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License-Plate Scans Aid Crime-Solving but Spur Little Privacy Debate
The Wall Street Journal ^ | 10 March 2021 | Byron Tau

Posted on 03/11/2021 9:13:46 AM PST by Theoria

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To: Locomotive Breath

In the movie Two Way Blacktop, every time the protagonists drive into a new state the first thing they do is steal the plates off a local car. The idea is that cops won’t harass them because of out of state plates.

I don’t know that it’s much of an issue nowadays since rental cars have plates from all over the country, even if you rented locally.


21 posted on 03/11/2021 10:52:51 AM PST by cuban leaf (We killed our economy and damaged our culture. In 2021 we will pine for the salad days of 2020.)
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To: Locomotive Breath

Hey old FRiend!! One of my coffee buddies has a Louisiana Tech University vanity plate and a son that lives in Houston. He claims he’s not been billed for a toll in Texas for five years. Apparently, the cameras can’t read the plate.


22 posted on 03/11/2021 10:58:08 AM PST by abb
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To: abb

... and greetings to you.


23 posted on 03/11/2021 11:38:44 AM PST by Locomotive Breath
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To: BobL

>>Others don’t have a problem with it.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with it - and I am not one of those ‘if you have nothing to hide....’ people, but you are already tracked by private corporations when you goto the supermarket. Carry a smart phone with you? you are tracked. Use a credit card? you are tracked, use a supermarket savings club card, tracked again...not to mention all the private security that are (likely) all along the route you drive.

We are tracked, get used to it - making law enforcement the only party that can’t make use of this information seems pretty silly.


24 posted on 03/11/2021 11:39:38 AM PST by qwerty1234
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To: Organic Panic

My truck goes mudding.


25 posted on 03/11/2021 11:44:29 AM PST by Uncle Miltie (My vaccination is undocumented ... like an immigrant.)
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To: Theoria

Being observed in public is different than having a permanent record of that activity, whatever it is.


26 posted on 03/11/2021 12:35:34 PM PST by fruser1
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To: qwerty1234

“We are tracked, get used to it - making law enforcement the only party that can’t make use of this information seems pretty silly.”

I suspect most people don’t mind law enforcement having access to it, it’s the part where they throw people in jail using that information, and not even needing a warrant to obtain it.

As it is, I held out as long as I could, but you are right and I conceded several years ago. Privacy is gone, no different here than in China.

But, hopefully, we’ll get some protections against the use of the data for mass purges of political opponents, as with what happened to 150 or so, nearly all non-violent people, who now have their lives ruined because they were invited into the Capitol Building when others didn’t want them there. That bothers me a bit, but yes, that is also what happens in Communist countries...so I guess I’ll also get used to that, too.


27 posted on 03/11/2021 1:00:10 PM PST by BobL (TheDonald.win is now Patriots.win)
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To: Theoria

Most local police departments now operate drones with a suite of privacy invading gadgets. These drones are capable of covering a 20 square mile “target” box where they are able to read every license plate 24 x 7. The federal government is incentivizing local PD’s to fly these drones, so that crimes can be “back-tracked”.

“Back-tracking” means that if the Police come upon a murder, they will be able to see who came and went from that address for the time period in question. These drones’ camera resolutions are so high, that they are capable of facial recognition. So they then follow that person backwards in time to see who might have participated or been in contact with the suspect prior to the murder having been committed.

Some are equipped with ground penetrating radar, which allows them to observe people within their homes, and they likely can hack into your computer using directed radio energy to obtain access to your computer, whether it’s connected to the internet or not. Encryption won’t work, as the keys are stored locally on your machine, or if you are a wise-guy and decide to “air-gap” your system and store your key on a usb flash drive, or some such, the government has the ability to crack any encryption, in near real-time.

The government has underground warehouses of computer systems, which use playstation processors (playstation processors are the best computing horsepower, in the sense that they do the most computing while releasing the least amount of heat). Heat is a major issue for the banks of computers that the government has that decrypt communications. I do recall at the outset of their building the underground facility in Utah, the government had requested bids (publically) for a cooling system with a 12 giga-watt capacity, which should give you an idea of the number of processors they have working on encryption.

As a routine matter, I encrypt almost every internet communication I engage in, if for no other reason, than to gum up the government’s works, in that if they want to decrypt my communications, then they must devote computing horsepower to do so, and if enough people encrypted their communications, they simply couldn’t decrypt everyone’s communications. So I’d urge everyone to encrypt as much as they can, and to use VPN’s for their web browsing. I use proton email and proton’s vpn, for about $4/month.

It’s probably far too late for me to get off the “re-education” list that the government is keeping, especially after this post.


28 posted on 03/11/2021 1:00:14 PM PST by krogers58
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To: Theoria

Yet the FBI and the local police cannot locate the democrat pipe bomber that was at the protest in Washington. They darn well know who it is and am protecting the democrat bomber.


29 posted on 03/11/2021 5:45:23 PM PST by minnesota_bound (I need more money. )
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