Come to think of it -- humans can't memorize all the number plates they see. Machines can. It's the "recording" of these images (though there for everyone to see) which takes us into the gray area.
In addition, the problem most people don't recognize with this, is the database keeps a history of where the car has been seen. This history is ripe data for divorce attorneys who can use it to show that assignations at motels took place.
Already, mapping technology can cause marital problems - I had a neighbor who split up because the Google car photographed a motorcycle in their driveway that wasn't the husbands.
> Already, mapping technology can cause marital problems
No, affairs can cause marital problems. Technology just makes it easier to get caught This is not a vindication of the technology in question, but it can't be blamed for everything.
I can't help but think that cheating business travellers had it a lot easier before the advent of ubiquitous, near-free mobile long distance telephony made it easier for spouses to keep tabs on the travelling partner. That doesn't make telephony a cause of marital problems.
I see this as a general trend of misattributing problems to technology that are actually caused by one's own behaviour.
Lying to people is a bad idea; some people mistakenly believe that they can lie freely without others knowing, and then cry foul when new technologies threaten that belief.
Everything we do, everything we say, has consequences that spread through the great web of causation; technology only allows us to look at this web faster and in more detail, and thus spot more inconsistencies in our model (i.e. lies). It's not the fault of technology if you lied and got caught.
I see this as a general trend of misattributing problems to technology that are actually caused by one's own behaviour.
I see. So stop doing anything controversial and you'll be just fine, right?
We better tell closeted homosexuals that someone tracking their movements isn't the problem; their behavior is the problem.
How about atheists? They're more disliked in the U.S. than just about any group out there (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-atheists-we-dis...). I guess the problem isn't their boss checking via license plate scanning whether or not they go to church every week, their behavior is the problem.
I guess we better tell political dissidents to knock it off too.
And let's not forget abuse of the data. You seem to think that this data is perfectly protected, perfectly monitored. You really can't imagine a scenario where a rogue cop pulls over a young girl, becomes obsessed with her and then begins stalking her by abusing electronic tracking systems he has access to? It's happening already - Google gave me too many examples to cite.
Everything we do, everything we say, has consequences that spread through the great web of causation
This is astoundingly pseudo-intellectual tripe. The reality is that what people do in their own private lives is none of your business, and people seeking to track people's every movements are evil.
I see. So stop doing anything controversial and you'll be just fine, right?
No. But if you are lying, you have to realize that you can be caught. The fact that some kind of technology makes it easier for you to be caught is not the technologies fault. Phones, cameras, computers, internet, all make it easier for you to be caught doing something you weren't supposed to be doing.
Should it be illegal for photographers to take pictures of people in public? What if that photographer publishes the pictures on their blog? What about people taking pictures/videos of police officers? Should they be allowed to upload these pictures/videos to the internet?
We better tell closeted homosexuals that someone tracking their movements isn't the problem; their behavior is the problem.
No, the problem is people that have problems with homosexuals.
How about atheists? They're more disliked in the U.S. than just about any group out there (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-atheists-we-dis...). I guess the problem isn't their boss checking via license plate scanning whether or not they go to church every week, their behavior is the problem.
Again, the problem here is the boss checking the license plates to make sure the employee goes to church. It's not that the plates are being logged, it's that the data is being used in a malicious manner.
Did you forget Murphy's Law? If it is possible for the data to be used in a malicious manner, someone will eventually use them with ill intent.
The key to preventing abuse is to make it more difficult by several orders of magnitude than allowable uses. One way to do this is to only store plate scan records where there is a pre-existing reason to track the location of the vehicle, and purge those records once that reason is no longer valid.
> We better tell closeted homosexuals that someone tracking their movements isn't the problem; their behavior is the problem.
No, my point is that it's the people doing the checking to then hurt others that are the problem, not the tools used to track, and not even the act of tracking.
> You really can't imagine a scenario where a rogue cop pulls over a young girl, becomes obsessed with her and then begins stalking her(...)
I can, but again, it's the cop who is the problem, not Google or Facebook or ALPRs.
> This is astoundingly pseudo-intellectual tripe.
It may sound like that for people who don't grok it, but it's actually also the base for my whole argument. If you understand this "tripe", then you can see that there are pretty much infinite ways you can use to obtain particular information; they only differ in cost. You can't ban them all. Progress of technology only reduces the cost of accessing some facts about the real world.
Let's look for ways to stop people from doing bad things instead of trying to fight the progress, with all the benefits it brings. For centuries we relied on limited access to information as a proxy for safety. We can't do that anymore.
> Everything we do, everything we say, has consequences that spread through the great web of causation
Like tracking, which could be used by political authorities to suppress political dissidents, employers to discriminate against homosexuals, or police to stalk or sexually harass a young woman.
Just because Google or Facebook or ALPRs don't intend for tracking to be used maliciously doesn't mean it won't. In fact, this is the entire argument against the NSA dragnet.
under that logic we should all be implanted with a sensor the records audio video of everything we see, say, and hear, as well as providing real time location data.
After all you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.... right
Also, "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide" is only partially not true, and I think it deserves pointing out.
If you have nothing to hide, then you only have to fear evil people (who may want to harm you, and the more they know about you the easier it gets) and morons (who jump to conclusions).
the_ancient - under that logic, I should be allowed to record what I hear, and if I catch you ever lying to me or breaking your verbal promises, you won't be able to deny that.
Yes, I do, but I don't find them relevant here. Suing you for breaching my privacy is completely independent from the fact that if you caught me lying to you by peeking through the curtains, I'd only have myself to blame.
Spoken like somebody in a privileged position of not having anything that they believe must remain hidden.
Me spying on you while you are in your home would be illegal, because you deserve some baseline privacy. Me tracking you around town should similarly be illegal.
You "blaming yourself" if I illegally violate your privacy is nothing but senseless and shameless victim blaming.
I don't know. People are unlikely to remember the license plate (unless it strikes an obvious pattern) but a person who was so inclined could write numbers down manually and store them indefinitely a bit like a CPU with no storage mechanism simply would hold the data in volatile memory... unless we plug in a hard drive.
I'm imagining a future where most cameras have Street View style blurring in their hardware. Where vintage digital cameras are sought after and illicit manufacturers produce unauthorised copies with the feature disabled.
I have a picture of my cars license plate in my phone for convenient access. Furthermore, if I am ever in a fender bender I want to have the ability to photograph everything, with license plates unblurred.
Already, mapping technology can cause marital problems - I had a neighbor who split up because the Google car photographed a motorcycle in their driveway that wasn't the husbands.