Surveillance via License Plates
How do I surveille thee?* Let me count the ways...™
If you are behind the wheel of your car, someone may be on to you. More and more cities are equipping patrol officers, toll booths and even access roads with computer sidekicks that can keep track of vehicle movements... Automated license-plate-recognition systems (ALPRs) mounted in patrol cars are capable of processing 1,500 license plates a minute, capturing a vast amount of data about the movements of both criminals and law-abiding citizens.
Los Angeles joins an expanding list of areas using some kind of automated license-plate-recognition systems (some examples: Memphis, DC, Tiburon California, UK). And if optical scanning wasn't bad enough, the US DOT wants to develop an RFID-enabled license plate:
The U.S. Department of Transportation's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program has posted online its solicitation for the fiscal year. The document includes a project for the development of a radio frequency-enabled license-plate system that would assist government agencies in the enforcement of traffic laws... but it's also important to ensure that people aren't tracked without their knowledge for nefarious reasons. A female rider, for instance, could be tracked with the technology by a stalker. This is one concern with the PASS Card program, in fact—the tags can be read from 20 or 30 feet away without anyone's knowledge, and if you can associate a random serial number with, say, Mark Roberti, then you could use RFID to track Mark Roberti.
But as Nicole Ozer, a technology expert for the California ACLU told the San Francisco Chronicle:
Innocent people should be able to go about their daily lives without being tracked and monitored.
Related Posts:
Surveillance via Hair
Surveillance via Neighbors
Surveillance via Auto Insurance
Surveillance via Residues on Paper
Surveillance via Mobile Phones
Surveillance via Pizza Delivery
Surveillance via Abandoned DNA
Surveillance via Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems
* with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
3 comments:
hi, here in Portugal the government aproved legislation for the use of RFID plates, starting this year :(
Mandatory RFID is always unfortunate.
Do you know if it is used for only specific purposes, or required to be active and readable at all times? In other words, could you legally install a blocking or jamming device for use when parking, or outside of certain areas, etc.?
It's Mandatory, at least according to what i've been reading!
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