In a rare instance of too much transparency, an Ohio police department released the precise movements of a particular vehicle in response to a public records request, showing just how invasive license plate reading technology can be.
  • Hello_there@fedia.io
    2·
    2 months ago

    Holy shit. So you can just ask for anyone’s plate and the police will hand it out. That’s what their response says.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      That’s so bizarre.

      In my country, only police can look up a licence plate, and only on official business - cops have lost their jobs for looking up friends, family and ex-girlfriend’s licenses.

    • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
      1·
      2 months ago

      As long as you follow the correct protocol and get the right staffer handling your request and live in Ohio.

      Other states have privacy controls that would block this from happening without explicit sign-off.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    0·
    2 months ago

    The government knows where you live and where you go pretty much all the time when you’re in a car. That includes your lifted pickup truck and your minivan covered top to bottom with words.

    All yous conspiracy nuts out there, let’s advocate for better bike and passenger train infrastructure and walkable cities, to make it harder for governments to know where you are and track what you do, thanks.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      01·
      2 months ago

      I highly doubt the government knows where I go:

      • older car with no smart crap
      • red light and speed cameras are illegal in my state
      • I use an alternative Android ROM on my phone with a firewall

      That said, I totality agree with your assessment. We need better pedestrian, cycling, and mass transit infrastructure. The problem is that pretty much nobody campaigns on that. Rs campaign on fiscal issues, Ds campaign on “culture” issues, and neither deliver on their promises anyway. I want more trains and more pedestrian/cycling infra, but neither party seems to care…

      • randombullet@programming.dev
        1·
        2 months ago

        But do you sanitize and vet your carrier data?

        Triangulation using cellphone towers is not unheard of and they can subpoena it.

        Then again, a national state actor going against a private entity is rare and the private entity will often lose.

        Same thing with my home cameras, I use unifi because it’s easy and the data is stored locally. That way the police can’t subpoena Amazon or any of the big companies for their cloud data.

        I’m being very facetious. Privacy is a losing battle. You fuckup once, you negate a lot of hard work.

        -Sent on my stock Google Pixel lmfao