Nazis did in identifying Jews and other undesirables. Only this time all the nice databases
This is silly, don't blame databases.
The problem with Nazis is the fucking Nazis, not anyones lack of foresight to hide every facet of their life for the past umpteen years just in case murderous assholes come into power. Your immediate concern is to not let them rise to power then gtfo when they do, not to fuss about being on any possible shit list.
Avoiding any datapoint about your life being in some database is something to do AFTER fascist assholes take over your country and you're stuck there, but good
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No. The problem with the Nazis is that people like that can be found in every society and many raise to the top. Listened to some things Trump recently said? The distance to actually start killing people from that is not very large. Also remember that these Nazis bought IT equipment form IBM to make their killing more efficient and IBM had no problems whatsoever selling to them.
Hence preparing a nice database will all the stuff you need to target whoever you want to target is exactly what some people want.
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I'd like to see a project to pollute this data (Score:3)
A national database of license plate numbers whose assignees want them printed on T-shirts, yard signs, bumper stickers, so they appear all over the country.
We have the opportunity to largely destroy the usefulness of this data through concerted mass action. If it's not a government-owned project, and the numbers aren't actually license plates, what prevents people from displaying numbers all over the country to get sucked into these readers?
One could even foresee an e-ink display on cars that would display new state and random number images every n recognition seconds as we drive around...
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For this kind of thing to work, you'd have to get people to buy into this concept on a large scale.
Most of us actually *want* police to be able to use plate scanners to find criminals. We certainly don't want to diminish their ability to do this!
So good luck with your plan. I'm not in.
Re:I'd like to see a project to pollute this data (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not convinced that "most of us" want warrantless surveillance of all of our movements, unconstitutional by other means.
This is an extralegal form of surveillance, and it deserves to be destroyed. We have constitutional protections for good reason, and the cops/FBI/office of the POTUS shouldn't get to ignore them just because they can afford to buy the info from private business.
It's not like those organizations have typically been beyond reporach.
Re:I'd like to see a project to pollute this data (Score:5, Interesting)
The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that warrants are not required for surveillance that happens *in public." https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com] Privacy is only an expectation...in private places.
Re: I'd like to see a project to pollute this data (Score:2)
But there's a key difference between surveiling A residence with A camera for A suspected criminal activity, and surveiling ALL of us EVERYWHERE, ALL the time, for NO particular suspected criminal activity.
Warrants don't even apply here because the aggregation of data is being done by businesses.
So if government will not protect us from mass surveillance (since they're using "other means" to avoid constitutional questions), I suggest "other means" of blotting this out: intentionally polluting the data.
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I don't see how your "difference" poses a problem.
My house has a doorbell camera, as do many of my neighbors. If an incident were to happen in our neighborhood, most of us would gladly turn over to police whatever footage we happened to get, upon request, no warrant needed. We cooperate with the police because we believe they are primarily there to help keep the peace.
This in no way infringes on anyone's constitutional rights. If you come near or in my house, YOU do not have an expectation of privacy, but *
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You should look into the founding of this nation, and the drafting of the 4th amendment.
Your cooperation on an individual doorbell camera - and even that of your neighbors - is different from an ability for a government off the rails - think perhaps of Nixon and his "Enemies List" being able to troll through the movements of thousands of citizens, for no other reason than that the President doesn't like them.
The amassing of this data can't be easily erased. While the request from police one doorbell-cam at
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Since you mention the founding fathers...the 4th amendment specifically prohibits unreasonable "search and seizure." The concept of "privacy" was derived from this in later court cases. The thing the founding fathers envisioned was much more physical. They did *not* envision people being able to go about their lives without being watched.
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The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I'd argue that "particularly describing" makes the difference between your camera on a pole and dragnet search of the entire populace.
That said, I have other things to do this week
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"Particularly describing" is one of three requirements for a warrant, authorizing search and seizure. Warrants must (according to your quote):
1. Be based on "probable cause"
2. Be supported by oath or affirmation
3. Particularly describe the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This phrase does not in any way mean that it is somehow restricting police from "particularly describing" something, it is literally a requirement for a warrant to be considered valid.
Re: I'd like to see a project to pollute this data (Score:2)
It merely automates what police officers have been able to do manually since license plates were first required on automobiles.
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Except that you'd need special police officers that did nothing but write down license plates all day, all night, at every moment.
There are too many plates collected at too many locations for this to be "what police officers do manually".
How is it that there's not the same outrage as at the government collecting massive databases of your phone calls, emails, envelope scans, etc.?
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I don't much care if the police catch criminals. They're probably not going to get much punishment anyway. They're certainly not likely to get the punishment they deserve. So why bother?
Bunper Stickers (Score:1)
Yet it doesnâ(TM)t detect anti-abortion, bumper stickers? How curious!
We're fucked (Score:3)
We need a law banning the use of data more than 10 years old for any purpose other than non violent felony crime. A metadata or log purging law may be a good idea too. No company should be allowed to retain metadata logs, without properly anonymizing it, more than 10 years old. That doesn't mean a website like Facebook or slashdot has to delete 10 year old comments, but they should delete who accessed something or what IP address was used to make the comment. Basically log file deletion. Also, any activity more than 10 years old should not be usable to persecute anyone UNLESS it's for a violent felony or theft of more than say a $50k or something like that. So if my neighbor caught me on camera smoking weed or something I don't want that shit used against me when I'm running for county dog catcher 5 years from now.
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*non violent felony crime prosecution.
Re: We're fucked (Score:2)
To be purged if exonerated or penalty served.
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Why? Because there is always going to be some info broker (incorporated or not) who claims that the data used was only 9 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds old at the time, and thus completely legal for them to have by one second. Also, they can simply change the timestamp on the data to make it compliant. (It is their database after all.)
The government putting a "it's legal only up to a certain date" requiremen
Re: (Score:2)
Why?
What is the purpose of deleting 10 year old metadata?
That would do *nothing* about the the photo of you smoking weed.
Nor should it.
Re: (Score:2)
GDPR (Score:3)
The rest of the world have been saying this for a long time, America need a law like GDPR, but no, Americans won't let anything get in the way of for-profit companies making more profits.
Re: GDPR (Score:2)
All the GDPR did is force companies to disclose IR they are doing shady stuff that is against the interest of users. The idealistic hope was that it would deter companies from doing shady stuff. The actual effect was, sadly, companies throwing temper tantrums in an attempt to reverse the laws so they could do their shady stuff in secret again.
The GDPR isn't telling these sites to display annoying cookie warnings. The sites WANT to make them as annoying as possible for
Re: (Score:2)
Would this behavior be illegal everywhere the GDPR questions would become superfluous.
The usual and fully expected mission creep... (Score:5, Informative)
That is why you want to stop the surveillance-fascists early on, i.e. when they still pretend this is about protecting children or some other lie that sounds good.
And it continues .. (Score:2)
don't (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Even the license data is too much (Score:4, Insightful)
A trove of license plate data from vehicles that had nothing to do with crimes still contains data of people doing embarrassing things. The judge visiting his mistress, the anti-abortion politician whose daughter's license plate is spotted at Planned Parenthood. Each of these could potentially be blackmailed, perhaps by low-level criminals, but but also by state-level actors like China, creating a silent army of compromised individuals working from within to twist things to China's will. And we all know how well companies protect data.
recordi00ng (Score:1)
Time to close Google Street View? (Score:2)
Genies and bottles (Score:3)
Even children have internet connected video camera in their pockets ... and have for quite a few years now. And just how long ago was Google Maps snapping pics of your lawn sign?
I'm not saying that it is good, just saying that it is the case.
Maybe just not persecuting people for their beliefs and speech might be a more accessible point to attack this from.
I like how wired frames this... (Score:2)
...as an "only one side" problem.
"...vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers..." because of course this tech couldn't and wouldn't ever be used to surveil things like anti-abortion, religious, or Gadsden flag stickers, right?
Let's be clear: the companies doing this will sell this data to anyone. And long before Cambridge Analytica was cancelled for daring to help the Great Orange Satan, the Obama-Biden campaign was lauded for its cutting-edge, internet based analytics determining political lean
That's why my bumper sticker (Score:2)
says 456EBK3'); DROP TABLE LicensePlates;--
Fixed it (Score:1)