this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 133 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The real dystopian nightmare is the one where everyone conforms and acts neutral out of fear. That’s how we really lose who we are and any sense of improving the situation.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

There are other ways to resist, esp in the days of the internet.

Modern tech permits state actors to obtain real life information about your where abouts. This tech now appears to be percolating to street police. There is a lot of abuse already happening but we are several big cases away before the daddy sam tryied to reign this shit in, if ever.

Point being got to be careful when dealing with the state or other quasi state insinuations as such corporation. Remember when Chevron got a lawyer with some bullshit criminal conviction with a private prosecutors as retaliation about his work on case against them in LatAm?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You could just copy others signed codes, so you would also need some sort of totp system.
Then you could still place some camera capturing and streaming plates of parked cars in real time, so you'd either need 2 way communication with the license plates, where the cameraa tell them to show a code for some specific nonce, and which you could then potentially still stream so would also need severe latency checks, or you would have to get way more reliable gps and make that part of the totp.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago
  • plate number is tied to a VIN which describes the make/model. (sir, this is a ~~wendys~~ toyota. where is the honda?)

  • replies not required from the plate - plate has a specialized qrcode printed across the entire plate (infrared reflector?) with an identifier (lic + other public info?) and signed with an RSA keypair - reader can authenticate the information and a qrcode read counts as a verifiably good read

  • ...or just ship RFID tags in the yearly inspection stickers - same cryptographic concept

none of this is hard or costly. only impediment is public rejection and we all know that can be managed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

We’re probably decades away from them countering with anything meaningful like that unless large swaths of people start doing it.

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wow this article goes into the nuance. And it terrified me.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago

a big thank you for your comment. comments like these really do help me to not skip worthwhile articles.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I’ve never wanted to post signs in my yard or put stickers on my bumpers because I didn’t want PEOPLE judging me. And people are judgmental. Now I’m glad I had that opinion because we have to worry about computers logging us so we can be judged in the future for whatever weird reason someone comes up with?

What happened to freedoms in America? It’s easy for a government to strip them after the people stop believing in them being important. Corporations are making free thought and self expression unimportant and dangerous and the gov’t will have no choice but to curb our freedoms in response. And we will cheer it on. I hate this shit.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

We got attacked and then in fear gave away our freedoms for the promise of more protections. There were people blowing the whistle each time but we ignored them. Patriot Act. Lobbying to not consider social platforms news aggregates. Lobbying to not pay news outlets, Lobbying to weaken anti-trust laws. Lobbying to kill legislation protecting children online. Lobbying against legislation to protect user privacy. Lobbying for the use of tech like facial recognition.

This kind of thing has been happening for ages.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago (2 children)

This is old news from a decade ago, before the US public was aware how the police had long been fabricating probable cause (and gunning down Americans by the hundreds) and SCOTUS had been carving out exceptions to the fourth and fifth amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

Then Trump won in 2016 and we saw what it looked like under mask-off tyranny. And now we're one election away from one-party autocracy.

The police state is here. It always was. 🌍👨‍🚀🧑‍🚀🔫

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago (1 children)

But a digital gun database is unconstitutional?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Only for the government. The workaround for mass warrantless surveillance is to contract a private company. Since you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public, it's not illegal to take a picture of your car as it drives by. You could do the same thing, just go outside your local police station and take pictures of the cars and write down the license plates and times they go by. Nobody will bother you because it's perfectly legal and the police obviously won't care that you're doing it because it's not illegal and they will thank you for making them feel safer.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 month ago (1 children)

this kind of thing is why I do not advertise my politics at all. no bumper stickers or yard signs or campaign t shirts. im even registered without a party so you can't look up my affiliation. and I don't talk politics on the internet because nothing is truly anonymous. if someone wants to come after you they will be able to find you with enough effort.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

Sounds like you're not loyal enough to The Party. If you were a good citizen, you wouldn't have anything to hide. Throw him in the gulag!

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 month ago (2 children)

This is and has been a big deal for a while. Do we really want easily trackable movements on every major road? What happens when they start feeding that data into federal fusion centers for cataloging and storage "just in case" they need it later?

What happens when a regime that criminalizes dissent has access to realtime vehicular and individual (via mobile phone) tracking data?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

They already do this to flag potential traffickers. I’m not sure what we want has anything to do with what happens.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Time for a bobby drop table sticker

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

QR code sticker-bomb

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Mount an e-ink display with a rotating slideshow of different images on your car until they have a record of your car having thousands of different bumper stickers.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago

I wish we could elect people we trust

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

there's a town nearby with dispensaries that have some amazing deals. there also happen to be three red light cams and two license plate readers the have been reported to give their information to out of state agencies and ICE on the two other stoplights in town. You can't convince me that's not some kind of honeypot.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They literally scan your ID when you buy green in my state. They already know who you are and where you live. The cameras are to keep people honest (intimidated).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean in addition to all that even if they didn't scan your id of you pay with anything but cash then the credit card company or bank knows and can be made to give up that info pretty easily.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Not a single cannabis store that I know of in the US accepts credit card. They're all cash only because the banks don't want any part of it. (Technically it's still federally illegal, and they don't want to get in trouble as national business)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I have seen many run it as an ATM transaction rounded to the nearest dollar and refund the change in cash. I saw this in two states.

Having said that. I love cash only businesses. Visa and the other CC companies have way too much power. We should all go back to cash tomorrow, but we won't.

I ran a business, not weed related, that was cash only for the better part of 5 years. When I started taking cards I made sure cash and bitcoin were also options. The only downside was going to the bank every week to grab stacks of small bills for change. The upside was never having to deal with credit cards and every payment settling instantly when the cash changed hands. Under $100, cash is king.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

Ah yes, the freedom of owning a car.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah that's pretty dystopian. Something worse hasn't been done with it probably just because many bad actors haven't been aware its an option.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Drive around with a permanent bike rack in the way of your tail plate. No front plates.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Some states require front plates.

Blocking a plate with a bike rack isn’t a bad idea, except - a) the rack will wear your paint, b) any automated toll collection based on license plate reading will also be blocked. Probably NBD once in while, but if someone regularly skips tolls and is caught it’s gonna hurt. They just had a toll-skipper sting near me where they caught a crapton of people who regularly skipped tolls with license plate blockers and temp tags. They lost their cars instantly, a few got slapped with 6-figure fines and fees, and I imagine jail time might be on the menu for some.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hmm. I have a bumper sticker that says "I ❤️ Nuclear War". I wonder what bucket that puts me in.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

The non credible defense bucket.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

With enough readers ... Your location and minute by minute tracking of your every movement

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Or just the phone in your car or on your person.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (8 children)

I’m looking for some adversarial material - numbers and letters at various angles that I can stick to the left and right of my license plate. To a human it will be obvious which part is my license plate but it might be sufficient to confuse an ALPR algorithm.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (6 children)

The readers are smart enough to distinguish between them, so it won't actually do what you want. You could try to flood the plate with IR and cover the plate with clear-to-human IR reflecting cover. Might work. Might not.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago
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