|
|
|
|
|
|
by csmatt
4793 days ago
|
|
|
We need CAPTCHA-style license plates :) I actually started doing some experimenting with IR LEDs since they emit light outside the visible spectrum, but do show up on cameras (as long as the cameras don't have an IR filter). The LEDs just weren't powerful enough. There is this http://www.nophoto.com/ |
|
|
I was about to post the same thing. This is a technological problem, it could do with a technological solution: We need a way to make sure that license plates are not machine readable.
Or maybe this: Make them explicitly machine readable, but then have the vehicle alert the owner when something reads it. So instead of a license plate you have a radio transceiver with a range of a few hundred yards, which broadcasts the vehicle's make and model and allows anyone to request the VIN. You can request the VIN with a mobile device but every request gets logged and notifies the vehicle owner, and making a request would require probable cause by law.
Everyone in the U.S. will soon have a mobile device anyway (if only one without a data plan that was discarded by someone with more money and only used for wifi), so this actually serves the original purpose of a license plate better than existing license plates do, because you can read the VIN from a vehicle after witnessing a violation of the law even if it's at an angle that you couldn't have read the plate or is far enough away that you couldn't have made it out.
On the other hand, it prevents passive surveillance or surveillance without probable cause, which has always been a misfeature of license plates outside of their original purpose.