Holy shit. So you can just ask for anyone’s plate and the police will hand it out. That’s what their response says.
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.
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.
This is why license plates are so short, so no one gets the custom plate
car'); DROP TABLE surveillanceState;“Oh yes, little Dropmobile we call it.”
Hmmm wonder if you could make it work with bumberstickers? Like have the custom plate P TABLE and then complete on ether side?
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.
Cameras already exist and facial recognition is getting better all the time. It won’t matter soon enough whether you’re in a car or on foot.
Eh. Makes more sense to make this kind of surveillance illegal.
You’re right. I was hoping conspiracy nuts wouldn’t be looking for the obvious solution.
Do you carry a phone?
I do. It runs GrapheneOS, though.
EDIT: Yes I know about triangulation via cell signal. If the cops start looking for me I can leave it at home.
They know where I am in my 1986 Fiero? In an area where the nearest traffic camera is at least 50 kms away? Where the police don’t show even if you call them?
Would I ride a train, sure but they are all freight haulers now and would you believe it even easier to track?
And my bicycle? its great, love it. but I am not able to make my 250km commute on it and although I have used it in the winter -50c is not conducive to cycling.
There is a record of you being the owner of a 1986 Fiero. Nobody needs to know the make, colour and serial number of your bike unless you register it in a system to ensure it’s not stolen.
US and Canadian Intercity trains have upped security since 9/11 like everything so there is more tracking than before. You can still buy tickets with cash at least. Denser cities make it easier to blend in the crowds.
And yeah my last car had no always connected tech bullshit, and if you live in a remote area then of course, mass-transit isn’t for you. Rural folks do also advocate for better city planning because it helps keep suburbanites out. Extreme cold and heat (beyond +/- 40 deg C) makes it hard but most winters and summers it can work
There is also a record of where I live, my height, eye colour and a whole list of things. People will still be able to find me on my bike easier then in my car since I can’t be that far from home on it.
You assume we all live in cities, we don’t. I like how my town is set up and is walking and bike friendly, but still most drive. This post was about privacy but you got on the ol’ soapbox about mass transit. Do you really think getting on a train/bus/tram you are not being/can not be tracked?
Leave your city, spread out and enjoy a bit of nature.
You can be tracked with facial recognition, etc. but not in the same way or with the ease of a car as demonstrated in the article so I think that my point is relevant to the article. Sure some states ban or don’t have traffic cameras, but in Ohio specifically, we see that a better intercity transit system could be better for privacy.
I already mentioned that sure, mass transit doesn’t work as well in rural and remote areas. Clarifying my point on that: planning cities for more density, more walkability and car free travel is good for country people outside of those cities, because it keeps the suburbs from sprawling out into the countryside. These exurbs take up what could have been useful farmland with people who are just LARPing country life and spend 4 hours every day travelling to and from their job that was in the city anyway.
Facial recognition needs a camera. Common but not everywhere.
The issue is police not respecting privacy at all, this does not change when on a bus.
Boo to paywall posts.
This is like walking into a newsagents and saying “Boo to paid newspapers”
Paywalls are as easy to bypass as it is to steal the newspaper and run away
Fair enough, in this instance the author is the cofounder, so while I’ll leave my comment to not hide that I’ve been corrected, he’s well within his rights to charge for his work.
What gets me is the more and more I see of this: https://lemm.ee/comment/12593815, where The Atlantic paywalls an article copublished with the authors public blog.
People like Doctorow are fortunate to have built their followings before you could game Google, but I wish there was a way to identify sources of content to overcome that, and drive traffic and ad revenue to the source, vs revenue to them via an intermediary.
I believe that where I live the license plate numbers would also not be considered personal information. This might work here too, if a different exemption was not claimed, although I’m not aware of anyone using this technology near me.
Investigations have given way to inquisitions.
Cops killing people while arresting them is the 21st century version of “Trial By Ordeal”.
And at some point when we tie the violence police levy on the populace to those same police libidos & their need for violence prior to sexual activity we will see what kind of twisted world we have become.
Shooting and beating people is literally cop viagra. And if you take away any part of their equation of sex and death they will threaten to quit then sulk and “quiet quit” just like the people they use to validate their oppression.
