The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers

Re:The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate R... by FireBeyond on Monday May 18, 2026 @05:56PM (#48186286)

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.

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Re:The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate R... by HNisCIS on Tuesday May 19, 2026 @12:49AM (#48189287)

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.

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Re:The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate R... by testing22321 on Tuesday May 19, 2026 @11:30AM (#48194654)

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

On the whole, no big deal.

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Re:The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate R... by jkestner on Tuesday May 19, 2026 @05:13PM (#48199729)

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!).

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Re:The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate R... by FireBeyond on Tuesday May 19, 2026 @07:11PM (#48200902)

> 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".

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