That sign telling you how fast you’re driving may be spying on you

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
The next time you drive past one of those road signs with a digital readout showing how fast you’re going, don’t simply assume it’s there to remind you not to speed. It may actually be capturing your license plate data.

According to recently released US federal contracting data, the Drug Enforcement Administration will be expanding the footprint of its nationwide surveillance network with the purchase of “multiple” trailer-mounted speed displays “to be retrofitted as mobile LPR [License Plate Reader] platforms.” The DEA is buying them from RU2 Systems Inc., a private Mesa, Arizona company. How much it’s spending on the signs has been redacted.

Two other, apparently related contracts, show that the DEA has hired a small machine shop in California, and another in Virginia, to conceal the readers within the signs. An RU2 representative said the company providing the LPR devices themselves is a Canadian firm called Genetec.

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Some LPR cameras can capture “contextual photos,” which include shots of the driver and passengers. Companies like Palantir Technologies, which was co-founded by controversial venture capitalist Peter Thiel in 2003, are incorporating facial recognition technology into license plate reader software; officers can access Vigilant’s “Intelligence-Led Policing Package” on their mobile phones.

Law professor Andrew Ferguson, a former public defender and author of 2017’s The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement, said the DEA “finds itself at the intersection of new technology scandals [accusations of secret, and possibly illegal, bulk data collection by the DEA have surfaced in recent years] because they maintain both domestic and international jurisdiction and thus can argue the need to use surveillance tools that would not be acceptable in purely local law enforcement.”



That sign telling you how fast you’re driving may be spying on you
 
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glhs837

Power with Control

So you are okay with the govt developing a huge database of innocent citizens movements for no other reason than "cause we can"? Now, were it available for a time, then all non-interest data gets purged, I'm okay, but I'm willing to bet this stuff jusst gets kept forever.
 

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
So you are okay with the govt developing a huge database of innocent citizens movements for no other reason than "cause we can"? Now, were it available for a time, then all non-interest data gets purged, I'm okay, but I'm willing to bet this stuff jusst gets kept forever.

I fail to appreciate the alarm. Red light cameras track you. Toll booths track you. It's a public roadway, who cares if Big Brother is watching?

Change my mind. Give me a scenario where A) the government would give a crap where I'm driving to; and B) why I should care if they know. Tell me why I'm so special that the government would want to track my movements, with 300+ million people in this country.
 

gemma_rae

Well-Known Member
A month ago I stopped at a red light and 'flash', the red light camera takes my picture! I know I was stopped, and the camera will clearly show it, so I make a U-turn and come back to the intersection again and 'flash'. I do this two more times and make faces at the camera each time to show them how stupid they are.

:razz:

Last week I got four tickets for failure to wear a seat belt.:burning:
 
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RoseRed

American Beauty
PREMO Member
A month ago I stopped at a red light and 'flash', the red light camera takes my picture! I know I was stopped, and the camera will clearly show it, so I make a U-turn and come back to the intersection again and 'flash'. I do this two more times and make faces at the camera each time to show them how stupid they are.

:razz:

Last week I got four tickets for failure to where a seat belt.:burning:

:lmao:
 

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
A month ago I stopped at a red light and 'flash', the red light camera takes my picture! I know I was stopped, and the camera will clearly show it, so I make a U-turn and come back to the intersection again and 'flash'. I do this two more times and make faces at the camera each time to show them how stupid they are.

:razz:

Last week I got four tickets for failure to wear a seat belt.:burning:

:roflmao:
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Change my mind. Give me a scenario where
A) the government would give a crap where I'm driving to; and
B) why I should care if they know. Tell me why I'm so special that the government would want to track my movements, with 300+ million people in this country.



not specifically TRACKING YOU .... but making a data base of where and when you were driving [or your vehicle] in a given place and time



YOUR RED Rav 4 was seen in the vicinity of a bank robbery where thieves were seen fleeing in a Red Rav 4
... Police have YOUR Plate because you drove past one of these signs around the time of the Robbery
... Suspects came and escape a different way with no LPS

3 am SWAT raids your house with a no knock warrant shooting your barking dog in the process
 

glhs837

Power with Control
I fail to appreciate the alarm. Red light cameras track you. Toll booths track you. It's a public roadway, who cares if Big Brother is watching?

Change my mind. Give me a scenario where A) the government would give a crap where I'm driving to; and B) why I should care if they know. Tell me why I'm so special that the government would want to track my movements, with 300+ million people in this country.

My issue is with the thought that govt needs to build a huge database of citizen movements who have not done anything to warrant being in a databse for no other reason than the govt wants a huge database. Govt tracking of persons should be restricted to citizens who have done something to draw the govts attention. Red light cameras, if done properly, only record information of those who break the law. Toll booth data should time out after a certain amount of time.

I'm okay with the notion that sometimes you need a wide net. But that net should have limitations. Unlimited tracking of non-interesting citizens "just in case" seems like a very STASI thing to do. And the more our govt looks like the STASI, the less they look like what our govt is supposed to look like. How far down that road do you do? Okay with your car reporting your movements to the NSA? How about your watch? Is it when the govt requires you to alwasy wear the watch, is that too far? Where do you draw the line?
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Where do you draw the line?



Hey I know, Mandatory DNA db for all citizens and persons entering the country or caught illegally within the borders ......


Oh wait I may be on board for the last 2 points
 

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
Hey I know, Mandatory DNA db for all citizens and persons entering the country or caught illegally within the borders ......


Oh wait I may be on board for the last 2 points

Are you kidding? People not only give their DNA willingly, they PAY to give it to someone.

What else ya got?
 

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
not specifically TRACKING YOU .... but making a data base of where and when you were driving [or your vehicle] in a given place and time



YOUR RED Rav 4 was seen in the vicinity of a bank robbery where thieves were seen fleeing in a Red Rav 4
... Police have YOUR Plate because you drove past one of these signs around the time of the Robbery
... Suspects came and escape a different way with no LPS

3 am SWAT raids your house with a no knock warrant shooting your barking dog in the process

Yeah, that's plausible.

:rolleyes:
 

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
My issue is with the thought that govt needs to build a huge database of citizen movements who have not done anything to warrant being in a databse for no other reason than the govt wants a huge database.

You're not talking about a "huge" database - you are talking about an impossibly astronomical database. There are roughly 62 million vehicles registered in the US. Do you honestly think the government can track the movement of every single one of them? The fed can't even build a health care website that won't crash, why would you think they could manage a database that large?

I'm going to guess any sign spying would be looking for specific cars with specific people driving them. They don't give a crap about me.
 

glhs837

Power with Control
You're not talking about a "huge" database - you are talking about an impossibly astronomical database. There are roughly 62 million vehicles registered in the US. Do you honestly think the government can track the movement of every single one of them? The fed can't even build a health care website that won't crash, why would you think they could manage a database that large?

I'm going to guess any sign spying would be looking for specific cars with specific people driving them. They don't give a crap about me.

You would be wrong....... another aspect of this that there are private compaines compiling this data then selling it to law enforcement.


https://gizmodo.com/ice-to-gain-access-to-nationwide-license-plate-database-1822446249

License plate readers are cameras linked to law enforcement databases. Essentially, they take a photo of a license plate, recording details like its location and when it was spotted, and upload that information to a database. Agents can then query the database to find the recent locations of a license plate or see if the owner has been flagged by law enforcement. ICE’s contract was finalized with Vigilant Solutions, which brags of a database containing more than 2 billion license plate photos.


As an ACLU report on license plate readers notes, the overwhelming majority of license plate photos taken are from innocent drivers who aren’t suspected of any crimes. A police department in Rhinebeck, NY registered 164,043 plates between April and June of 2011. Ultimately eight of these plates were on the “hot list.”

Note those numbers. three months, one towns police department recorded over 150,000 plates. And that was in 2011, when a good number of vehicles might not even get a good scan. The tech is much better now, it can catch both sides of a street, off angle, all sorts of conditions.
 

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
Meh. Still don't care. If I go on the run from Big Brother, I won't be driving the car registered to me with my personalized license plates.

There are bigger things to worry about in our little republic, I just can't get excited about this.
 

glhs837

Power with Control
Meh. Still don't care. If I go on the run from Big Brother, I won't be driving the car registered to me with my personalized license plates.

There are bigger things to worry about in our little republic, I just can't get excited about this.

Call it concerned rather than excited. It's a bad trend, I think. Like militarized cops, just a symptom.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Yeah, that's plausible.

:rolleyes:



Berwyn Heights Mayor police raid shot his dog ?

that was over a FedEx package full of drugs ... police get no knock raid warrants wrong ALL THE TIME .... license plate data bases only add another layer
 

glhs837

Power with Control
Yeah, that's plausible.

:rolleyes:

http://www.sfexaminer.com/city-set-to-approve-wrongful-arrest-suit/


$500K worth of plausible. Once the guns come out, all bets are off. All it takes is one Barney Fife moment, and you go home in a bag.

Police pulled her over on information that her car was stolen, but a police’s automatic license plate reader misidentified her car as a stolen vehicle through the mistake of one digit and officers never checked the plates of the Lexus before pulling her over. The plate number actually read by the camera belonged to a 1999 gray GMC truck, according to court documents.

Officer Alberto Esparza was driving the patrol car at the time with the license plate reader and was unable to make out the actual plate number but had dispatch confirm the plate number identified by the camera was in fact stolen.

Once pulled over by Sgt. Ja Han Kim, Green was treated as a high-risk felony culprit. She “saw numerous police officers with guns pointed at her, and an officer with a shotgun or assault rifle just to her left,” the court document said. She was handcuffed and forced to her knees. Green as well as her vehicle was searched. Ultimately, the police realized their mistake and released her, but not after more than 20 minutes had passed.
 
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