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A comment on A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo industry. Parent comment

Re:A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo i... by __david__ on Wednesday March 05, 2014 @02:41PM (#7349299)
> The scan of the license plan is not really the issue, it's the collecting of the scan, tagging it with GPS, and aggregating the scan into large, permanent databases that can be accessed by both government and private corporations.

I've had this idea in my mind to build the exact same thing, but have it be crowdsourced data and available to everyone for free. Wouldn't you like to know where police cars spend most of their time? Wouldn't you like to see where your mayor's car is at 3am? If private corporations and the government get the data, I should get the data, too.

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Re:A vast hidden surveillance network, powered by the repo i... by berberous on Wednesday March 05, 2014 @06:19PM (#7350707)
An amusing story along those lines:

"In 2012, the StarTribune newspaper in Minneapolis tracked the movement of the Mayor R.T. Rybak's car 41 times at license police readers in the prior year. The newspaper put the information on a map and gathered the data through public records requests.

As a result of that report, the mayor directed the police chief to recommend a new policy on data retention, the ACLU said."

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