Number plates are just one of the privacy tracking technologies. Any modern connected car infotainment system will report and have that data sold or anything that has Bluetooth can be tracked.
I understand why these statistics may be interesting, but all I really want to see is a map of the locations of the ALPR cameras. I would add an easy link to that data on this site.
One thing this surfaces nicely is how scale changes the privacy model. Individually these look like “mere observation,” but once you can reconstruct routine movement patterns across counties, the data starts behaving more like long-term tracking than casual surveillance.
The county lists are wrong, at least they are for my state of New Jersey. We have 21 counties, not 27. Is it picking up the bordering counties that might have overlapping contracts or something?
It pulls counties from OSM administrative boundaries of level 6, which according to the OSM wiki, is "State counties and county equivalents, Territorial municipalities" (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag%3aboundary=administr...). It does lead to some weird oddities, like counties with under 10 homes... I'd rather not manually correct it, since I want to rely on pure OSM data. (Unless you mean there is an actual bug in the processing and there's counties listed that aren't in the right states...)
I'll add a link to the OSM relation for the county to each county page, so you can see the source data on OSM to verify/edit.
One of those counties is Rockland, which is in NY. I wonder if it's counting bordering counties for states, since the assumption may be that the closest essential services for some Rockland residents may be in New Jersey.
I know at least in Rockland's case, their power utility extends slightly into NJ. Can see it on statewide power outage trackers like this one: https://projects.nj.com/data/outagetracker/
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.
I agree. It's frustrating that we have ended up in a reality where vehicle movement is heavily tracked, but we're not using that technology to do the most obvious and productive thing.
My city spent a few million dollars installing Flock cameras to all its municipal parking garages in a matter of months, but has been hemming and hawing over adding a few speed cameras for years, despite petitioning the state for an allowance do so back in 2023.
Traffic enforcement cameras don't even have to become the networked surveillance system that Flock offers. Most are still cameras triggered by radar rather than perpetually recording all drivers.
These cameras are currently not used at all for traffic/speed enforcement. The best they would do is track more serious crimes like hit-and-runs by photographing cars in the area.
This is great work. Once ALPR coverage is dense enough that you can’t go anywhere without generating a permanent record, the “mere observation” argument falls apart. Mapping this openly is one of the few ways communities can actually understand what they’ve signed up for.
100% coverage seems like an inevitability in a country where filming in public is a constitutionally protected right and networked ALPR capability is possible (if not regularly offered yet) in commodity doorbell cameras.
> 100% coverage seems like an inevitability in a country where filming in public is a constitutionally protected right a
It really doesn't have to be though. The rights of individuals to record in public doesn't have to translate to the right of corporations (flock, amazon, etc.) to do it without restriction. Time, place, and manner restrictions on our rights already exist, it just needs to be found that this manner is unacceptable as an imposition on our freedom which should be protected under the fourth amendment.
I'm a private citizen. On my house we have an ALPR Axis camera pointing down the street (in addition to Axis cameras around the whole perimiter.) And when the police ask, we almost always provide them with data. I feel perfectly justified doing this, and we've helped solved several crimes.
Number plates are just one of the privacy tracking technologies. Any modern connected car infotainment system will report and have that data sold or anything that has Bluetooth can be tracked.
Recent car tracking discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46097624
I understand why these statistics may be interesting, but all I really want to see is a map of the locations of the ALPR cameras. I would add an easy link to that data on this site.
https://ringmast4r.github.io/FLOCK/
https://deflock.me/
DeFlock is the first link in the "Related ALPR & Flock Projects" section, it contains a map.
One thing this surfaces nicely is how scale changes the privacy model. Individually these look like “mere observation,” but once you can reconstruct routine movement patterns across counties, the data starts behaving more like long-term tracking than casual surveillance.
The county lists are wrong, at least they are for my state of New Jersey. We have 21 counties, not 27. Is it picking up the bordering counties that might have overlapping contracts or something?
yeah we have 8 counties in CT, not 14. The names are also wrong.
It pulls counties from OSM administrative boundaries of level 6, which according to the OSM wiki, is "State counties and county equivalents, Territorial municipalities" (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag%3aboundary=administr...). It does lead to some weird oddities, like counties with under 10 homes... I'd rather not manually correct it, since I want to rely on pure OSM data. (Unless you mean there is an actual bug in the processing and there's counties listed that aren't in the right states...)
I'll add a link to the OSM relation for the county to each county page, so you can see the source data on OSM to verify/edit.
There are also not 53 states.
One of those counties is Rockland, which is in NY. I wonder if it's counting bordering counties for states, since the assumption may be that the closest essential services for some Rockland residents may be in New Jersey.
I know at least in Rockland's case, their power utility extends slightly into NJ. Can see it on statewide power outage trackers like this one: https://projects.nj.com/data/outagetracker/
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.
I agree. It's frustrating that we have ended up in a reality where vehicle movement is heavily tracked, but we're not using that technology to do the most obvious and productive thing.
My city spent a few million dollars installing Flock cameras to all its municipal parking garages in a matter of months, but has been hemming and hawing over adding a few speed cameras for years, despite petitioning the state for an allowance do so back in 2023.
Traffic enforcement cameras don't even have to become the networked surveillance system that Flock offers. Most are still cameras triggered by radar rather than perpetually recording all drivers.
These cameras are currently not used at all for traffic/speed enforcement. The best they would do is track more serious crimes like hit-and-runs by photographing cars in the area.
Ah, that's helpful and something for me to learn more about. Thanks for the info.
This is great work. Once ALPR coverage is dense enough that you can’t go anywhere without generating a permanent record, the “mere observation” argument falls apart. Mapping this openly is one of the few ways communities can actually understand what they’ve signed up for.
100% coverage seems like an inevitability in a country where filming in public is a constitutionally protected right and networked ALPR capability is possible (if not regularly offered yet) in commodity doorbell cameras.
> 100% coverage seems like an inevitability in a country where filming in public is a constitutionally protected right a
It really doesn't have to be though. The rights of individuals to record in public doesn't have to translate to the right of corporations (flock, amazon, etc.) to do it without restriction. Time, place, and manner restrictions on our rights already exist, it just needs to be found that this manner is unacceptable as an imposition on our freedom which should be protected under the fourth amendment.
> filming in public is a constitutionally protected right
As with everything, there's much nuance to this "right".
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Common_Questions,_Arguments,_%...
I'm a private citizen. On my house we have an ALPR Axis camera pointing down the street (in addition to Axis cameras around the whole perimiter.) And when the police ask, we almost always provide them with data. I feel perfectly justified doing this, and we've helped solved several crimes.
Hi enemy! :)
https://archive.ph/et1uD