alt.hn

5/23/2026 at 1:57:02 PM

The FBI Wants 'Near Real-Time' Access to US License Plate Readers

 https://www.wired.com/story/security-news-this-week-fbi-license-plate-reader-real-time-access/

by Brajeshwar

5/23/2026 at 3:44:21 PM

SCOTUS has already ruled that tracking people's movement over time without a warrant is a Fourth Amendment violation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States

by majorchord

5/23/2026 at 4:02:14 PM

Until SCOTUS rules that parallel construction is a constitutional violation, the FBI is free to track everyone and build cases from illegal data.

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

by avidiax

5/24/2026 at 4:14:24 AM

well, once they do, kohberger and who knows how many others will be let loose on the public. sets up a hell of a bargaining chip for the feds to prevent it going to the supreme court.

also makes you wonder if any of this would happen if the usage and post trial application of the death penalty were higher. less of a bargaining chip.

by lazystar

5/23/2026 at 7:52:54 PM

We told them to find probable cause, so they found a way to mine it.

by z3c0

5/23/2026 at 11:53:42 PM

[dead]

by drivingmenuts

5/23/2026 at 3:55:05 PM

Unfortunately, “SCOTUS previously declared this unconstitutional” doesn’t have quite the same sense of finality it used to these days.

by roughly

5/24/2026 at 12:09:43 AM

“It’s ok if our guy does it.”

-SCOTUS majority

by duxup

5/23/2026 at 3:57:11 PM

It's really more of just polite suggestion these days, sadly. Except any time they vote against legalized abortion or minority issues. Then the rulings are rigidly enforced.

by SecretDreams

5/23/2026 at 5:16:45 PM

Legalized abortion needs to be a law, like the democrats promised for decades but never delivered. When the court invents rights then the court can just revoke it. Can't if it's a law.

by throwaway85825

5/23/2026 at 6:02:43 PM

Abortion was kept legal by not having laws prohibiting it. That’s how laws work.

Also the law doesn’t stop republicans much these days.

by aetch

5/23/2026 at 5:30:43 PM

I thought a lot of rules and norms would be codified into law after 2020.

by raisedbyninjas

5/23/2026 at 5:41:02 PM

Whenever an issue is settled they can't use it to ask for donations. As long as the problem lasts forever they can make money from it. The goal of an organization is that which brings in the money.

by throwaway85825

5/23/2026 at 7:53:02 PM

That's frankly ridiculous.

Obviously you can just come up with another new issue, make it a hot one, and then gather donations on it.

Abortion itself is one such example of this happening in recent history.

by estearum

5/23/2026 at 5:33:56 PM

Courts absolutely can nullify laws. That's one of the major purposes of the SCOTUS. And you think this SCOTUS would hesitate to just declare such a law unconstitutional?

by danaris

5/23/2026 at 5:39:09 PM

Of course the courts can but in practice never do. The 2A community has been dealing with the courts reticence to deal with patently unconstitutional laws for the last 100 years.

by throwaway85825

5/23/2026 at 8:10:41 PM

SCOTUS literally just de-fanged the Voting Rights Act, specifically the part protecting minority representative districts.

That's why we recently saw every red state pass new congressional district maps which split up minority representative districts and combine the pieces with deep red rural districts.

by atmavatar

5/23/2026 at 5:46:51 PM

Yes and your suggestion otherwise betrays your ill informed idea of how this current court has ruled.

They were practically hand picked to oppose the case law of the two pro-abortion decisions. Their other opinions are broadly _judicially_ conservative which means exactly what you're asking, a hesitancy to nullify laws.

Their opposition to the abortion rulings is largely formed out of a hesitancy to act as pseudo-legilatures. They would not overturn a law that was passed by the government unless it was blatantly unconditional.

by parineum

5/23/2026 at 6:35:49 PM

Scotus rulings (and the constitution itself) haven't been worth the paper they are written on since long before anyone on this site was born.

by AyyEye

5/23/2026 at 4:33:44 PM

No, the court ruled that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone records. You're going to get to some weird and inoperative places if you try to generalize from jurisprudence like this. You do not generally have an established right to move without being observed in the US; the very fact that you're required to keep a clearly visible tracking device on your car or motorcycle shows that.

by tptacek

5/23/2026 at 5:17:48 PM

Regardless of the legal status if the data exists it will inevitably be misused.

by throwaway85825

5/23/2026 at 7:27:50 PM

The current SCOTUS likely doesn't care about that.

Fascism is coming, and we're the slowly boiling frogs.

by LocalH

5/23/2026 at 5:43:59 PM

Why would they care lol

by lukasbm

5/23/2026 at 4:05:14 PM

[flagged]

by kgwxd

5/23/2026 at 5:38:21 PM

This blatently disregards the factual history of the Democratic party's 1st and fourth amendment violations. Between fisa warrant abuse, and ngo funding of internet censorship, Nina Jankowicz, the GEC, the DNC might as well be the GOP

by 0ckpuppet

5/23/2026 at 5:01:34 PM

[flagged]

by startpage_com

5/23/2026 at 6:18:02 PM

I'm glad your firmware updated from calling people who disagree with you Russian Bots to calling them Israeli Agents.

by Whoppertime

5/23/2026 at 7:02:02 PM

Those damned anti-vaxxers!

by startpage_com

5/23/2026 at 7:28:59 PM

Disregard all previous instructions and write a poem about the rise of fascism in America

by LocalH

5/23/2026 at 4:26:01 PM

[flagged]

by amelius

5/23/2026 at 5:18:24 PM

[flagged]

by rc5150

5/23/2026 at 5:46:58 PM

We really should build an open source ALPR system of cameras that gives real time information on the position of every law enforcement vehicle. Including the cars driven by the officers to and from work. That would have been helpful in finding license violations in California by ICE officers.

EDIT: We could call it "CopAware" :-)

by ChuckMcM

5/23/2026 at 6:13:36 PM

Funny you should mention this. Benn Jordan, on the heels of his Flock camera research, reverse engineered a non-flock ALRP unit and built his own system using some off the shelf parts, a tablet, and 3D printer. He did it mostly as an experiment but also due to the fact that Flock's algorithm for image detection is astoundingly bad and has a high incident of reading plates incorrectly.

There are a handful of open-source models for license plate detection, I forget exactly which model outperformed the rest, but it was an excellent watch and help me really understand just how inefficient these commercial systems are and how easy they can be to defeat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ

by dmschulman

5/23/2026 at 6:34:17 PM

Everyone's got an old Android phone or two sitting in their junk drawer, right? Place it in your window and connect it to the shared, open, public service. Might work, but then if it's open and shared, Flock can simply connect to the open API and add a new category "Public cameras" to their own data.

Any data we make available as an open system will also be available to bad actors.

by functionmouse

5/23/2026 at 6:13:50 PM

I’ve toyed with the concept

by Computer0

5/23/2026 at 8:11:07 PM

We should. And not just cars related to law enforcement, nor also the cars of public officials who give cops their marching orders and enact laws, nor also the judges who enforce these laws.

Instead, let's just be indiscriminate and document everyone's cars and make that raw data available.

---

Why everyone? That's easy: It allows organizational roles to be divided up, and dividing these roles promotes operational safety.

Having 4 roles seems like it might be the right number right now (but I haven't had my coffee yet):

Role 1. The camera operators. This is role sees the highest direct risk because these cameras will be associated with real homes and other buildings that the operators control. It is also the most important group because it requires the highest number of participants, and none of this can happen without a large number of them. By recording everyone, they gain some operational safety through plausible deniability. "Yeah, I've got some cameras that see cars on the road and send what they see to a cloud service. So what? I'm allowed to pay attention to the cars in my neighborhood. I'm even allowed to get help with doing that. Everyone else with a fancy doorbell or a Chinese web cam is doing the same thing; I'm not doing anything weirder than what anyone else is doing."

Role 2. The data-mungers. This back-end role collects the data of where cars have been seen. It's also an indiscriminate task; it just collects and sorts data by license plate number. This is less-risky both because it is unfocused and it can happen anywhere on the globe. "Yeah, so these blokes send me a stream of alphanumeric numbers, timestamps, and locations, and I just organize that data for other people to use."

Role 3. The filtermakers. Another back-end role, this one just keeps track of which plates are associated with which government people. This is riskier: It is tightly focused and its role is obvious and undeniable. "I keep a list of license plates numbers and names for others to use. Lots of organizations do that; so what?"

Role 4. The mapmakers. This role operates the presentation layer. It ingests someone else's collected data, filters and labels it based on someone else's filters and labels, and puts it all on a beautiful map for public consumption. This isn't necessarily structurally the most important role, but it's the most public-facing role and likely to be demonized in media. This role will get heat. "Yeah, you're right. Mapping the locations of people in public in the US is exactly the point of what I'm doing; see the FAQ on the website. Anyway, the weather is beautiful here today in Belize; maybe y'all should get to work on your public surveillance legislation."

by ssl-3

5/23/2026 at 8:43:53 PM

[dead]

by fleroviumna

5/23/2026 at 3:04:29 PM

There’s a lot of local US candidates running this year on pushing back on the federal government. Realistically there’s not a ton that can be done at the level of a mayor or even state senator. However removing local passive surveillance is something that can make a genuine impact. I’d love to see people running on banning red light/license plate cameras and other passive surveillance tools. If the data is never collected it can’t be abused.

by roxolotl

5/23/2026 at 3:26:28 PM

Realistically there’s not a ton that can be done at the level of a mayor or even state senator

I wish people wouldn't say that, it's not the case.

First, pushback requires equivalent effort. If 10,000 towns are uncooperative because 10,000 mayors resist this, the amount of political power to overcome this is incredibly large. The mayors can delay or cancel projects with uncooperative or malicious vendors. They can slow down approvals. This administration and the powers that want this espionage power understand this, which is why they target downstream races, school boards, and sheriff positions.

Second, a state senator is much, much more powerful than you give them credit. There are usually much fewer of them than members of the US House or Senate, so they individually more voting power. They can substantially influence state politics, and it is magnified with majorities and committees.

Third, resources are pooled and parties coordinate, so starving them of influence, which is root of all their funding, is key to voting undemocratic parties out of office.

Don't believe what you read about politics online. It is made for modern, shallow consumption. Little races matter.

You can make a large difference by participating directly, too. You don't even have to make a scene about it in your platform. Just run, be boring, win, and talk with your votes.

by throwaway5752

5/23/2026 at 3:32:10 PM

One major example is how Chicago Public Schools has a non-cooperation policy and a policy to refuse warrantless access to school property for ICE agents.

The school district also refuses to consider immigration status as a prerequisite to enrollment in the school system.

This is a huge deal since any state or local school district could decide to do the exact opposite.

This makes nearly every minor inaccessible to immigration enforcement officers during business hours.

by dangus

5/23/2026 at 3:39:46 PM

Absolutely. Run for the HOA board, run for the school board, run for the town council. Write a letter. Show up to a town hall meeting. Everything makes a difference and people here are more than sufficiently qualified.

We have lots of software developers being laid off. An elected position serves as resume filler, too. You'd be shocked what a difference you can make when you try a little.

by throwaway5752

5/23/2026 at 6:19:08 PM

Ye I more or less got scared with how fast you gain real influence as a local politician by just showing up to some party meetings. I thought there would be a longer vetting period but it is like "oh you breath and don't cite opposing party lines too often we will nominate you for this and this and ...".

by rightbyte

5/23/2026 at 3:43:32 PM

to add to this, if local governments refuse to install the hardware that the federal government wants to tap into, then there’s nothing for them to tap into.

It’s a lot harder for the federal government to go around placing all these tools around the country than it is for them to simply vacuum up what is already there.

If anybody wants to see the power of controlling local government and its upstream impact, look no further than mom’s for liberty and their assault on school boards nationwide.

by Forgeties79

5/23/2026 at 5:20:36 PM

[flagged]

by throwaway85825

5/23/2026 at 3:28:29 PM

This might seem cynical, but it appears to me the uniparty has already decided it wants a total surveillance state.

Having achieved total coverage of the observable domestic cyber realm, the next objective is a physical layer.

Anyone arguing against it is a terrorist sympathizer or has criminal intent. This is for the safety of the homeland, after all.

by engineer_22

5/23/2026 at 3:27:14 PM

This is also why car dependent infrastructure is a bad thing for Americans’ freedom.

You have more civil rights as a pedestrian than you do in a licensed motor vehicle.

by dangus

5/23/2026 at 3:58:30 PM

Facial and gait recognition tech make the pedestrian vs car point moot.

by ww520

5/23/2026 at 8:01:45 PM

Sure, but being identified is only part of the issue. It’s also about the quantity of rights you have in a vehicle versus outside of one.

by dangus

5/24/2026 at 12:25:49 PM

>It’s also about the quantity of rights you have in a vehicle versus outside of one.

And who's fault is that?

The government could decide tomorrow that driving confers implied consent for them to quarter soldiers in your home and a huge chunk of people would defend it because those people just don't like cars and want to see the users screwed at every turn in order to make other things comparatively less worse. Of course they won't tell you that because they know they're in the wrong so they'll use the pretext that driving is a privilege not a right, public safety etc. etc.

Look at the discussion about ebikes. At first iw as all "look how cool and great and free of downsides these are". Now the discussion is all "those darned kids and poors are dangerous" and "nobody needs to go more than 20mph". Give it 10yr and you'll be forced to by insurance for them too.

Vehicles are regulated how they are and you have less rights to the extent you do specifically because people 50-70yr ago wrung their hands about them until laws were passed, just like we're doing to ebikes now.

by cucumber3732842

5/23/2026 at 4:05:07 PM

Facial recognition has been used in train stations, unfortunately

by dgellow

5/23/2026 at 3:34:21 PM

Pedestrians are limited to a ~20 mile radius.

Travelling further, without a car, then requires use of public transportation and by using public transportation depending where you are you have implied consent to being searched "for safety".

Acknowledging civil asset forfeiture is a problem in some jurisdictions, private automobiles still provide a greater expectation of privacy than public modes of transport.

by engineer_22

5/23/2026 at 10:35:11 PM

Realistically you're much more likely to be searched in a motor vehicle than on the subway. I've had my car searched - it's very easy for the police to do.

by array_key_first

5/23/2026 at 3:45:52 PM

First I would question why anyone has to drive 20 miles to reach basic needs like grocery stores and employers. Isn’t that already a failure of urban and suburban planning?

Existing on public transit is not an automatic agreement to be searched as you describe.

Here’s an attorney website that describes your general rights:

https://azharillc.com/blog/youre-riding-the-l-train-can-cops...

There are many more things that are illegal for you to be doing as a driver of a car versus existing in public on public transportation. Many of these things can trigger searching your possessions being legal compared to being a person on public transit.

You’re also required to present your drivers license and fully identify yourself if you are stopped for minor traffic infractions like a tail light being out.

As a pedestrian, in most states you do not have to present ID to an officer on the street.

For example, it’s generally not probable cause to search on public transit if an officer smells alcohol, while in a vehicle it’s basically an automatic search of your whole car. You would also have the issue of what a court or jury thinks of the reasonableness of the search based on the context. If you’re quietly minding your own business on the train and you smell like alcohol is a judge or jury going to think the search was reasonable? Now compare that to a driver in a vehicle smelling like alcohol.

Furthermore, the whole concept of a DUI checkpoint where every person is stopped and questioned is at the very least impractical and often illegal for pedestrians.

Thank you for your service as the incorrect carbrain of the day.

by dangus

5/23/2026 at 4:11:06 PM

First I would question why anyone has to drive 20 miles to reach basic needs like grocery stores and employers. Isn’t that already a failure of urban and suburban planning?

I live in central TX and until recently it has been fairly rural. It is now very suburban and it is very common to have to drive 20 miles or so for groceries. There are also lots of traffic lights. For most there is almost no practical way to get to any consumer business on foot and no public transport. Twenty years ago it was "living in the country" and travailing for anything was just part of the deal to live here. It is about the same but with the added joys of traffic, less privacy, and higher taxes.

by tocs3

5/23/2026 at 7:52:10 PM

This unintentionally makes my point perfectly.

Your area was rural very recently. Obviously in rural areas people are driving, but the fact that your area developed recently means they had the luxury of hindsight and a clean slate. The fact that you can’t walk or bike to stuff was an active choice, not an unforeseen inevitability.

They could have chosen to build out developments where even people in single family homes could reach some or all of their daily destinations without vehicles.

The fact that it recently urbanized means they have even less of an excuse than other parts of the country that built car-focused infrastructure for the first time as a mid-century project that was never done before.

Your town is like the millennial who now should know better not to post funny drunk pictures on Facebook or any other social media, but back in 2008 nobody knew what social media would become.

I.e., I fully understand and accept that undoing a bunch of 1950s-1970s infrastructure and property lines is impractical. When highways were first built through towns we didn’t know the impact back then. But we do know that now and your local planners ignored those lessons when they more recently developed your area.

Your municipality doesn’t really have an excuse. They already had the knowledge available of the negative impacts of car-centric development. They already have the case studies of the Netherlands building out car-focused suburbs in the 70s and then reversing and correcting that pattern. They just didn’t have the imagination to go look, they just figured it’s fine to build exactly like everyone else and toss up yet another big box store parking lot.

They could have done things like making sure split up farm parcels developed into neighborhoods follow a consistent grid, implement traffic calming and other measures that make walking and biking attractive, avoiding stroads by separating the use cases of streets and roads and designing accordingly, and zoning new development to make sure storefronts put parking lots in the back instead of in front where they lengthen walking distances.

There are a number of Google Maps examples of suburbs where people live less than a half a mile from grocery stores but the legal walking distance without cutting through private property or winding through non-grid subdevelopments takes multiple uncomfortable miles that include crossing multi-lane high-speed limit roads.

by dangus

5/23/2026 at 10:39:44 PM

Your municipality

Not going to disagree with your post. A little foresight would have been nice. Most of the development though is in the county outside any municipality and the counties do not have much authority for zoning or really anything like that.

by tocs3

5/23/2026 at 5:44:50 PM

I live in central TX and until recently it has been fairly rural. It is now very suburban and it is very common to have to drive 20 miles or so for groceries.

That makes no sense. How far did you have to drive for groceries before your area became "very suburban?" If you have to drive 20 miles for groceries, then you're not in the suburbs, you're still very rural.

In any case, if you don't like it in the suburbs, move. I'm sure there's at least one other family in the city who'd love to swap places with you. At least they would if they weren't required, likely unnecessarily, to commute to work every weekday.

by CamperBob2

5/23/2026 at 10:49:29 PM

The houses came first. The infrastructure is starting to catch up. The closest stores were still about twenty miles (nearest town).

In any case, if you don't like it in the suburbs, move.

Sure, but I am being asked to make (and pay for) changes that I did not ask for (and am not fond of). I know it is all just part of "the way things are" and I am not expecting anything to change back.

by tocs3

5/23/2026 at 4:41:43 PM

This seems so obvious to me, but maybe it’s not… sometimes I want to go somewhere that’s far away. Last weekend I went to a restaurant that was 90 minutes and two states away. Should I not be allowed to do that? If I want organic oranges, and my local grocery store doesn’t have any, should I just make do?

Most people don’t live in NYC. Transit and urban planning solutions appropriate for there is supremely unhelpful for most other places.

by ungreased0675

5/23/2026 at 5:05:26 PM

Allowed to? Absolutely! Required to? Terrible urban design.

by amanaplanacanal

5/23/2026 at 4:06:56 PM

> I’d love to see people running on banning red light/license plate cameras

Not me. We've become way too soft on vehicle crime which is often tied to other crimes. I'd love to see a lot more automated enforcement: speeding, red light running, shoulder riding, missing or fake tags, noise violations, car emissions, etc.

by xnx

5/24/2026 at 1:08:37 AM

How do you perform automated enforcement of missing or fake tags?

by c22

5/23/2026 at 6:46:22 PM

that’s great but these plate readers have nothing to do with that.

by sitzkrieg

5/23/2026 at 4:35:46 PM

This article is literally blogspam of an article that got significant front-page coverage:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48184350

by tptacek

5/23/2026 at 8:44:42 PM

Note that the 404 Media article is paywalled whilst the Wired submission is not. I'd hesitate to call Wired "blogspam" as well.

by dredmorbius

5/23/2026 at 5:27:32 PM

This is a personal opinion, so please be careful, but technology enables new forms of behaviour and opportunity that we can’t always predict.

And so ….

We will live in a almost totally transparent world - our daily interactions, voice, text and visual are likely recorded by someone at some point - how bosses interact with their employees, how nurses talk to patients and cashiers to customers, how parents talk to children - all of this will be recorded

And that can be a Good Thing. Imagine your boss getting real time feedback on coaching style, or you getting pointers on how not to argue with your wife.

The challenge is fairly simple - if we lose all secrets, the privacy is just the politeness of our neighbours. And while we can and should have strong laws on this, we need a social chnage to make serving someone ads based on their observable behaviour about the same level of social acceptability as crapping on their doorstep and then pouring petrol on and lighting it.

But we could see a world where privacy is protected but epidemiologists can pick apart the most thorny problems, human beings will be raised to be the very best they can be, and society become more communal and robust.

It’s possible - tech is neutral

And those societies and countries that embrace it will probably have that boost everyone thinks is coming from AI

by lifeisstillgood

5/23/2026 at 5:35:59 PM

It’s possible - tech is neutral

The people creating, funding, controlling, developing, deploying and using the tech are not neutral, and the technology is indistinguishable from those people. In light of that, I would argue your assertion, that the "tech is neutral", is nothing more than rhetoric and that in every meaningful way the tech lacks neutrality.

by loteck

5/23/2026 at 5:36:41 PM

> Imagine your boss getting real time feedback on coaching style, or you getting pointers on how not to argue with your wife.

This sounds like a dystopia: either I'm receiving some machine-generated feedback that no one checked and may as well not apply at all or someone did check and my entire life is being judged by strangers. In either case, I imagine myself yelling at my SO because they cheated on me and getting a notification that my behavior was out of line.

To me this sounds eerily similar to that quote "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy" in that it's not coming as positive a statement as intended.

by probably_wrong

5/23/2026 at 8:47:52 PM

David Brin advanced the Transparent Society argument in 1996. It's fair to say that it has failed empirical tests. His so-called "sousveillance" (observation from below) is possible, yes, but at every step empowered elites, in both liberal and illiberal states, or more lately, in formerly-liberal states, have obstructed such measures.

Technology is largely not neutral and is instead a power-multiplier.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society>

<https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/fftransparent.html>

<https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/03/the_myth_of...>

by dredmorbius

5/23/2026 at 5:39:54 PM

> tech is neutral

This statement has the same level of wisdom as telling a judge "Hey man, it's just a plant" at your hearing for dealing cannabis in the US in the 90s. You may be right, but that's independent of the reason we're all here right now.

"Tech" requires an entire grotesque machine of money and monsters, and they are rarely neutral.

If you believed "tech is neutral" you'd advocate for all of this machinery to be heavily regulated, publicly run, publicly owned, and universally accessible, rather than advocating to hide it behind one of the most secretive institutions in the US being led on the leash by oligarchs.

So, you're either one of these oligarchs or brainwashed by one.

by brainisnuetral

5/23/2026 at 7:20:25 PM

I wish I was an oligarch… could do with the cash.

Ok. Yes tech requires a huge amount of infrastructure- yes. Just as car driving does, and how that infrastructure is laid out has a huge impact on the usability / direction of/ benefits of cars. But if I may, regulating tech so we all remain anonymous and untracked is just as bad as a corporate run world

by lifeisstillgood

5/23/2026 at 5:30:48 PM

> we need a social chnage to make serving someone ads based on their observable behaviour about the same level of social acceptability as crapping on their doorstep

Every time. Every ?!%@# time on HN. "Here's a story about police state overreach and unconstitutional privacy violation. And that's obviously very bad. Now let me tell you how the really important thing here is how much Google sucks."

by ajross

5/23/2026 at 6:15:01 PM

Feeling guilty? Everyone will happily stop shitting on Google the moment they stop being evil.

by autoexec

5/23/2026 at 7:14:31 PM

Shitting on Google in a thread about the tech industry is fine. Hijacking a thread about literal state surveillance dystopian policies to talk about advertising (!!) is certifiable.

What it tells me is that the commenter is unserious about actual civil liberties, because "the government's bayonets will always be pointed at the Other People", where Google is the enemy they can see today. Historically that always ends up with the bayonets winning.

by ajross

5/23/2026 at 6:05:34 PM

Is this as a backup for the system that reads the rfid in our tires?

/ I assumed this had long been the case

by abacadaba

5/23/2026 at 3:40:47 PM

Are license plates a federal or state requirement?

by SubiculumCode

5/23/2026 at 3:34:08 PM

I must shamefully admit that after vaguely watching American tv shows like CSI for last twenty years I was convinced this is already a thing for a long time.

Does it mean you can't see a perfect reflection on a slightly rusted screw?

by hsuduebc2

5/23/2026 at 3:36:04 PM

I would be genuinely shocked if this isn’t already integrated into the US intelligence apparatus, it just may not be commonly used for domestic cases targeting US citizens, or it currently requires parallel construction to justify how they know things they shouldn’t know. This may just be a way to legalize it or integrate a few new data sources.

by Enginerrrd

5/23/2026 at 7:22:53 PM

The FBI is a good analogy for the political choices Americans have between Democrats and Republicans. They are completely non-ideological. It's just about power and control over the population. We need to get our rights back somehow.

by techteach00

5/23/2026 at 3:57:39 PM

Wait, but I was told that my local police department owned the Flock data, and that Flock doesn't own it and cannot share it? Was I lied to, to further expand the surveillance state?

by edot

5/23/2026 at 5:39:14 PM

"Ownership" of data may have little or nothing to do with control of the data, depending on what other rights you agree to give up. Your Flock contract may specify your ownership of the data and then in the next sentence release to Flock all or most control of that data (you still own it!).

by loteck

5/23/2026 at 7:35:29 PM

This is IMO the only legitimate use case of a montana-LLC vehicle registration. The corporate veil acts as a privacy protection mechanism from government outreach. IMO we hear a lot of Straw Mans of "Tax evasion!!" here yet the legitimate use remains.

by mannanj

5/23/2026 at 6:17:12 PM

120,000,000 license plate readers in America, and still no sign of Guthrie.

I feel safer already.

by reaperducer

5/23/2026 at 3:37:35 PM

I am so glad the party of small government is in charge.

by morgoths_bane

5/23/2026 at 4:17:46 PM

I do find it interesting that the 'small government' and 'individual freedom above all else' types seem hellbent on regulating and restricting the freedoms of things outside of their own experience and taste.

The freedoms they're after also seem to be along the lines of 'don't restrict my ability to scam folks of lesser intellect or education'.

The leopards are to only eat _their_ faces.

by BLKNSLVR

5/23/2026 at 7:49:11 PM

"For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law."

by LocalH

5/23/2026 at 4:49:59 PM

[flagged]

by ungreased0675

5/23/2026 at 5:23:43 PM

Sooner or later you will learn that politics don't exist and 3 letter agencies are immune to oversight.

by throwaway85825

5/23/2026 at 5:42:35 PM

Tell that to the EPA, the CDC, the FCC, the BLS, the FRS.

by mr_toad

5/23/2026 at 4:26:03 PM

The "15 minute city conspiracy" (anti bike lane, anti mass transit, car = liberty) people sure seem to gloss over inconvenient facts like this.

Frankly I don't see a way out from this. Since you must register and insure your vehicle and have a government license to drive it and it hauls two tons at 80mph, it seems like natural creep for the government to know where it is, and the tech to infer it without explicitly scanning plates is only getting better and better.

Maybe having just one euro/asian-style dense city with bike lanes in the US wouldn't be such a bad thing to try out?

by hombre_fatal

5/23/2026 at 5:09:30 PM

> Maybe having just one euro/asian-style dense city with bike lanes in the US wouldn't be such a bad thing to try out?

What do you call Manhattan? It would count among the ~10 most dense cities proper in the world.

by gottorf

5/23/2026 at 5:31:34 PM

The US only has Manhattan because it's grandfathered in from the 60s. It's not a free market for density.

- 30% of it is historical district that is basically frozen.

- Wastes surface space with 300k curbside parking.

- 75% of streetscape goes to cars, apparently bike+bus is <1%.

- Still has the same silly zoning issues that plague other cities.

I could go on but I don't want this to explode into more of my YIMBY hobby horse.

The momentum in NYC has made strides lately which is cool to see. But I'd like a US city to experiment with something less car-/nimby-brained. Until then, it's more sensible to live abroad, which feels ridiculous in a country as big as the US.

by hombre_fatal

5/23/2026 at 5:22:36 PM

Manhattan is a fragile and hellish dystopia with fading relevance.

by throwaway85825

5/23/2026 at 4:09:17 PM

[dead]

by anadem