[cbhl]

In the Toronto, Ontario area, ALPRs were built into the 407 Electronic Toll Route to accompany the RFID readers. This eliminated the need for toll booths entirely, because the license plate reader could be used to find the car's registration and send a bill.

Of course, there are slightly different semantics here -- the ALPRs in the 407 are stationary (mounted at every on-ramp and off-ramp), and you can choose to avoid them by simply using other roads running in parallel to the toll road.

However, this tech is at least a decade old (the 407 was first opened in 1997). It seems odd to me that people are up in arms about the tech now, especially since you can build a rudimentary ALPR with just a webcam and the right image processing algorithms.

[Amadou]

> It seems odd to me that people are up in arms about the tech now, especially since you can build a rudimentary ALPR with just a webcam and the right image processing algorithms.

That is precisely why people are up in arms. What was once rare is now ubiquitous. When every police car has an ANPR capable of reading 60+ plates per minute and is feeding plate numbers plus timestamps and gps coordinates into a backend database with poorly defined access controls the potential for abuse skyrockets.