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A comment on Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets. Parent comment

Re:Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking... by bpchaps on Monday August 13, 2018 @07:45PM (#17754484)
Thanks!

I thought so to until recently and was honestly kind of surprised they actually gave it to me. They rejected giving license plate info at first, but they've given it out in other, similar, FOIA requests.

Specifically in FOIA's statute, it says:

    (c-5) "Private information" means unique identifiers, including a person's social security number, driver's license number, employee identification number, biometric identifiers, personal financial information, passwords or other access codes, medical records, home or personal telephone numbers, and personal email addresses. Private information also includes home address and personal license plates, *except as otherwise provided by law or when compiled without possibility of attribution to any person.*
In other words - if the dataset itself doesn't have identifying information, then it's not considered private. That said, I've played around with re-identification using this dataset as a POC.. and then deleted the code, because yeah - it's scary.
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Re:Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking... by mehrdadn on Monday August 13, 2018 @08:00PM (#17754588)
That is scary, thanks for sharing. And for those here who don't seem to be worried about the safety aspect, note that this means any corporation with a lot of your personal info (insurance, Equifax, etc.) could just submit a FOIA request to get the license plate number of anyone in Illinois (and likely other states) who's parked anywhere illegally, whether intentionally or accidentally... and then strike a deal to gather license plate scanning data to track where you go and what you do. Heck, I wonder if this sort of thing is already happening and we just don't know about it.
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Re:Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking... by kasey_junk on Monday August 13, 2018 @08:08PM (#17754627)
I think, because he glossed over it in the post, that you are underestimating how much work Matt does to get the data & how much the governments he works with try to hinder & redact it.

In some cases that is a very good thing. In other cases it’s just them trying to obfuscate and block transparency.

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