License plate Reader Company is looking for a partnership with Dashcam Company, which is not scary at all – Jalopnik

Automated license plate readers (Alprs) are scary enough and offer a wealth of information to the authorities about where you are and when. Flock Safety, an Alpr company that has not always played through the rules, now wants to collaborate with Nexar, a dashcam manufacturer who uses similar technology, reports 404 Media. It is in no way scary or ominous that such a partnership has the technological potential to supervise private dashcams in allocation tools.

Until now, Clock has specialized in stationary cameras, installed at locations of the customer’s choice, and sometimes without all the required permits, according to Forbes. The technology not only reads license plates, but also the brand, model and color of the car. This can certainly help the police to solve legitimate crimes, but it also creates a huge database that can be used to follow people’s movements, regardless of whether they are suspected of a crime or not. 404 media reports that both Customs and border protection And ICE used Flock’s data to perform them unpopular activities.

Nexar, on the other hand, sells connected dashcams that include trillions of images per month and location data to his network and upload. In addition to standard dashcam functions, Nexar’s Citystream uses live algorithms to identify objects in the video, including traffic signs, traffic lights and construction zones, and publishes them online. It also identifies faces and license plates, but she fades In the public images. Customers, including public agencies, can pay Nexar to gain private access to this database.

If you are in a public place, such as a road, there is no expectation of privacy. We must have license plates on our vehicles that we are not allowed to cover up. If an agent on patrol happens to see that your plate has expired, they have the right to cross and maintain the law. If a surveillance camera from a gas station takes your board when you fill, it is to be expected.

The problem is when trillions of photos with location data, all go into a database in public places. In search of a license plate, an extensive history of observations now brings forward and it is possible to find out behavioral patterns. Regular weekday observations in an office building are probably where the owner works, for example. All these legally obtained information, and that is possible Follow someone’s movements In a way that the authors of the Fourth amendment could never have anticipated or desired.

Although the government has access to this data, people like private researchers and even repo men can also get it, and they don’t even need an order. They can just buy access to the database, such as Shame Did as a demonstration. Adding data collected from consumer dashcams to this database would expand the range far beyond Flock’s existing stationary cameras. We do not say that that is what Flock and Nexar do together, but only the possibility must at least lift some eyebrows.