Repo man cameras

PHeller wrote: 2) The sad thing about ALPR technology (and big data used in law enforcement) is that it really doesn't do anything to stop random violence, murders, or burglary. Like the example used above, it is used more for drug enforcement and registration/inspection infractions, which are great at turning up drug offenses.

This part isn't really true...

The big draw of LPR systems for police is warrant service. The data doesn't get saved, it just gets compared to a hot file of mostly stolen vehicles and vehicles associated with warrants. Yeah it flags registration and insurance violations, but that's not the big draw. It's more of a reactive asset so it's probably not going to prevent burglaries and murders, but it does help put known burglars and murderers in jail.

http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/2014/dec/04/sheriff8217s-office-unit-now-using-license-plate/

And people wonder why kids don't care about driving anymore? They are too smart to play.

The irony is that as the old people with good driving records die off, and less and less kids belly up to the predatory insurance and law enforcement cost, the need to maintain and grow profits will be passed on to the remaining driving population. So we can expect the cost of driving to keep going up exponentially.

Basil Exposition wrote: I wish they'd link the insurance and registration in my state. The number of uninsured keeps my premiums amongst the highest in the country. Although you have to have proof of insurance to register your car, many folks make the first payment, get the card, then drop the insurance immediately.

Its not a solution. Trust me.

Rupert wrote: I just read an article in the paper where people were getting speeding tickets based on the Fast Pass tolling system. Drive through the next Fast Pass tolling station location too soon, you get a ticket. That's not actually new, just a different method. For years I always made sure I stopped for at least a potty break at the centers on the West Virginia & Pennsylvania Turnpikes. The time at the last tool booth was printed on your card. Too quick an arrival at the next tollbooth equaled a ticket.

I'd like to see that because every interview I have ever heard or read claims that they are not doing that, anywhere. Interesting for someone to prove that they are.

The repo men are also making more money selling the massive amounts of data they collect than on repos. There is so much you can glean about a person's behavior from their travel patterns. The repo men sell their data to large national aggregators, who sell it on to many different buyers. Companies can easily find out how often you travel, where to, what stops you make, what things you pass, etc.

Basil Exposition wrote: I wish they'd link the insurance and registration in my state. The number of uninsured keeps my premiums amongst the highest in the country. Although you have to have proof of insurance to register your car, many folks make the first payment, get the card, then drop the insurance immediately.

Unless you live in Michigan or West Virginia, your rates are lower than mine.

GA is third highest state in the nation, and our insurance Is linked to our registrations, so I don't think your theory holds water.

GameboyRMH wrote: Plus if you leave home with your cell phone then that tracks everywhere you go -

not if your you're still living in the 20th century …and your cell phone isn't smart enough to tell where it is

Rupert wrote: Do any of you Privacy Advocates carry a cell phone? If you do, you are already paying a ton of money to be tracked 24/7. Whether in your own home or anywhere else.

depends on the phone … like I posted above … no smart phone here … and as often as not, even if I have it with me, it's turned off

In reply to wbjones:

Ive seen you post comments like this before.

ALL basic phones (dumb phones) have basic GPS ability as well.

I dont think it matters if your phone is "smart" or not.

Rupert wrote: Do any of you Privacy Advocates carry a cell phone? If you do, you are already paying a ton of money to be tracked 24/7. Whether in your own home or anywhere else.

I can pay a ton of money to be berkeleyed by a hooker, but does that mean you can berkeley me?

SVreX wrote: In reply to wbjones: Ive seen you post comments like this before. ALL basic phones (dumb phones) have basic GPS ability as well. I dont think it matters if your phone is "smart" or not.

not when they're off

Maryland is one of the only (if not the only) state that has a law stating that ALPR records can only be kept for 30 days.

wbjones wrote:

SVreX wrote: In reply to wbjones: Ive seen you post comments like this before. ALL basic phones (dumb phones) have basic GPS ability as well. I dont think it matters if your phone is "smart" or not.

not when they're off

for general info …doesn't the phone have to be connected to a tower to be able to be tracked … in my house there are only a few places when I have the ability to make a call … there are lots of places when I'm out that don't have a service available … I'd assume that if my phone can't make contact with a tower than no one can provide location info

I wouldn't assume that just because you can't place a call that the cell company can't triangulate your position. A call requires two signals - incoming and outgoing, in order for the call to be successful. The cell tower does not require two signals in order to "see" the phone and it's location. Best bet is to take the battery out of the phone if you don't want to be trackable.

In reply to pinchvalve:

Ever since EZ Pass started here I've heard these friend of a friend stories. I've never seen anyone ticketed. I have made several trips up and down the NYS thruway well over the speed limit without a peep.

They feel right now that if they were doing that a lot of users would switch back to cash which would cost more than they would make in tickets.

I got politely told by a friendly toll booth operator one time to either pay the lost ticket fee or make my way back to the rest stop and take a nap. This was in OK or KS in the 90's. Apparently driving 240-odd miles in roughly two hours would have tripped something automatic for a ticket back then.

I have a friend who is a state trooper in Montana. If you enter or exit the state of Montana on the interstate your information is forwarded to whatever trooper is on that stretch of highway. He can issue tickets based on what time it was when he pulled you over, the distance from the border camera, and when you entered the state. He doesn't do that, but he can.

I had a run-in with one of these recently. We were coming back to work from lunch and noticed a car with odd things on it driving slowly down a row in our private lot. Didn't think anything of it until we'd parked and started walking towards the building and came across him crawling down another lane. I stepped in front of him and stopped him, one of my friends started questioning him. He avoided saying who he was, who he worked for, what he was doing, then tried to say it was a public place (absolutely not, and we have signs on our entrances saying as much) and he was free to do what he wanted, then gunned it away when he realized he wasn't blocked in anymore. Got his plates and chased him off the property. We turned over the pics and an incident report into security, they didn't seem to care.

A little research shows they're not actually looking for specific cars, they're capturing everyone just so that if you ever go delinquent on a loan, they'll immediately know where you habitually park.

That's pretty low in my book, especially when you trespass to collect that information. His behavior demonstrates that he does this often and is familiar with talking his way out of confrontation. Pretty scummy.

I would personally have loved to have had him arrested for trespassing, but even if we had been able to keep him from leaving, I doubt the company (large and bureaucratic) would have done a thing. That's exactly what he's counting on.

I feel dirty just thinking about it.

SVreX wrote:

Basil Exposition wrote: I wish they'd link the insurance and registration in my state. The number of uninsured keeps my premiums amongst the highest in the country. Although you have to have proof of insurance to register your car, many folks make the first payment, get the card, then drop the insurance immediately.

Unless you live in Michigan or West Virginia, your rates are lower than mine. GA is third highest state in the nation, and our insurance Is linked to our registrations, so I don't think your theory holds water.

My area is in one of the top ten in the country, but if it didn't work in GA, I'm sure it wouldn't work here. How long has that been in effect?

North Carolina had an interesting system. Car insurance was pretty cheap-- at least until you got a speeding ticket. Then it would pretty much double for the next 3 years. If you got another ticket it would continue to rise precipitously.

When SunPass started in FL, they had to get voter approval, and things didn't look so good. So they had to promise IN WRITING, as part of the sign-up contract, that the passes and metadata would NEVER be used for Traffic Enforcement. So it passed. But I would not be surprised if there was some weasel clause in there that let's them do it anyway.

wae wrote: While it is true that you are in a public place and we have no expectation of privacy, we have technology today that can process amounts of data that would have been unimaginable in 1791 to produce results that would have been similarly unbelievable.

Ding ding ding! Too many people don't understand that laws have to be updated to keep up with technology. Laws that were written back when a gasoline engine might as well have been a warp drive assumed you couldn't put a squad of cops with notebooks and binoculars on every lamppost and have offices full of people processing the information. It would have been ridiculous in both practical and financial terms.

Today you can do all that with a camera on each pole and a few servers.

GameboyRMH wrote: Ding ding ding! Too many people don't understand that laws have to be updated to keep up with technology.

Shut your mouth! That's not how we do it in 'Murica. (see also: 2nd Amendment)

erohslc wrote: When SunPass started in FL, they had to get voter approval, and things didn't look so good. So they had to promise IN WRITING, as part of the sign-up contract, that the passes and metadata would NEVER be used for Traffic Enforcement. So it passed. But I would not be surprised if there was some weasel clause in there that let's them do it anyway.

One of the few highlights of CA law is that the use of devices that measure speed by timing vehicles across a known distance is labelled a "speed trap" and is not admissible as evidence of speeding. This means that "speed enforced by aircraft" is close to meaningless and I think would rule out these kinds of toll-based tickets.

Cell-site location data is fairly approximate, all the carrier can tell is which cell the phone is in (or sometimes which group of 3 or 4 cells). Since cells range from a couple hundred feet to a mile or more in size, you'd have to a VERY long toll road to put a speeding ticket outside the error bars. AIUI, the GPS data on a dumb phone is not available most of the time, it's only intended for E911 use, has to be specifically turned on by the base station, and there's limited capacity to run it. Smartphones have their own GPS receivers, but they don't upload that information to the cell carrier. They do upload it to Google if you have that enabled, so in theory someone could use that to try to write a speeding ticket. I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect there'd be all kinds of problems with using that as evidence, however.

SVreX wrote: Because the laws do not keep pace with the technology. Legislators rarely repeal laws. Those things are outdated, but the laws are still on the books.

About a year ago a "No turn on red" sign was added at a corner due to the view to the left being blocked by a row of trees. Since then, the trees have been removed, but of course the dumb sign remains, now with an unobstructed view to oncoming traffic. I heard an explanation why: that it cost money to install the sign, and even more to remove it, so often the budget doesn't allow for needless sign removal. That's nice... "stay the course..."

GameboyRMH wrote: We are living in a full-on sci-fi dystopia, and most Gen. Y'ers are some sort of cyberpunk character.

I took offense to this, then I remembered how I used to get internet (for several months) by mac spoofing comcast paid public hotspots every hour for another "free trial".

please... how is this different then banks collecting your finger prints........ the Supreme Corp has decided only the "authorities" need be controlled........

What berkelying berekley

codrus wrote:

erohslc wrote: When SunPass started in FL, they had to get voter approval, and things didn't look so good. So they had to promise IN WRITING, as part of the sign-up contract, that the passes and metadata would NEVER be used for Traffic Enforcement. So it passed. But I would not be surprised if there was some weasel clause in there that let's them do it anyway.

One of the few highlights of CA law is that the use of devices that measure speed by timing vehicles across a known distance is labelled a "speed trap" and is not admissible as evidence of speeding. This means that "speed enforced by aircraft" is close to meaningless and I think would rule out these kinds of toll-based tickets. Cell-site location data is fairly approximate, all the carrier can tell is which cell the phone is in (or sometimes which group of 3 or 4 cells). Since cells range from a couple hundred feet to a mile or more in size, you'd have to a VERY long toll road to put a speeding ticket outside the error bars. AIUI, the GPS data on a dumb phone is not available most of the time, it's only intended for E911 use, has to be specifically turned on by the base station, and there's limited capacity to run it. Smartphones have their own GPS receivers, but they don't upload that information to the cell carrier. They *do* upload it to Google if you have that enabled, so in theory someone could use that to try to write a speeding ticket. I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect there'd be all kinds of problems with using that as evidence, however.

this is what I had been led to believe/understand

and ECM … if I can't receive OR make a call from my home, how would cell towers be able to triangulate my position ? (actually a serious question… I used to work in the RF industry …back before cell phones…)