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Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

(alpranalysis.com)
239 points sodality2 | 1 comments | 10 Dec 25 17:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.637s | source

Built this over the last few days, based on a Rust codebase that parses the latest ALPR reports from OpenStreetMaps, calculates navigation statistics from every tagged residential building to nearby amenities, and tests each route for intersection with those ALPR cameras (Flock being the most widespread).

These have gotten more controversial in recent months, due to their indiscriminate large scale data collection, with 404 Media publishing many original pieces (https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/) about their adoption and (ab)use across the country. I wanted to use open source datasets to track the rapid expansion, especially per-county, as this data can be crucial for 'deflock' movements to petition counties and city governments to ban and remove them.

In some counties, the tracking becomes so widespread that most people can't go anywhere without being photographed. This includes possibly sensitive areas, like places of worship and medical facilities.

The argument for their legality rests upon the notion that these cameras are equivalent to 'mere observation', but the enormous scope and data sharing agreements in place to share and access millions of records without warrants blurs the lines of the fourth amendment.

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yannyu ◴[10 Dec 25 20:28 UTC] No.46223289[source]▶
I've thought about this a lot as I see more and more reckless driving in the areas I live in. Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights. We seem to have a worst of all situations where traffic is getting increasingly difficult to enforce, driving is getting more dangerous year by year, and we're terrified of government overreach if we add any automation at all to enforcement.

I don't know the solution, but I do know that in the US we've lost 10-15 years of progress when it comes to traffic fatalities.

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autoexec ◴[10 Dec 25 21:36 UTC] No.46224218[source]▶
> Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights.

The fact that these cameras are already pervasive and the problem of bad drivers hasn't been solved anywhere doesn't give me a lot of hope that these cameras are the solution to that particular problem.

It seems like police can do a lot to increase enforcement without the need of these devices. We have evidence that they've been doing less traffic enforcement so maybe start there. Increasing our standards for driving tests (some of which were eliminated entirely over the first few years of the pandemic) would probably help. Automatically shutting off/disabling or limiting the use of cell phones (all of which come with sensors that can detect when you are going at speeds you'd expect while in cars) might help. Bringing physical buttons and dials back to cars instead of burying common functions in touchscreen menus might help.

There's a whole lot of places to look for solutions to safer roads before we have to resort to tracking everyone's movements at all times.

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1. potato3732842 ◴[11 Dec 25 11:17 UTC] No.46230015[source]▶
The standards for evidince, processes for enforcement and court side of things are not set up for cheap enforcement of "that clearly ain't right" behavior. They're set up for revenue enforcement of easy to prove but not necessarily bad in abstract offenses.

Police can't substantially increase enforcement overall because that would just cause bad political optics, say nothing of stops that needlessly escalate to being newsworthy in a bad way. They'd necessarily issue a hundred petty bullshit tickets for every deserved ticket for legitimately bad behavior. It just wouldn't work. It would be like trying to plow a field with the ripper on the back of a bulldozer. It kinda looks similar but it's wrong for the job.

And all of this is based on the assumption that we're trying to enforce things that the broad public agrees need strict enforcement, not whatever the original comment wants.