I don't know if you could ever collect this data and never have foreign entities or NSA moles infiltrate into it by sending their agents to work at that company and steal the data whenever they want. But I can see how this would be good at fighting crime but also a completely and absolute destruction of privacy.
We need politicians that actually care about Americans and their rights but no one who cares is dumb enough to want to go into politics, which is the sad thing.
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.
Personally I don't have a huge problem with 1A being broad enough to including recording literally everything in public and meticulously cataloging and following everyone, but only if the rest of the amendments are read in the same broad and literal manner. Meaning I can own nukes, I don't have to display a plate, the 10th amendment would stop the feds from outlawing intrastate weed, etc. What it looks like what happens is the feds cherry pick interpretations of the bill of rights to trump up their powers and then give the least charitable interpretations to the plebs.
"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
technically we have one, the Fourth Amendment, but SCOTUS defanged it completely, years ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/25/switzerland-vo...
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.
So what people are really reacting to is the government using technical means to change the terms of that social contract without our input.
Same thing with Flock. People do the whole civic engagement thing and cities still sign contracts anyways.
A lot of people wouldn’t even be opposed if the whole thing was on a ballot measure. It becomes a problem when the government decides they no longer need consent of the governed.
Also,
> So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.
You paid for a bit of the infrastructure being driven on just by being a tax payer.
US is certainly not known for it's public transportation and walkable cities.
Yet you can have a license without owning a car. They don't issue you a plate to use. So the plate is clearly for something else, mainly I think, to indicate that you've paid the appropriate registration fees on the vehicle. The plates are tied to a vehicle to prevent the obvious "plate swapping" attack that people would use against this regime.
> roof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure
Actually those are gas and sales taxes, are they not?
> you're required to wear the wrist band.
The wrist band need not have a unique identifier readable from several feet away emblazoned on it in order to function.
But the 4th amendment is a right, that applies even when engaging in a "privilege." See also the fact police can't just willy nilly check your driver license while engaging in a "privilege."
>So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.
False.
Plates are required even on my own privately owned publicly accessible road, and a large portion of my trips happen on publicly available but 100% privately owned roads with 0 taxes to maintain them (in fact, I maintain a lot of the roads in my community myself because they are all private). In fact some of those roads, I 100% own and maintain, and yet since I legally can't bar anyone from driving on it the law in my state (AZ) requires a displayed plate (even for me).
>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.
It's like citing me for not having a wrist band on my own owned road easement, which is the law in my state. There is no property right you are attempting to assert under which that makes sense. I can go about 90% of the way to "town" on privately owned roads in which none of the owners care if I have a "wrist band" yet the state can still cite me for not having it.
It doesn’t matter whether the road in front of my house is owned by the federal government, state, county, city, or Bob, I and everyone else is allowed to drive on it, so it’s a public road.
Police can still use them to identify the vehicle, and verify registration, but mass surveillance and repo companies can't use them to track vehicles for more than a day OR to identify vehicles.
And then of course all the texas plates. No, it isn't just visitors from texas. Texas has a cool loophole where there is no registration information on the plate, it is on a little sticker on the dashboard. As such, there are a dozen plus cars that have been regulars in my neighborhood for years with texas plates, with some several years old sticker on their dashboard.
It is kind of surprising that they don't get hit with a huge ticket for failing to register their car after 20 days. Some even park on the street quite brazenly. But maybe that shows how these systems are, today at least, very poorly connected between states. I've even seen a car being sold locally where the owner openly admits it was never registered or smogged, and they used it as their local neighborhood runabout just rolling the dice that they would not get pulled over. Just an aspect of the driving culture.
Flock has two obligations. Sell equipment to police. Avoid freaking the public out.
Their statements are almost certainly not reliable.
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.
In California, isn't this just a normal person buying a new car? If bought from a dealership lot, a new car will run on temporary paper plates for several weeks until the permanent registration and new plate is processed. You see this all the time in CA, because CA buys a lot of new cars. There are even circumstances a used car will roll of the dealer lot with paper plates pending processing.
It used to be easy to search for terms like “tires” and find what were clearly counterfeiting rings.
Although, this does get enforced in some places, at least. I remember on Parking Wars, PPA ticketed or maybe impounded a car that had an out of state expired registration.
This sets off my spidey senses in the same way that "social contract", "law abiding citizen" and other turns of phrase like that do.
>Having laws that only some people follow
It's not like these people are all part of the system and protected from consequences. They're just saying fuggit consequences be damned. Be happy that some have the balls to tell the system to shove it. You can choose to be one of them any time you want.
Regardless, the cops harass the shit out of people who "look sketchy" because your bullshit license plate or whatever pretext is what gets you the foot in the door to the felony BS.
The only solution I see is to stop massive data collection no matter who does it. This is probably not going to happen so we will most likely end up with a surveillance society much worse than what "1984" described. And some day an authoritarian will use the data to its full extent.
From a taxpayer perspective, it's such a waste to have multiple agencies doing their own unconstitutional surveillance. Why have two Ministries of Love when one would do? :)
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.
In the same way that the CIA doesn't sell cocaine.
I'm sure they "mostly" focus externally but that doesn't mean they're not still doing a hell of a lot domestically.
The FBI is the boogeyman everyone around these parts wants the NSA to be. The NSA has the skillset, they just don't use it like that, domestically.
That was my point. Carry on. I don't mind if you agree or not.
That seems like a statement that needs backed up by sources.
Seriously, though, I think the Karens out there want E-bike licensed just so cops can keep hassling brown people even when they're not driving clapped out old Toyotas.
Source: https://legalclarity.org/are-license-plate-flipper-devices-i...