"facw" (facw)
05/16/2018 at 11:15 • Filed to: None
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"facw" (facw)
05/16/2018 at 11:15 • Filed to: None | 3
| 12 |
The Washington Post has an interesting article on the repo business, focusing on their use of license plate readers to find cars.
!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!
Especially interesting (though I suppose not surprising) to learn that the company that provided the LPR tech keeps info on every license plate it reads, both to allow the repo industry to find currently non-delinquent cars in the future should they stop making payments, as well as to sell to insurance companies and others.
!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!
Derpwagon
> facw
05/16/2018 at 11:21 |
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That seems pretty dystopian.
CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
> facw
05/16/2018 at 11:23 |
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I recently had a claim involving the theft of an LPR system from one of my client’s vehicles in North Carolina. Those things are not cheap.
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facw
> CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
05/16/2018 at 11:32 |
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I’d imagine not, though it seems like the sort of thing that could get very cheap very quickly if they can make the switch to commodity off the shelf components.
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CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
> facw
05/16/2018 at 11:34 |
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Maybe. The system stolen off this client was $55K USD. That’s a lot of dough.
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facw
> Derpwagon
05/16/2018 at 11:36 |
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It seems like being tracked in public is just something we’re going to have to get used to, there are just too many ways for people to do it.
As for the actual repossession, seems like that is unavoidable if people don’t pay their loans. If you said the cars couldn’t be repossessed, it would be much harder for many people to get a loan. There are in between solutions, but it’s always going to be a trade-off.
MonkeePuzzle
> facw
05/16/2018 at 11:49 |
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good, coz this is one of the funniest shows I’ve ever watched
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1833188/
That Bastard Kurtis - An Attempt to Standardize My Username Across Platforms
> facw
05/16/2018 at 12:08 |
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I used to boot cars for a living, and we used LPR cameras...the company we got ours from only kept data for 90 days and didn’t sell it. The data was actually kept locally on our computer, not uploaded to any sort of central database. That seems like a better way to do it, if you’re collecting the data for a purpose, it should only be collected for that purpose.
Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
> facw
05/16/2018 at 12:18 |
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Yeah, the creep factor here is high. Never mind that the repo company is using tech to make their jobs easier, that is just how the world works. A
s you noted, what is of concern is all this data is uploaded to the manufacturer of the scanners. This develops a national database of plate numbers, gps coordinates, and time stamps. The simplicity of tracking someone from this data is apparent. All you need is a couple scans of a single car to develop trends in a persons activity. Do they work? Where? When? When are they home? Where do they shop? Where do their kids go to school? As plate scanners increase in prevalence all of these questions will be trivial to answer.
Even if all they’re used for is to find and repo cars, how long before that database is compromised? In reality we all know this information is being sold to anyone who wants it.
The question is how is this data tied to a person? My understanding is in most states you have to be a member of law enforcement or have some manner of legal order to get owner info from tag numbers.
Eric @ opposite-lock.com
> facw
05/16/2018 at 12:53 |
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If I hadn’t updated my car loan’s information, it’s unlikely they’d ever find my car if I quit paying (not that I would, they could still mess up my credit and I didn’t go into real debt for it). It is rarely visible from any public or even semi-public place. At best, they might be able to log my location when I’m driving, but the probability of using that for much seems low unless the right repo person identified me and followed to wherever I was going.
It would be interesting to see their data for where they’ve picked my license plate up, if ever. About the only people that probably have any useful record of my driving are the people that collect bridge and lane tolls.
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facw
> Eric @ opposite-lock.com
05/16/2018 at 13:03 |
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It would be interesting to see what people (both in government and commercially) have recorded, as there’s not too much out there. Oakland has released some samples: https://data.oaklandnet.com/browse?q=alpr
You can make requests to local government for your information, but most will reject those.
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Eric @ opposite-lock.com
> facw
05/16/2018 at 13:11 |
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I’d love to see the Oakland type data for the various levels of law enforcement. It’d be interesting to see how often/when/where they’ve been logging my license plate...
They would have an easier time tracking me down using the internet and/or the address the USPS has for me.
functionoverfashion
> facw
05/16/2018 at 14:23 |
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This is why I paid someone to hang from my roof and put their thumb over my license plate everywhere I go.