If you have an automatic toll transponder (ez-pasz, etc.), those things are read very frequently even when you're not going through a toll meter. There's info on this online.
TPMS sensors also transmit a serial number. I wouldn't put it past the NSA to have sensors embedded in certain roads to track that.
And of course, dragnet automatic license plate scanning / tracking is already ubiquitous and there's really not anything you can do about it. Use a bicycle instead, I guess...
> The cops could absolutely track it. License plate readers are built into most cop cars and parking enforcement vehicles, they could call the carmaker, they could view cctv from the area, whatever.
Maybe where you live that's true. Try going somewhere in upstate NY, or deep in West Virginia. The tracking technology is unevenly distributed.
I don't think oversight policies are nearly enough. The intrusion into your privacy is scary enough, even without marrying it to state-sanctioned violence. And automated license plate reading is quite possible with consumer electronics, which means that the only reason why things aren't getting tracked is that it's not profitable to track it yet.
Get rid of license plates. They can also be used by private parties to track car movements. They aren't safe anymore in this time and age. Once someone builds a proof of concept of a real time car tracker using crowd sourced license plate trackers, we'll realize that.
maybe not, but those technologies are spreading everywhere... including license plate readers at every corners... which is why Steve Jobs didn't have one on his car... But he could have been tracked some other ways... with the wireless sensors in his tires for example (and most cars communicate wirelessly with the manufacturer)
I don't think it was foreseen when license plates were created the harmful use case of having a cop at every street corner with photographic memory and accurate speed measuring abilities who occasionally notes cars down for speeding / running a red light and who is networked with every other cop all working together reporting on such-and-such car now at position x,y while a team at HQ is constantly updating large maps with tacks showing the last known location of car x,y. Agree that the modern tech equivalent of the above has already been happening to various extents. Indeed we're fast approaching a time when we'll have enough sensors-of-all-sorts penetration to be able to track the whereabouts of anything of interest worldwide -- the underlying geospatial tech to make that scale already exists.
Your comment is obvious flack with a motive. You are forum sliding.
Your comment neglects the following all-too-obvious points:
1. Video surveillance of an embossed number on a black tire is difficult.
2. Parked cars remain vulnerable to passive tracking.
3. 300 milliseconds for a reading is not a long time.
4. Range/distance can be compensated for with wattage.
5. Proximity can be compensated for with many more sensors.
6. Unlimited budgets can cure all your counter-points.
7. A focused effort on an individual can operate invisibly with this.
8. These details transcend license plates and VIN numbers.
9. We know that for points A & B, the metadata relating them, is valuable.
10. Traveling from point A to point B, regardless of what
happens in transit, is more often the sought-after data.
Rather than worry about this little tracking peculiarity, my mind wanders to a future where the govt is smart/capable/evil enough to be connecting all the cameras in buildings, cars, etc. into one place that constantly monitors for license plates and is able to tell:
-- anyone who has been driving around with a car registered in another state but hasn't relocated it to that state within a month (avoiding taxes -- CA I'm looking at you)
-- backtracking where someone who committed a crime came from, and has gone
I work in the public safety domain. You don’t even need a tracker on vehicles. There are several camera startups in this space, such as Flock Safety, which can scan for plates and particular vehicle descriptions and alert law enforcement. These devices are more common than you think. Agencies can also enter data sharing agreements. I work on the consuming end of data from systems like this.
Seems like this was de-bunked reading the comments [1], the system would have to be incredibly huge considering the RFID tag inside the tire is only a few inches (so it is not generating a very far field - the 20 feet seems incredibly far for such a small tag).
On top of that it would be far easier to just track the giant visible license plate since we already have that technology available.
The destroying with a camera flash is legit (not because of the flash but because of what seems to be caused by capacitors in the device - light reading on this so I may not be correct) however many users point out why read that when there are much easier ways to track a vehicle where-a-bouts.
Interesting and disturbing however much more complex then just OCR!
License plates have seen such an enormous mission creep, starting out by enforcing safety inspections and liability for car accidents and finding stolen cars, and continuing down to letting the public and private sectors routinely track motorists' whereabouts.
When license plates were introduced, the technology to make them more privacy-protective didn't exist. Today, it might, but it would be expensive to switch and challenging to get police to give up monitoring powers they've become accustomed to.
Or you could pull a stunt where you monitor a road a set up a website where people can check the license plates of all who have passed and at what time.
Would probably only move us closer to having having private surveillance banned, while the real problems continue.
It's a done deal: everywhere your car with a license plate goes is and will be tracked, and stored forever.
It's already happening, it is already cheap, and there's no way to stop it short of a massive swell of public support for enacting laws to limit it -- in the USA, that seems very unlikely.
What I think is important to extrapolate from this stuff is that everything we can do with license plate recognition now will soon be doable with facial recognition.
Tracking everywhere your car has been and storing the record forever is one thing. It's very hard to imagine that tracking everywhere your face has been isn't the next step.
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