alt.hn

5/18/2026 at 7:28:59 PM

The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers

 https://www.404media.co/the-fbi-wants-to-buy-nationwide-access-to-license-plate-readers/

by cdrnsf

5/18/2026 at 8:43:25 PM

It's probably never going to happen because neither party cares about protecting Americans rights, but we need to have some sort of law that creates a Chinese firewall between these mass surveillance data and the government, or whoever else.

I don't know if you could ever collect this data and never have foreign entities or NSA moles infiltrate into it by sending their agents to work at that company and steal the data whenever they want. But I can see how this would be good at fighting crime but also a completely and absolute destruction of privacy.

We need politicians that actually care about Americans and their rights but no one who cares is dumb enough to want to go into politics, which is the sad thing.

by reenorap

5/19/2026 at 3:40:18 AM

The government should not be allowed to violate civil rights by outsourcing the harm to private industry

by SilverElfin

5/19/2026 at 5:21:07 AM

"The third-party doctrine is a United States legal doctrine that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties, such as banks and phone companies, generally have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in that information."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

by leonidasrup

5/19/2026 at 4:46:13 AM

The fact that has been a routine practice is egregious, but the bigger insult is the fact that this loophole has been known for quite some time. Yet, our legislators and judiciary have allowed the practices to continue. There’s nothing but foxes in the henhouse.

by voakbasda

5/18/2026 at 9:04:33 PM

Just don't collect the data. If it's too dangerous for the government to have then private companies shouldn't have it either. The entire purpose of license plate readers is to assist law enforcement; if we decide as a society that we don't want to do it then just ban it completely.

by wmf

5/19/2026 at 12:25:49 AM

> The entire purpose of license plate readers is to assist law enforcement

It was the repossession companies that deployed them first. The police, as a general rule, are about 10 years behind on technology almost everywhere, so when new stuff drops, it's actually profit driven industries that deploy it.

Our company cut deals with several large business in the area, like malls, and we deployed the cameras at the entrances to their lots. If a car on the "hot list" pulled in, we'd get an alert, then dispatch a truck to go collect the vehicle.

by themafia

5/19/2026 at 6:55:36 AM

Username checks out.

by salawat

5/19/2026 at 5:57:38 PM

The way it should work is that if a government can't do a thing, then they can't pay for the same thing.

Remove the demand and the activity will dry up.

by archontes

5/19/2026 at 1:52:51 AM

It is the government that wants these companies to do this, so they can get access to the data!

by coliveira

5/19/2026 at 3:33:52 AM

I would say Congress is not the FBI but I guess that's no longer true.

by wmf

5/18/2026 at 10:48:42 PM

You can't realistically ban cameras and character recognition software.

by baby_souffle

5/18/2026 at 11:33:11 PM

It’d be hard to keep individuals from doing this. But individuals aren’t running networks of cameras. Companies are. Those companies probably couldn’t fly under the radar selling LPR data if the practice was banned.

by wl

5/19/2026 at 7:39:48 AM

How do you know individuals aren't running ALPR networks?

by tardedmeme

5/19/2026 at 1:01:13 PM

Most individuals I know only have access to a handful of places they could put ALPR devices. Their home, their work, a couple of really really close friends who trust them enough to let them setup a camera on their property. Individuals could pay people to host their cameras but then that starts looking like a business, so while it's theoretically possible for an individual to have a network of APLRs just for the fun of it, that just seems like weird enough hobby that, I don't have any evidence of this, but I don't think anyone is doing that.

by fragmede

5/19/2026 at 3:27:00 AM

You can ban the commercialization and mass scaling of the technology. Just because you can't prevent something at a small scale doesn't mean you can't prevent corporations and government agencies from doing it without exposing themselves to unacceptable legal risk.

by saguntum

5/19/2026 at 12:19:24 AM

You can ban possession of the data if you attach statutory damages per infraction.

by analog31

5/18/2026 at 11:50:03 PM

You can make it illegal to use private cameras for surveillance of public spaces. In Europe this is already the case.

by MaKey

5/19/2026 at 7:40:26 AM

It's actually a very cool law. You can see people expressing themselves more freely because of rules like this.

by tardedmeme

5/18/2026 at 11:58:22 PM

[dead]

by ihsw

5/18/2026 at 11:38:44 PM

You can ban what’s done with the software/hardware, just as we ban assault with a deadly weapon.

by pictureofabear

5/18/2026 at 11:56:30 PM

You can ban certain ways of using them, and enforce it and serve punishment for violation.

by pigeons

5/19/2026 at 12:33:35 AM

You can ban mass surveillance.

by tintor

5/19/2026 at 12:05:38 AM

You can ban pictures with certain content.

by ipaddr

5/19/2026 at 12:07:59 AM

There is little chance I could just post up cameras wherever my ex travels and note all the time she arrives and leaves at all intersections and get away with that without at least a restraining order ordering me to stop. What they are actually doing is stalking by method of a network of cameras deliberately installed to follow people from place to place. It isn't generalized observation in pursuit of speech, it arguably isn't even speech, but rather mass individualized stalking. Maybe 1A allows that but that doesn't seem to be the law on the books for anyone else trying to stalk people in such a way.

Personally I don't have a huge problem with 1A being broad enough to including recording literally everything in public and meticulously cataloging and following everyone, but only if the rest of the amendments are read in the same broad and literal manner. Meaning I can own nukes, I don't have to display a plate, the 10th amendment would stop the feds from outlawing intrastate weed, etc. What it looks like what happens is the feds cherry pick interpretations of the bill of rights to trump up their powers and then give the least charitable interpretations to the plebs.

by mothballed

5/19/2026 at 12:20:10 AM

but we need to have some sort of law that creates a Chinese firewall between these mass surveillance data and the government

technically we have one, the Fourth Amendment, but SCOTUS defanged it completely, years ago.

by tessierashpool

5/19/2026 at 11:21:45 PM

Americans (the majority anyway) are still far too comfortable to care about any of this. Unemployment would need to be like 50% before most people even stopped to think "hey, maybe I should pay attention and vote".

by frogperson

5/18/2026 at 9:31:00 PM

What's a Chinese firewall?

by djkoolaide

5/18/2026 at 9:44:57 PM

oops I meant Chinese Wall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall

by reenorap

5/18/2026 at 10:54:44 PM

They’re called ethical walls now, for obvious reasons (although the room is still Chinese, for whatever distinction).

by singleshot_

5/19/2026 at 3:33:31 AM

No they aren't.

by qotgalaxy

5/18/2026 at 9:34:46 PM

> What's a Chinese firewall?

"The Great Firewall (GFW; simplified Chinese: 防火长城; traditional Chinese: 防火長城; pinyin: Fánghuǒ Chángchéng) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically" [1].

(I don't think they mean a Chinese wall [2].)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall#Alternative_terms

by JumpCrisscross

5/18/2026 at 9:25:05 PM

Only america can think there no harm in mass collection of data, and actively is against any attempts to limit it (gdpr for example) because it’s “anti growth”

by hdgvhicv

5/19/2026 at 2:17:59 AM

The Swiss are, if anything, worse. They passed a mass surveillance law, it was challenged at referendum, and upheld with 70% of the vote:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/25/switzerland-vo...

by hedora

5/19/2026 at 10:00:14 PM

Maybe I should rephrase it

Only America loves having unaccountable private companies collect data but hate it when the accountable government does.

by hdgvhicv

5/18/2026 at 10:28:35 PM

This will never change until we pass laws that make personal data a liability instead of an asset.

by psadauskas

5/18/2026 at 10:30:15 PM

How about a law that says your documents, like your car registration number on a plate, doesn't have to be displayed except in case of reasonable articulable suspicion a crime has been committed. We could call it, the 4th amendment.

by mothballed

5/18/2026 at 10:37:29 PM

Your plate is displayed because driving is a privilege, not a right (note that traveling is a right, but you can travel without driving).

So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.

It's like having a wrist band to an event. You're not required to attend the event, but if you do attend it, you're required to wear the wrist band.

by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS

5/19/2026 at 12:36:40 AM

Sure, but for decades the license plate was an implicit social contract of functional pseudonymity: a random string of characters that for almost everyone on a day to day basis meant the government wasn’t tracking your whereabouts but could identify you if they really wanted to (at a stop).

So what people are really reacting to is the government using technical means to change the terms of that social contract without our input.

Same thing with Flock. People do the whole civic engagement thing and cities still sign contracts anyways.

A lot of people wouldn’t even be opposed if the whole thing was on a ballot measure. It becomes a problem when the government decides they no longer need consent of the governed.

by janalsncm

5/19/2026 at 12:35:05 AM

In the US, driving is a hard sell to call a privilege. It's basically a necessity. When society is designed around the assumption of getting around by car, it's no longer a privilege.

Also,

> So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.

You paid for a bit of the infrastructure being driven on just by being a tax payer.

by xboxnolifes

5/19/2026 at 7:42:33 AM

That's one of the best ways to do business. You take something that is technically a privilege, turn it into a necessity, and then charge through the nose for it. It makes you very rich and very powerful.

by tardedmeme

5/19/2026 at 12:28:42 AM

> driving is a privilege

Yet you can have a license without owning a car. They don't issue you a plate to use. So the plate is clearly for something else, mainly I think, to indicate that you've paid the appropriate registration fees on the vehicle. The plates are tied to a vehicle to prevent the obvious "plate swapping" attack that people would use against this regime.

> roof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure

Actually those are gas and sales taxes, are they not?

> you're required to wear the wrist band.

The wrist band need not have a unique identifier readable from several feet away emblazoned on it in order to function.

by themafia

5/19/2026 at 12:31:10 PM

> So the plate is clearly for something else, mainly I think, to indicate that you've paid the appropriate registration fees on the vehicle.

I think it's so they can identify the car owner quickly and easily and hold them liable for any law violations or damage. And of courese, at least partially (or ostensibly) for revenue generation and taxation purposes (though if that's all it was for, just using the VIN would make more sense IMHO, which is why I suspect it's more for the former).

by freedomben

5/18/2026 at 11:10:47 PM

>Your plate is displayed because driving is a privilege, not a right (note that traveling is a right, but you can travel without driving).

But the 4th amendment is a right, that applies even when engaging in a "privilege." See also the fact police can't just willy nilly check your driver license while engaging in a "privilege."

>So your plate is really the proof that you've paid a bit for the infrastructure to drive on.

False.

Plates are required even on my own privately owned publicly accessible road, and a large portion of my trips happen on publicly available but 100% privately owned roads with 0 taxes to maintain them (in fact, I maintain a lot of the roads in my community myself because they are all private). In fact some of those roads, I 100% own and maintain, and yet since I legally can't bar anyone from driving on it the law in my state (AZ) requires a displayed plate (even for me).

>It's like having a wrist band to an event. You're not required to attend the event, but if you do attend it, you're required to wear the wrist band.

It's like citing me for not having a wrist band on my own owned road easement, which is the law in my state. There is no property right you are attempting to assert under which that makes sense. I can go about 90% of the way to "town" on privately owned roads in which none of the owners care if I have a "wrist band" yet the state can still cite me for not having it.

by mothballed

5/19/2026 at 3:29:17 AM

The fact that the road is legally accessible to the public makes it a public road for the sake of this discussion. You must have a license plate to drive on a public road. It really isn’t any more complicated than that.

It doesn’t matter whether the road in front of my house is owned by the federal government, state, county, city, or Bob, I and everyone else is allowed to drive on it, so it’s a public road.

by brewdad

5/19/2026 at 3:10:46 AM

Car is a neccesity in this country.

US is certainly not known for it's public transportation and walkable cities.

by hsuduebc2

5/19/2026 at 11:59:56 AM

Cars are also lethal weapons and around 1 out of every ~83 deaths in the US is a traffic death (~38k traffic deaths/yr, ~3M total deaths/yr). It's good to keep track of cars given how dangerous they are.

by modriano

5/19/2026 at 12:26:51 AM

I’ll throw you an olive branch and say the registration sticker is completely pointless. The source of truth for whether my car is registered is in a database, not on a sticker. Someone can steal your sticker which results in a false positive for the thief and a false negative (and huge headache) for the victim.

by janalsncm

5/19/2026 at 9:18:31 AM

True - but couldn't the same be said for ID then ? Just memorise your license number - cops have been able to look it up in their car computer for years. Saved me at least once.

Typically also they don't even bother with looking at your registration unless the sticker is way out of date

by Melatonic

5/19/2026 at 5:10:26 PM

There isn’t a simple mapping between IDs and car registrations. You can borrow a friend’s car without telling the government about it.

by janalsncm

5/19/2026 at 8:02:33 AM

The point of a plate is to publicly identify the vehicle at all times, not just when you feel like it

by aetch

5/19/2026 at 5:20:43 AM

The tech companies will just use face recognition, tracing, gait recognition, unique properties (like scratches) etc. etc. for the same purpose, same way they pioneered browser fingerprinting.

by foobiekr

5/19/2026 at 1:08:43 AM

They will find something else to track you by. I think the idea of no expectation of privacy in public doesn't work anymore with the available tech.

by vjvjvjvjghv

5/18/2026 at 8:30:46 PM

In socal people might not even use license plates at all. Some people mask them with a towel or something like that. Some run paper dealership plates which I guess don't need to have any license number on them at all, just the dealer logo. Others just take them off and drive. I've seen plates that were sanded clean and with different numbers stuck on them that don't match then indented numbers.

And then of course all the texas plates. No, it isn't just visitors from texas. Texas has a cool loophole where there is no registration information on the plate, it is on a little sticker on the dashboard. As such, there are a dozen plus cars that have been regulars in my neighborhood for years with texas plates, with some several years old sticker on their dashboard.

It is kind of surprising that they don't get hit with a huge ticket for failing to register their car after 20 days. Some even park on the street quite brazenly. But maybe that shows how these systems are, today at least, very poorly connected between states. I've even seen a car being sold locally where the owner openly admits it was never registered or smogged, and they used it as their local neighborhood runabout just rolling the dice that they would not get pulled over. Just an aspect of the driving culture.

by asdff

5/18/2026 at 9:48:06 PM

Note that Flock says it can identify a car by physical characteristics from dents to bumper stickers.

by jkestner

5/18/2026 at 9:55:49 PM

Having worked with the result of prior generations (circa 2010) of algorithms for that sort of thing in the radar spectrum (I was not privy to the actual algorithms that underpinned it all) I suspect accuracy drops off exponentially once you get away from text based stuff and flagrant body differences (missing mirror, aftermarket spoiler, etc).

by cucumber3732842

5/18/2026 at 9:56:05 PM

Absolutely they can. Vehicle panel colors, wheel rims, roofrack, tow hitch, bumper stickers, damage all factor into their vehicle fingerprinting.

And once they've got a real license plate for the vehicle, all the historical information for that vehicle fingerprint's activities are now linked.

by FireBeyond

5/19/2026 at 4:49:33 AM

I routinely add/remove many of those things so I'm not sure how reliable they are.

Like I alternate between hitch/no hitch/bike rack, add/remove roof rack (it hurts mileage and is easy to swap), swap between my summer and winter rims+tires, and rotating through a set of magnetic bumper stickers would be trivial.

by HNisCIS

5/19/2026 at 9:13:14 PM

I'm guessing license plate takes precedence over all those things. On the other hand, Flock hasn't shown any particular competence, and is happy to flag a bunch of false positives (look at all those criminals!).

by jkestner

5/19/2026 at 11:11:00 PM

> and is happy to flag a bunch of false positives (look at all those criminals!).

Garrett has explicitly said he'd prefer a false positive to a false negative (very dystopian, no?) given his goal of "zero crime, powered by Brawndo, I mean Flock".

by FireBeyond

5/19/2026 at 3:30:39 PM

So you’re in the < 1% they can’t accurately and reliably fingerprint.

On the whole, no big deal.

by testing22321

5/19/2026 at 12:30:57 AM

Note that Flock has incorrectly identified several vehicles as "suspects" to police during investigations.

Flock has two obligations. Sell equipment to police. Avoid freaking the public out.

Their statements are almost certainly not reliable.

by themafia

5/18/2026 at 11:28:31 PM

You properly could identify cars uniquely by the sound they make. If not now then soon.

by pizzly

5/19/2026 at 12:49:30 AM

My dog could do this 10 years ago. 2 miles away through the canyon she knew exactly who would be showing up in 10 minutes. And it's a popular canyon.

by ranon

5/19/2026 at 3:29:30 PM

I can identify the family wagon we had growing up from the door slamming.

Always makes me smile when I hear it across a parking lot.

by testing22321

5/19/2026 at 9:28:13 AM

"The whistlers go WOOOOO"

by Melatonic

5/19/2026 at 9:17:57 PM

If Shot Spotter is bad at merely identifying the source of a gunshot, I'm not going to trust our security tech bros to cut through all the environmental noise and provide trustworthy identification among 10,000 different Teslas.

by jkestner

5/18/2026 at 8:44:21 PM

> Some run paper dealership plates which I guess don't need to have any license number on them at all, just the dealer logo

In California, isn't this just a normal person buying a new car? If bought from a dealership lot, a new car will run on temporary paper plates for several weeks until the permanent registration and new plate is processed. You see this all the time in CA, because CA buys a lot of new cars. There are even circumstances a used car will roll of the dealer lot with paper plates pending processing.

by giobox

5/18/2026 at 8:47:55 PM

That isn't how it works anymore, as far as I know (it used to). The dealerships now can print paper license plates with numbers on them.

by bagels

5/18/2026 at 9:21:58 PM

Yup, I recently bought a car and you get temporary numbers that are associated with the dealer (who knows who you are and what car you have) until your actual plate with real numbers and registration comes from the DMV.

by jerlam

5/18/2026 at 8:45:53 PM

You can tell when it isn't a normal person buying a new car when it is your neighbor's car you see for multiple years with those "temporary" tags. I catch a lot of out of date registration too. Usually those cars are parked off street but sometimes not. I usually see about two dozen on my walks. Easy to tell at a glance when you recognize what color tag is now very stale.

by asdff

5/18/2026 at 8:55:58 PM

Sometimes, yes, but some groups of people just run with temporary tags for a very long time and roll the dice.

by everdrive

5/18/2026 at 11:40:39 PM

There are groups on Facebook Marketplace selling fakes. They used to have those Texas dealer plates but I believe the Texas authorities finally stopped procrastinating on doing something about that.

It used to be easy to search for terms like “tires” and find what were clearly counterfeiting rings.

by acdha

5/18/2026 at 8:46:01 PM

Car culture sucks, but on the other hand, I'm kinda glad we don't live in such a police state that we got people going out of their way looking over our shoulders at this level of detail.

Although, this does get enforced in some places, at least. I remember on Parking Wars, PPA ticketed or maybe impounded a car that had an out of state expired registration.

by dfxm12

5/18/2026 at 8:49:01 PM

Well, it directly leads to registration fees and insurance rates being higher than they would normally with everyone paying in properly. There's also air quality concerns with people not going for smog checks. So people not playing that game are getting hurt by the people who do.

by asdff

5/18/2026 at 9:19:28 PM

Having laws that only some people follow, and others do not without penalty, bothers everyone's natural sense of fairness and eventually rots the whole concept of following laws.

by jerlam

5/18/2026 at 9:29:00 PM

We have a lowering trust society for many reasons. I don't doubt it plays a role, but I'm sure this is low on the list of contributing factors. The required deployment of LEO to our communities to enforce this as suggested would lower trust further. There are many more impactful ways to raise trust, and most of them involve addressing the corruption of those in power.

by dfxm12

5/18/2026 at 9:59:42 PM

>natural sense of fairness

This sets off my spidey senses in the same way that "social contract", "law abiding citizen" and other turns of phrase like that do.

>Having laws that only some people follow

It's not like these people are all part of the system and protected from consequences. They're just saying fuggit consequences be damned. Be happy that some have the balls to tell the system to shove it. You can choose to be one of them any time you want.

by cucumber3732842

5/18/2026 at 10:02:21 PM

There's a certain kind of person cops don't like to deal with unless it's going to get them a nice promotional-tier felony arrest. Not a lot of people looking to wrestle with a gang banger over a registration ticket. If you look like a functional member of society though they'll ruthlessly enforce whatever money they can get out of you.

by mothballed

5/19/2026 at 1:38:57 AM

Anyone can buy a Chrysler 300 and pay the local detailing shop to limo tint it. There's nothing stopping you from looking like a tough nut to crack.

Regardless, the cops harass the shit out of people who "look sketchy" because your bullshit license plate or whatever pretext is what gets you the foot in the door to the felony BS.

by cucumber3732842

5/19/2026 at 12:38:24 AM

[flagged]

by HDBaseT

5/18/2026 at 9:57:24 PM

I drive in socal a lot and I rarely see a car without a visible plate.

by dawnerd

5/19/2026 at 12:45:16 AM

How about digital license plates? That change the code displayed daily. Not unlike authenticator phone apps.

Police can still use them to identify the vehicle, and verify registration, but mass surveillance and repo companies can't use them to track vehicles for more than a day OR to identify vehicles.

by tintor

5/19/2026 at 4:45:53 AM

The gov will have that database though and it's a simple query to get all the displayed IDs and then search them in Flock's database. It makes it slightly harder for Flock to do things of it's own accord but that's not the problem here.

by HNisCIS

5/19/2026 at 9:23:39 PM

Gov will always have access if they really want to, but my suggestion above prevents Flock and private companies from connecting vehicle location data to vehicle owner.

by tintor

5/19/2026 at 12:32:32 PM

So you audit the database and the access. Just because it exists doesn’t mean it has be available.

by _factor

5/19/2026 at 3:25:26 AM

Flock uses other vehicle characteristics to track vehicles: bumper stickers, dents, etc.

by rationalist

5/19/2026 at 1:37:05 AM

What are the odds of Elon already providing this kind of service through Teslas?

by goshx

5/19/2026 at 7:09:32 AM

The same odds as any other modern car spying on you and selling that data (100%)

by akimbostrawman

5/18/2026 at 8:13:31 PM

My local town runs their own license plate readers for red light and speed cameras. Not sure how the feds could get access to those.

by amanaplanacanal

5/18/2026 at 8:35:46 PM

These have funny loopholes usually. For our county they have a few connected to running the red light for a busway. But notoriously the information is collected by some company out of state with no actual policing power, who then begs you to pay the ticket with a letter every couple months. You can actually ignore this if you avoid any sign of life that indicates you might have received the ticket, such as looking it up on the county ticket portal. They don't serve you or send it via certified mail. The county courts motioned years ago that they aren't enforcing these tickets. They don't affect your ability to renew your license, register your car, or insurance rates. They don't come up when you get pulled over for anything else. It is basically a scam to support the traffic ticket company out of state hoping you pay them and sustain their business model.

by asdff

5/18/2026 at 10:09:40 PM

Except current immigration enforcement. Ignoring that is enough to have citizenship denied. Just happened to a friend of mine in Houston. Culture is to ignore, courts ignore, police don’t see it. USCIS do.

by jamiek88

5/18/2026 at 8:23:05 PM

The NSA would presumably have all of this.

From a taxpayer perspective, it's such a waste to have multiple agencies doing their own unconstitutional surveillance. Why have two Ministries of Love when one would do? :)

by testplzignore

5/18/2026 at 8:59:35 PM

This is the purview of the FBI. The NSA is focused on the rest of the world.

Is there overlap? Sure. But the amount of disinformation on the website about the FBI vs the NSA is comical. If anything, when people say “NSA” they really mean “CIA” and just don’t understand the difference.

by irishcoffee

5/18/2026 at 9:17:58 PM

>The NSA is focused on the rest of the world.

In the same way that the CIA doesn't sell cocaine.

I'm sure they "mostly" focus externally but that doesn't mean they're not still doing a hell of a lot domestically.

by cucumber3732842

5/18/2026 at 9:36:54 PM

recently there has been some football and stopgap in congress about reauthorizing the patriot act permissions for the NSA to collect any communications where one endpoint is out of the country. so that's at least widely recognized and 'legal'

by convolvatron

5/18/2026 at 9:50:31 PM

I covered this with: "Is there overlap? Sure."

The FBI is the boogeyman everyone around these parts wants the NSA to be. The NSA has the skillset, they just don't use it like that, domestically.

That was my point. Carry on. I don't mind if you agree or not.

by irishcoffee

5/19/2026 at 6:13:06 AM

Intentionally collecting everything to include millions of U.S. persons data, say the collection was "incidental", put the computer equivalent of a removable sticky-note over their name to say it's been "minimized" and thus a-okay for the NSA to use...

There is a debate the bulk of NSA's leadership has been wholly uninterested in having over what they do with regards to acquiring and parsing U.S. persons' private communications, instead preferring to use word-games and rhetorical sleight-of-hand.

Everything I've seen about the NSA domestic collection debate and publishings and statements from officials have boiled down to:

*The NSA taps communication sources they know with absolute certainty contains an enormous amount of U.S. persons' information because these sources also contain non-U.S. persons communications. An effort is made to remove U.S. persons' information from this programmatically but this step frequently leaves an enormous amount leftover. Despite this - the NSA intentionally parses these private communications - that include that of of millions of U.S. citizens - in bulk. That it isn't their intent or mission to specifically acquire and parse U.S. persons' communications are not germane considerations. Actions matter more than words.

*The NSA justifies this by dint of "it's okay, everyone! We trust ourselves to never do anything bad with your information! We never meant to acquire it! But we did. And we will keep acquiring more of your info 'incidentally' as your privacy is something we are willing to sacrifice in our efforts to acquire foreign intelligence."

*The NSA shares an enormous amount of U.S. persons' private communications with other intelligence agencies to include the FBI. Again - that it was not the NSA's intent nor mission to acquire the information to begin with is not relevant when they, nevertheless, keep getting the information!

by rockskon

5/20/2026 at 11:05:32 PM

> Everything I've seen about the NSA domestic collection debate and publishings and statements from officials

I’m telling you there is a lot you don’t know. I do not care if you accept that or not. Your sources are not my sources.

No I can’t prove it to you. Obviously you are free to believe whatever you want. Your sources are career politicians and the media. Mine… are not.

by irishcoffee

5/21/2026 at 1:15:59 AM

My sources are the prior leadership of the NSA's public statements, the specifics of the legal opinions released by the FISA court, PCLOB reports, and me actually paying attention to what intelligence officials have stated in public testimonies. They are not sourced from fear-mongering from paranoid schizophrenics or activist lawmakers who are making assumptions of what the NSA is doing.

You are doing the equivalent of telling me to ignore all of those sources - to include the FISA court - and to trust you - random-person-on-Hacker-News-alluding-to-working-for-the-NSA.

If you are correct and everything else - to include the FISA court - are wrong - then that begs the question of why they would all publicly make material misrepresentations about the NSA's acquisition of U.S. persons' information.

Shall I assume that the NSA no longer collects information if one-end of a communication is foreign and the other American?

Or what of Americans that use VPNs even if the exit node is within the U.S.?

What of "incidentally" collected information (collected without a probable-cause warrant) on U.S. citizens' communication contained evidence of a crime?

What about Americans living on the coasts whose information may end up crossing a fiber line going overseas and then back again even if the source and destination are U.S. citizens? Are their communications acquired?

Don't you all still share unminimized data (to include what U.S. person data was not filtered out at the time of initial acquisition) with the CIA, FBI, and NCTC - agencies with their own rules on how long they get to retain U.S. persons' information they acquired from NSA-sourced data.

The 2023 PCLOB report on FISA Section 702 (see page 78) maintains that agents and analysts at the NSA and the three agencies they share raw data with typically do not affirmatively purge U.S. persons' information that has been incidentally collected that is not immediately recognized as having foreign intelligence or criminality information. Out of the possibility that the information might later-on be interpreted as being relevant to their agency mission, instead the information is generally kept until it ages out. Depending on an agency's individual procedures they may be retained for 5 years. Or 15 years. Or indefinitely.

I'm to understand it used to be a real significant problem for analysts to spy on U.S. citizens indirectly by looking up a foreign national the U.S. citizen was known to be communicating with.

I could keep going on, but I'd like to think I made my point.

Your agency's mission statement is not a shield to hide behind. Your actions are what matter. And a legal Rube Goldberg machine that results in an enormous amount of U.S. persons information being acquired by the NSA (and, by association, the FBI and CIA and NCTC) does not engender confidence that the agency actually gives a damn about the privacy of U.S. citizens.

by rockskon

5/21/2026 at 11:00:57 AM

Not my agency. I’ll never work for them, or any DoD agency, ever.

by irishcoffee

5/18/2026 at 11:25:14 PM

> The NSA has the skillset, they just don't use it like that, domestically.

That seems like a statement that needs backed up by sources.

by joquarky

5/18/2026 at 11:37:55 PM

Fat chance. I don’t care if you believe me. I’m not lying to you.

by irishcoffee

5/18/2026 at 11:43:08 PM

I believe you but this seems far more like HSI territory, who are comfortable, able, and excessively willing to overstep rights of both citizens and foreigners. They're also an underestimated agency that IIRC is larger than the FBI.

by mothballed

5/18/2026 at 8:21:10 PM

Presumably it's a system that can be viewed from a phone or from dispatch remotely right? All they'd have to do is share the credentials and that's that.

by chaps

5/19/2026 at 6:46:42 PM

You sure that data is stored locally and not on a vendor's cloud offering?

by bl4kers

5/18/2026 at 8:25:54 PM

It already goes to your local DHS Fusion Center.

by dayofthedaleks

5/18/2026 at 8:15:00 PM

By offering money?

by masfuerte

5/18/2026 at 8:22:33 PM

Or withholding money (grants).

by giantg2

5/19/2026 at 12:26:14 PM

This has been the norm in the Netherlands for about 20 years now. Since then the number of license plate readers has expanded enormously. This is so old that the laws about it have been updated several times already.

https://digitalfreedomfund.org/case-studies/collection-and-m... (dutch, sorry)

https://anprcameras.nl/ (a partial list, oh and there's mobile "stations" doing it too)

At one point they were very proud of having developed an algorithm to go much further than just license plate reading: "trajectory control". By placing ANPR cameras on every road and checking the traffic, they could not just detect when your license plate drove by a camera, but locate the vehicle down to a few meters at all times. This algorithm is now also used for traffic indicators, speeding fines, ...

They also identify the vehicle (to check if you've paid correctly, and to give fines relating to vehicle type). They check how many people are in the car (there's a tax advantage for cars that never carry more than 2 people). And I'm sure this is not a full list.

Oh and in case you're wondering about the GPDR: every EU state, as well as a looong list of international organizations (from the UK tax service to Interpol) have the right to grant permanent and transitive exceptions to the GPDR to anyone they want. The license plates are collected and processed by a private company. A blanket GPDR exception has been granted to them. They have other business deals involving the license plate data.

The Netherlands is also doing face recognition in the public space, by the way. In a very similar way. The very thing the GPDR was explicitly "created to prevent", or so the story goes. It was even put into the GPDR law that without the GPDR face recognition would become commonplace. Well, GPDR passed, and it is commonplace. At airports + a lot of train stations + a number of locations in big cities. About 1.3% of all arrests in the Netherlands were made on the basis of face recognition cameras in 2023.

https://algoritmes.overheid.nl/en/algoritme/oorg10264/354332...

by spwa4

5/19/2026 at 1:07:10 AM

People are usually afraid of government surveillance but I suspected already a long time ago that all the data that's being collected by private firms will eventually be used by government and companies. Basically we have been building and continue building an infrastructure that Hitler or Stalin would have been envious of. And as we have seen in the last year, companies will fall in line quickly with whoever is in power as long as the profits keep flowing.

The only solution I see is to stop massive data collection no matter who does it. This is probably not going to happen so we will most likely end up with a surveillance society much worse than what "1984" described. And some day an authoritarian will use the data to its full extent.

by vjvjvjvjghv

5/18/2026 at 8:26:41 PM

I believe technology is great but we must regulate to assure personal privacy is maintained.

by scholarnet-AI

5/18/2026 at 9:17:50 PM

I don't think regulators (government) protecting the people from the FBI (government) is going to work out.

by nazgulsenpai

5/18/2026 at 8:28:35 PM

I think we can’t easily choose both, because these agencies will portray it as something they need in order to help children.

by cute_boi

5/18/2026 at 8:38:41 PM

They'll also need it to track down terrorists. And who determines who is a terrorist? Why, the department of justice does.

by bpoyner

5/18/2026 at 8:13:45 PM

I had already assumed that they were using Flock data for exactly this. I guess paying to speed the nationwide rollout makes it official and will free them from pesky courts and human rights.

by baggachipz

5/18/2026 at 8:25:53 PM

It's not that they don't have access but that they don't have legal access that they can use as leverage. Parallel construction is a pain in the ass. They're buying the right to use it in court.

by delichon

5/18/2026 at 8:45:57 PM

Exactly. It is not that they are not already spying on all of us; they are. Or that they cannot already nail you for something. It is that they need a way to launder their evidence so that it is kosher come prosecution.

by goolz

5/18/2026 at 9:15:12 PM

If they do, doesn't that make the companies running those readers agents of the state during the collaboration?

by LocalH

5/18/2026 at 10:03:22 PM

Not that it will help for long distance travel, but if I was running strategy for the big E-bike cartel, I couldn't think of a better meme to promote than the surveillance state getting a chubby about ALPRs.

Seriously, though, I think the Karens out there want E-bike licensed just so cops can keep hassling brown people even when they're not driving clapped out old Toyotas.

by Zigurd

5/18/2026 at 10:11:07 PM

ALPRs, from Flock in particular, track more than license plates. They've installed Flock cameras on pedestrian paths even.

by dawnerd

5/19/2026 at 10:47:31 AM

It's a special American madness that prevents law enforcement for installing their own mass surveillance systems, with all the oversight that it'd come with, and instead buy all the data they need from shady techbros siloing all the data they can, at ten times the cost.

If you don't like mass surveillance, you have to ban private companies doing it too. If you're okay with it, do it in-house. You still need to ban private companies doing it.

by oliwarner

5/18/2026 at 10:32:15 PM

[dead]

by god_n_stuff

5/18/2026 at 9:48:12 PM

[dead]

by black_13

5/18/2026 at 10:40:59 PM

Another AI click bait article. Fake news. And a conspiracy theory.

by martinbfine

5/18/2026 at 10:44:09 PM

If you make a claim like that you should back it up in some way.

by darkstar999

5/19/2026 at 1:06:21 AM

They already know where you are.

by foofyter

5/18/2026 at 8:43:21 PM

Does anyone sell am eInk display that's 12"x6"? Doesn't have to be color, though bonus points for that...

by NoMoreNicksLeft

5/18/2026 at 8:58:00 PM

Something like this? https://reviver.com/

by lanrat

5/18/2026 at 9:00:25 PM

Nah, I was thinking a raw eInk panel. Not one controlled by the state. One that can flip the numbers for 2 seconds, while driving past the surveillance cameras but be back on my real license plate number immediately just in case there are any cops watching. Hell, I could even run recognition against the rear dash cam, so that it overrides a flip if there are recognizable cop cars within view. Could be fun.

by NoMoreNicksLeft

5/18/2026 at 9:27:08 PM

James Bond had a solution for this decades ago

by hdgvhicv

5/18/2026 at 9:02:11 PM

I equate these license plates with terrible money management skills. $900 for a license plate: "a fool and his money are soon parted" regardless of what income bracket they're in

by kylehotchkiss

5/18/2026 at 9:24:33 PM

This information can be critical for understanding the movement of vehicles and can benefit law enforcement giving them more evidence and knowledge to work off of. As long as these systems are accurate and not being maliciously tampered with it keeps everyone accountable to their actions.

by charcircuit

5/18/2026 at 10:11:13 PM

Corrupt government officials use this data to kidnap people. Not criminals, just people they don't like. Do you really think that's worth tolerating just because it'll help us catch more actual criminals?

by __MatrixMan__

5/19/2026 at 4:49:33 AM

I have to wonder if the two who've replied to you are bots. Neither of them seem to have noticed what you meant by "kidnap people".

by simoncion

5/19/2026 at 5:04:59 AM

I am not a bot and I understand that kidnap people can also mean to abduct people which is the age independent term.

by charcircuit

5/19/2026 at 12:14:32 AM

Yes, I think it's worth tolerating and I think all queries should be logged and monitored for abuse. Kidnapping already is not legal to do.

by charcircuit

5/19/2026 at 9:31:19 PM

We're already seeing that federal agents are finding clever ways to access this data while hiding the fact that they're federal agents: https://www.404media.co/floridas-wildlife-cops-are-searching...

And that's right now. They don't currently own the infra. If you think they're going to be better behaved once they do, you're delusional.

by __MatrixMan__

5/19/2026 at 5:22:42 AM

But if persons in power are already not being held accountable, what the heck is a log file going to do?

by righthand

5/19/2026 at 9:07:10 AM

If people in power can freely get away with kidnapping than there are bigger problems to fix to restore law and order.

by charcircuit

5/19/2026 at 1:06:30 PM

Exactly my point and you’re describing giving those people more power and suggesting an unenforced audit log is all we need to keep check.

by righthand

5/19/2026 at 8:24:45 PM

I never suggested an inenforced audit log.

by charcircuit

5/20/2026 at 1:02:22 PM

Who enforces checking the log for overreach then? The cops/pols that can’t be trusted to use it?

by righthand

5/19/2026 at 12:37:31 PM

And giving those same people more power makes it more difficult to fix the core problems.

by _factor

5/19/2026 at 8:25:19 PM

It doesn't. It's just as easy / hard to vote such a person out.

by charcircuit

5/19/2026 at 9:19:03 PM

The people they're having abducted are the people that speak out about their misbehavior. Enabling those abductions very directly makes it harder to vote them out.

by __MatrixMan__

5/19/2026 at 12:11:15 AM

Helping solve kidnapping cases is a direct and straightforward application of vehicle intelligence data.

by Dibby053

5/19/2026 at 9:15:38 PM

Enabling state sponsored kidnapping is also a direct and straightforward application of vehicle intelligence data.

We should only allow its use if the cases solved is likely more than the cases caused.

by __MatrixMan__