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
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.
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.
