I feel as if ALPRs are already a fact of life. Not thrilled about it, but that’s sort of what license plates are for (ALPRs are really just automated cop eyeballs).
The most disturbing thing, is the behavior of the company. It’s pretty clear that they have a separate contract with the feds, and that contract is the one they care about more.
It’s also an illustration of the faustian bargain that customers make, when establishing these types of contracts. That goes for regular customers, like consumers of social media, SaaS, or data storage apps; not just municipalities, running ALPRs and redlight cameras. It’s like a roach motel; your data checks in, but doesn’t check out. Camel’s nose, and all that.
Basically, all of SV’s business, is about gathering data. That’s why my solitaire apps keep trying to get me to sign onto public challenges and leaderboards.
As lots of folks here have indicated, this behavior will only be changed, by truly holding corporations and corporate directors (and maybe also shareholders) accountable. That’s pretty difficult, in practice. I guess it shouldn’t be easy, as we’d have endless frivolous litigation, but it shouldn’t be impossible, either.
Licesne plates were never intended to be recorded all the time to create a data set of who went where when.
They were so that in the non-standard case where something other than "business as usual" has happened an owner could be identified.
I don’t think that’s the current desired use either. (What they were intended for 120 years ago, doesn’t seem super important though). Setting aside the concerns that dominate all political discussion today on this topic amongst the 31% of voters who voted for Harris (that’s turnout * popular vote), these things are used every day to solve actual crimes. For instance, recently in my state, some dude murdered a woman and then hopped in his car and was caught because of an ALPR about an hour and a half away from the scene of the crime. When the police cornered him, he fired on them repeatedly. If it was not for ALPRs that guy would probably still be on the loose.
Having these keep data for a very short amount of time is a reasonable idea. I don’t think most reasonable people, including law-enforcement really thinks it would be ideal to build a permanent database of everywhere everybody goes. If anyone is convinced that is what they want, I encourage you to try speaking to someone outside your own political party instead of only operating in a social media echo chamber because I think you’ll be surprised how much real people don’t have cartoon villain ambitions.
> Having these keep data for a very short amount of time is a reasonable idea.
I agree that this is more reasonable than the status quo (although I’d still prefer no cameras at all). Now show me the politicians who are willing to limit ALPR data retention by law on the federal level. As far as I know it hasn’t even been proposed, nor will it be, until some kind of major public scandal emerges. I’d rather not wait until major harm is done.
The federal government has an unfortunate habit of illegally harassing the disfavored group du jour (which rotates about once a decade). State and local governments are often worse, with personal grudges getting into the mix. I’d rather not provide tools to make the harassment even more effective! At some point you begin to enable new “official” crime with the tools you use to stop typical criminals. And the impact of state-level crimes can be much larger and more widespread.
> I think you’ll be surprised how much real people don’t have cartoon villain ambitions.
Most don’t, but some do, and unfortunately they are attracted to power like moths to a flame. Not that everyone in government is a bad guy, but many are when given means and motive.
Edit: edited to specify data retention at the federal level, actually I was surprised to see that a few states do limit data retention.
You're right, of course, but the real issue is the lack of corporate accountability, and data stewardship. Since HN has a lot of folks that really don't want people talking about corporate accountability, the discussions are pretty much guaranteed to devolve into macguffins.
Case in point: notice how fast this discussion will dive off the front page. Happens quite frequently, when the topic is one that makes certain folks uncomfortable.
Because having the .gov build and maintain the lists would be so much better?
The problem isn't that "evil capitalists are doing the thing" it's that anyone is doing the thing.
I can’t help but notice that we’re still not talking about corporate accountability.
These are a lot more than ALPRs. Look into them more / see my other comment in this thread.
I’m sure you’re correct, but I was talking about enforcing corporate accountability, a lot more than anything else.
I think there is probably a core difference between recording the position of any plate which is wanted pertaining to a crime and recording the position of every plate. I have zero issue with Flock finding suspect plates, but the fact some journalists were able to get logs of where their cars were indicates it is far more overbroad of collection than an automated cop's eyeballs.
In my city of 55,000, Flock's transparency portal states that they've had 330,000 vehicle captures in the last 30 days.
From being a previous employee of Flock I know that each of those captures has some location and timestamp data.
Yes, but most of my comment was about corporate accountability, which no one wants to talk about.
Flock is so much more than an ALPR, that'd be one thing. They recognize vehicles based on all the metadata you'd expect, color, etc. But they also look at vehicle panels that are a different color, collision damage, bumper stickers and window decals, roof racks, tow hitches, wheels and rims to identify a vehicle.
And then they'll happily run their AI over that knowledge and based on their prompt, if the vehicle is "behaving suspiciously", then they'll ping law enforcement directly and proactively.
It is utterly Minority Report-lite.
I was led to believe that alerts are based on matching cars on a hot list. Is alerting based on behavior an advertised feature?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44860000