Re:DHS to Launch Nationwide License Plate Reader Program
by ics on Tuesday April 07, 2015 @12:01PM
(#9334949)
It will be an interesting future when the average person can anonymously set up a device to do these things without further human intervention at low cost.
Re:DHS to Launch Nationwide License Plate Reader Program
by zo1 on Tuesday April 07, 2015 @12:22PM
(#9335103)
I'd imagine that such a future also means that a lot of the devices capable of what you say would be made "illegal" by virtue of countless regulations, requiring of licenses and approvals, and even grey-areas that make it a nightmare for private individuals to pursue, etc. I phrase it like that, because all of these things (though some may be noble/necessary/etc) do effectively make things "illegal".
Re:DHS to Launch Nationwide License Plate Reader Program
by xrjn on Tuesday April 07, 2015 @08:00PM
(#9337986)
You can essentially already do this with a Raspberry Pi, PiCam, battery pack and opencv. The hardware will cost you under $100, and there are already various libraries that can process the license plates [0]. With a 3g stick you could even collect this data remotely.
Of course, performance won't be comparable to the commercial product here in question, but I'm certain that with some motivation you can get similar, if not better, results on better hardware.
I would imagine that person's life would be made very difficult. Even outside of these lettered agencies, I would imagine if someone created a system to capture the license plates of the cars used privately and publicly by government members or high ranking executives in organisations tied to the government they would create a very bad situation for themselves.
If anything has been made more than blatantly apparent in recent years it is that there are one set of rules for us and another for them.