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Alright! Dystopian nightmare timeline is a go!
I especially like the part where cops are reported to heavily abuse these databases for personal agendas or to share with criminals. Truly ACAB
This is a very good reason to maintain the appearance of neutrality while facing your local community
This might even be an argument for putting those smoked opaque covers on your license plates even if it's questionably legal. There's more than a few people out there with definitely not legal smoked covers to the point you literally can't read their plates unless you're tailgating them, and cops don't give a shit because nobody is ever pulled over for illegal mods. I'd wager that the cameras can't read them either if you can't at 10 yards
The real dystopian nightmare is the one where everyone conforms and acts neutral out of fear. That’s how we really lose who we are and any sense of improving the situation.
I'd wager that the cameras can't read them either if you can't at 10 yards
I might not take a bet on that. most license plates use reflective paint to aid in this. it would surprise me if paint and cameras are not tuned to at least one non human-visible wavelength.
polarized plate covers, specialized spray coatings, etc may work, but I am not betting my freedom on it. time to go bond style and get rotating plates.
What you need are two things: a sunflexzone IR reflecting cover behind a ghostplate cover. The second one turns black when photographed at an angle such as a stoplight camera.
Ah yes, the freedom of owning a car.
This is old news from a decade ago, before the US public was aware how the police had long been fabricating probable cause (and gunning down Americans by the hundreds) and SCOTUS had been carving out exceptions to the fourth and fifth amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
Then Trump won in 2016 and we saw what it looked like under mask-off tyranny. And now we're one election away from one-party autocracy.
The police state is here. It always was. 🌍👨🚀🧑🚀🔫
before... SCOTUS had been carving out exceptions to the fourth and fifth amendments
They've been doing that shit since the country was founded. The fourth and fifth amendments only exist if you're a rich person and the cops need an excuse not to investigate you.
But a digital gun database is unconstitutional?
Only for the government. The workaround for mass warrantless surveillance is to contract a private company. Since you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public, it's not illegal to take a picture of your car as it drives by. You could do the same thing, just go outside your local police station and take pictures of the cars and write down the license plates and times they go by. Nobody will bother you because it's perfectly legal and the police obviously won't care that you're doing it because it's not illegal and they will thank you for making them feel safer.
police obviously won’t care
Unless you're taking pictures of police vehicles, in which case they definitely care. Still not illegal, but they'll most likely harass you for it.
But hey, you can make a living suing police departments, there are worse things to spend your time on.
Federal civil rights lawsuit: any%
Mount an e-ink display with a rotating slideshow of different images on your car until they have a record of your car having thousands of different bumper stickers.
Track-me-not, automobile edition.
Wow this article goes into the nuance. And it terrified me.
a big thank you for your comment. comments like these really do help me to not skip worthwhile articles.
This is and has been a big deal for a while. Do we really want easily trackable movements on every major road? What happens when they start feeding that data into federal fusion centers for cataloging and storage "just in case" they need it later?
What happens when a regime that criminalizes dissent has access to realtime vehicular and individual (via mobile phone) tracking data?
They already do this to flag potential traffickers. I’m not sure what we want has anything to do with what happens.
I’ve never wanted to post signs in my yard or put stickers on my bumpers because I didn’t want PEOPLE judging me. And people are judgmental. Now I’m glad I had that opinion because we have to worry about computers logging us so we can be judged in the future for whatever weird reason someone comes up with?
What happened to freedoms in America? It’s easy for a government to strip them after the people stop believing in them being important. Corporations are making free thought and self expression unimportant and dangerous and the gov’t will have no choice but to curb our freedoms in response. And we will cheer it on. I hate this shit.
We got attacked and then in fear gave away our freedoms for the promise of more protections. There were people blowing the whistle each time but we ignored them. Patriot Act. Lobbying to not consider social platforms news aggregates. Lobbying to not pay news outlets, Lobbying to weaken anti-trust laws. Lobbying to kill legislation protecting children online. Lobbying against legislation to protect user privacy. Lobbying for the use of tech like facial recognition.
This kind of thing has been happening for ages.
this kind of thing is why I do not advertise my politics at all. no bumper stickers or yard signs or campaign t shirts. im even registered without a party so you can't look up my affiliation. and I don't talk politics on the internet because nothing is truly anonymous. if someone wants to come after you they will be able to find you with enough effort.
Sounds like you're not loyal enough to The Party. If you were a good citizen, you wouldn't have anything to hide. Throw him in the gulag!
Time for a bobby drop table sticker
QR code sticker-bomb
I wish we could elect people we trust
there's a town nearby with dispensaries that have some amazing deals. there also happen to be three red light cams and two license plate readers the have been reported to give their information to out of state agencies and ICE on the two other stoplights in town. You can't convince me that's not some kind of honeypot.
They literally scan your ID when you buy green in my state. They already know who you are and where you live. The cameras are to keep people honest (intimidated).
I mean in addition to all that even if they didn't scan your id of you pay with anything but cash then the credit card company or bank knows and can be made to give up that info pretty easily.
Not a single cannabis store that I know of in the US accepts credit card. They're all cash only because the banks don't want any part of it. (Technically it's still federally illegal, and they don't want to get in trouble as national business)
I have seen many run it as an ATM transaction rounded to the nearest dollar and refund the change in cash. I saw this in two states.
Having said that. I love cash only businesses. Visa and the other CC companies have way too much power. We should all go back to cash tomorrow, but we won't.
I ran a business, not weed related, that was cash only for the better part of 5 years. When I started taking cards I made sure cash and bitcoin were also options. The only downside was going to the bank every week to grab stacks of small bills for change. The upside was never having to deal with credit cards and every payment settling instantly when the cash changed hands. Under $100, cash is king.
Drive around with a permanent bike rack in the way of your tail plate. No front plates.
Some states require front plates.
Blocking a plate with a bike rack isn’t a bad idea, except - a) the rack will wear your paint, b) any automated toll collection based on license plate reading will also be blocked. Probably NBD once in while, but if someone regularly skips tolls and is caught it’s gonna hurt. They just had a toll-skipper sting near me where they caught a crapton of people who regularly skipped tolls with license plate blockers and temp tags. They lost their cars instantly, a few got slapped with 6-figure fines and fees, and I imagine jail time might be on the menu for some.
Ours apparently does, but nobody follows that law, and I've never seen it enforced.
- a - easy fix, drive a beater
- b - the only tolls in my area use a sensor
If you didn't want to use a tracking sensor for tolls, can't you just pay cash? Whenever I visit Florida, that's what I do. It sucks when the machine is busted, but then I just chuck my change at it and go.
They've been dismantling cash toll stops to erect automated readers in their place.
Dang. I haven't been to Florida (or anywhere with tolls) for a few years, but I knew plate readers were an option, but I thought cash tolls were still quite prevalent.
That's a privacy nightmare.
I've resigned myself to just pre planning longer routes to avoid tolls. I am not putting a transponder in my car and I am certainly not going pay for that privilege or to help normalize it.
I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to intentionally hide your plates
But is it illegal to intentionally always be ready to carry bikes?
Yeah that's pretty dystopian. Something worse hasn't been done with it probably just because many bad actors haven't been aware its an option.
Hmm. I have a bumper sticker that says "I ❤️ Nuclear War". I wonder what bucket that puts me in.
The non credible defense bucket.
With enough readers ... Your location and minute by minute tracking of your every movement
I've heard of card counters getting stopped by security when they try to walk into a casino, there are definitely ways to "make" someone's car and put it in a database but the tech is still spotty afaik.