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It is the government that wants these companies to do this, so they can get access to the data!

> The entire purpose of license plate readers is to assist law enforcement

It was the repossession companies that deployed them first. The police, as a general rule, are about 10 years behind on technology almost everywhere, so when new stuff drops, it's actually profit driven industries that deploy it.

Our company cut deals with several large business in the area, like malls, and we deployed the cameras at the entrances to their lots. If a car on the "hot list" pulled in, we'd get an alert, then dispatch a truck to go collect the vehicle.

You can't realistically ban cameras and character recognition software.

oops I meant Chinese Wall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall

> What's a Chinese firewall?

"The Great Firewall (GFW; simplified Chinese: 防火长城; traditional Chinese: 防火長城; pinyin: Fánghuǒ Chángchéng) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically" [1].

(I don't think they mean a Chinese wall [2].)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall#Alternative_terms

The Swiss are, if anything, worse. They passed a mass surveillance law, it was challenged at referendum, and upheld with 70% of the vote:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/25/switzerland-vo...

I’ll throw you an olive branch and say the registration sticker is completely pointless. The source of truth for whether my car is registered is in a database, not on a sticker. Someone can steal your sticker which results in a false positive for the thief and a false negative (and huge headache) for the victim.

They will find something else to track you by. I think the idea of no expectation of privacy in public doesn't work anymore with the available tech.

Your plate is displayed because driving is a privilege, not a right (note that traveling is a right, but you can travel without driving).

So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.

It's like having a wrist band to an event. You're not required to attend the event, but if you do attend it, you're required to wear the wrist band.

You properly could identify cars uniquely by the sound they make. If not now then soon.

Having worked with the result of prior generations (circa 2010) of algorithms for that sort of thing in the radar spectrum (I was not privy to the actual algorithms that underpinned it all) I suspect accuracy drops off exponentially once you get away from text based stuff and flagrant body differences (missing mirror, aftermarket spoiler, etc).

Note that Flock has incorrectly identified several vehicles as "suspects" to police during investigations.

Flock has two obligations. Sell equipment to police. Avoid freaking the public out.

Their statements are almost certainly not reliable.

Absolutely they can. Vehicle panel colors, wheel rims, roofrack, tow hitch, bumper stickers, damage all factor into their vehicle fingerprinting.

And once they've got a real license plate for the vehicle, all the historical information for that vehicle fingerprint's activities are now linked.

That isn't how it works anymore, as far as I know (it used to). The dealerships now can print paper license plates with numbers on them.

You can tell when it isn't a normal person buying a new car when it is your neighbor's car you see for multiple years with those "temporary" tags. I catch a lot of out of date registration too. Usually those cars are parked off street but sometimes not. I usually see about two dozen on my walks. Easy to tell at a glance when you recognize what color tag is now very stale.

Sometimes, yes, but some groups of people just run with temporary tags for a very long time and roll the dice.

Well, it directly leads to registration fees and insurance rates being higher than they would normally with everyone paying in properly. There's also air quality concerns with people not going for smog checks. So people not playing that game are getting hurt by the people who do.

Having laws that only some people follow, and others do not without penalty, bothers everyone's natural sense of fairness and eventually rots the whole concept of following laws.

Except current immigration enforcement. Ignoring that is enough to have citizenship denied. Just happened to a friend of mine in Houston. Culture is to ignore, courts ignore, police don’t see it. USCIS do.

This is the purview of the FBI. The NSA is focused on the rest of the world.

Is there overlap? Sure. But the amount of disinformation on the website about the FBI vs the NSA is comical. If anything, when people say “NSA” they really mean “CIA” and just don’t understand the difference.

Or withholding money (grants).

They'll also need it to track down terrorists. And who determines who is a terrorist? Why, the department of justice does.

Exactly. It is not that they are not already spying on all of us; they are. Or that they cannot already nail you for something. It is that they need a way to launder their evidence so that it is kosher come prosecution.

Helping solve kidnapping cases is a direct and straightforward application of vehicle intelligence data.

Yes, I think it's worth tolerating and I think all queries should be logged and monitored for abuse. Kidnapping already is not legal to do.

I equate these license plates with terrible money management skills. $900 for a license plate: "a fool and his money are soon parted" regardless of what income bracket they're in

Nah, I was thinking a raw eInk panel. Not one controlled by the state. One that can flip the numbers for 2 seconds, while driving past the surveillance cameras but be back on my real license plate number immediately just in case there are any cops watching. Hell, I could even run recognition against the rear dash cam, so that it overrides a flip if there are recognizable cop cars within view. Could be fun.