Give Me Your License Plate Number, I Will Look You Up Online

JH
John Honovich
Jul 11, 2013
IPVM

TLO, an 'online investigation system', has added LPR tracking to its offering, according to the company's June 28th press release, with one billion vehicle sightings in its database, growing by 50 million each month. Anyone can sign up and search for any plate.

Forbes has published an article with their results of trying the system out, noting:

"The service charges $10 per category of each license plate look up, divided into current, recent and historical. Cars are photographed or filmed and then matched with license plate recognition software... I searched for my own car, as well that those of two relatives with their permission. Of five cars that I looked up, three cars turned up nothing, but I found data on the other two."

Compare to a Wall Street Journal investigative report form 2012, with similar details / concerns. Also, we have noted how NYC retains the right to search license plate records for up to 5 years.

Anyone particularly concerned or interested in this?

Rv
Rogier van der Heide
Jul 11, 2013

The NSA approves!

Aren't there privacy laws just to prevent things such as these ? I'm sure the private investigators would love this feature. I just hope we will never see these kind of features here in Holland.

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Ari Erenthal
Jul 11, 2013
Chesapeake & Midlantic

Call your Representatives, everyone.

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Carl Lindgren
Jul 11, 2013

I'm not at all surprised. While many of us have been decrying government snooping into our private lives, the dirty little secret is that private industry is the worst offender. I know I've ranted on this before but I received a wake up call a few years ago when I attended a meeting where LexisNexis was invited to make a presentation. Despite the meeting's venue, they proceeded to demonstrate what I felt were huge invasions of privacy. When I questioned why we would need to know things like people's Social Security numbers or if someone had ever known a sex offender (even years before the person exhibited such traits), the presenter explained that he thought law enforcement personnel would be attending the presentation. Yeah sure!

With the combination of government and private industry actively seeking to know everything about everyone, we should all be very concerned.

JG
John Grocke
Jul 11, 2013

My main concern is if some creep sees my daughter or wife driving down the road, for $10 he knows where to find her later.

Disclosure - I have installed fixed ALPR systems for several local law enforcement agencies. Generally they are comparing license plate reads to national and state "hot list" databases for outstanding warrants, stolen vehicles, Amber alerts, etc. Occasionally they use it to attempt to track recently stolen vehicles in the area or to assist in active investigations such as robbery or homicide. As far as I know they do not sell the data and at most they keep it for 30 to 90 days. All of those plate reads with context images can fill up a 10GB SQL database fairly quick on busier roads.

JH
John Honovich
Jul 11, 2013
IPVM

Grocke, to my understanding, it is the car repossession agencies that are the sources of this problem (i.e., they scan plates looking for cars to repossess and they make some bonus bucks selling your family's license plate recorders to third parties).

As one repo man boasted to the WSJ:

"I take absolute exception to any government telling me that I can't go into public and take video," [the repo man] says. "That's taking my freedoms away." He estimates his company has snapped "hundreds of millions" of photos of plates nationwide."

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Brian Rhodes
Jul 11, 2013
IPVMU Certified

Citing a protected freedom to capture and resale information used to violate protected freedoms. Priceless.

JG
John Grocke
Jul 11, 2013

Congitive dissonance abounds in today's society...

JG
John Grocke
Jul 11, 2013

How are they snapping all of these plates? Fixed cameras near roadsides? A mobile application driving all over the place like the Google Map cars? Speeding/Traffic Light cameras?

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Ethan Ace
Jul 11, 2013

It's quite Randian, really.

I was just recently introduced to an iPhone app called Docket in Your Pocket which lets you search court dockets by name. So for only $3.99 you, too, can see all of my parking tickets in Lehigh County. I know that this is public information, but I still don't love it.

JH
John Honovich
Jul 11, 2013
IPVM

They drive around, scanning everyone's plates, looking for a match on a repossession list. They make money on the matches by repossessing and money on the non matches by selling the information.

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Carl Lindgren
Jul 11, 2013

"Usually I go along with whatever police enforcement needs to do to keep us safe, so I figure they must have people stealing cars and that sort of thing," says 86-year-old Virginia Rose. That attitude of blind trust in government has gotten us to where we are today.

And now we have Lizard Lick's seedy relatives claiming it's their right to collect and sell license plate info? What a world we live in!

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david tonsberg
Jul 15, 2013
Security Reps

This is very concerning John. I agree with Carl, we Americans are to blame for allowing the government to run away with our freedoms without much of a fight. We all have gotten so concerned with our own situations that we forgot to be concerned and voice that concern on time to the people who are representing us at all levels of government. Career politicians and private interest groups have injured this country perhaps beyond repair.

Allowing the government to track Americans at any level would have been a crime prior to 911. Since then we have stood by and let these politicians take away freedoms under the guise of protectionism. Since then we have unprecedented levels of surveillance at all levels of government. America is a police state.

Welcome to the new United Stasi of America.

You may think this is dramatic and an overstatement. Remember history often repeats itself. Do some homework on Germany's history and surveillance practices utilizing the Stasi. Then make your own comparison to the behavior of US government.

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Sagy Amit
Sep 02, 2013

David,

Considering the fact that you volunteer most of your personal information on Google+ and Linkedin, it is a bit dramatic to be concerned about LPR...

Last week I got a "Notice of Toll evasion" in the mail. Since it wasn't my license plate number, I looked for a similar service online to help me figure out the mistake. I tracked it down to my local auto maintenance shop which made a mistake with a loaner I got from them.

Depending on which side of the law we are, these services can become useful to all of us one way or another.

We gave up our privacy when we got on social networks, blogs and online shopping.

Just deal with it...!

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Marty Major
Sep 02, 2013
Teledyne FLIR

Sagy,

I have ranted many, many times about LPR cameras and the inherent taxation of poor people it engenders.

Look at any study of any munipality that has employed LPR technology for any period of time. The vast majority of 'hits' are for these 3 things:

1. Expired/Suspended/No Registration

2. No Insurance

3. Unpaid tickets

Who do you think drives around with these 3 things outstanding? Poor people do.

And the vast majority of the scans (high 90s %) are not 'hits'. Yet they are still stored. Why?

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