| ▲ | bitexploder 6 days ago |
| I started building ALPR and speed detection systems for my house based on RTSP feed. I kind of want to finish this with an outdoor TV that has a leaderboard of the drivers that drive the fastest and their license plate in public display on my property, but visible to the street. In part to make my neighbors aware of how powerful ALPR technology is now, but also many of my neighbors should slow the heck down. I am not sure how popular this would be, but also I kind of like starting the right kind of trouble :) |
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| ▲ | varenc 6 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| If you're in CA, I learned recently that any use of automatic license plate recognition here is regulated and has a bunch of rules. Technically just turning on the ALPR feature in your consumer level camera is illegal if you don't also do things like post a public notice with your usage and privacy policy. The law is a bit old and seems like it was written under the assumption that normal people wouldn't have access to ALPR tech for their homes. I suspect it gets very little enforcement. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml... |
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| ▲ | bitexploder 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Interesting. It actually is posted that my property is under video surveillance. Colorado though. It seems like you would have a poor argument that you can’t collect and analyze images of a public space. One cynical aspect of Colorado law I learned about going down the ALPR rabbit hole: in Colorado it is a higher class misdemeanor than regular traffic violations to purposely obfuscate your plate to interfere with automated plate reading. The law is “well written” in that there is little wiggle room if they could somehow prove your intent. Meanwhile it is a lesser class violation to simply not have a plate at all. Their intent feels pretty clear to me. | | |
| ▲ | varenc 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > seems like you would have a poor argument that you can’t collect and analyze images of a public space Absolutely agree... but the CA law is clear that tracking license plates get special treatment! It being public space doesn't matter. It's wild to me that how you analyze the video is regulated. Also that no similar regulation for the regular public doing facial recognition exists. Just ALPR. I wonder how I'm supposed to comply with the law if I were to take a public webcam feed, like one from a highway[0], and run ALPR on it myself. I obviously can't post any notices there. And I'm not the camera operator so can't comply with anything related to that. But I would be doing ALPR which does require I follow rules. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Will be interesting to see what happens to the law. It feels outdated, but I'm doubtful any CA politician is going to expend karma making ALPR more permissive. So I bet it'll stay on the books and just go largely unenforced. https://go511.com/TrafficTransit/Cameras | | |
| ▲ | bitexploder 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I would blatantly ignore that law. I am in a position to easily fight a state entity with legal resources. They definitely cannot regulate that constitutionally. As a private citizen I am not posting notices. It is bad law that doesn't protect anyone and erodes protected rights. | | |
| ▲ | IAmBroom 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Maybe they can't regulate that "constitutionally" (for your understanding of that document, which has no legal weight). They still might be able to regulate it for all practical purposes. | | |
| ▲ | bitexploder 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Potentially. I care a lot about this. I think this is a pretty easy case to fight them on 1A grounds as the case law is quite settled and clear per my understanding. So they can have unconstitutional laws on the books, but the long tail of that fight is against the. |
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| ▲ | a456463 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Great. Let's stop using Ring cameras for security then | | |
| ▲ | try_the_bass 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Build a better, cheaper replacement, then? | |
| ▲ | iberator 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Who uses them anyway? Almost nobody in Europe | | |
| ▲ | iAmAPencilYo 5 days ago | parent [-] | | That's awesome. In the US, they are everywhere - apartment buildings, houses, business. Amazon's Ring might the most popular, but there are many vendors. |
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| ▲ | Karrot_Kream 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Cities in CA also often put their own ALPR restrictions on btw so you'll want to check both state and local laws. | | |
| ▲ | bitexploder 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I feel if you have a camera on your property with a view of public spaces they have a losing argument. I doubt none of that holds water constitutionally. This is first amendment protected. If you are filming a public space with no expectation of privacy the government has no constitutional authority to restrict you if you are retaining the data private and never sharing it. So far the only legal area that matters is the government itself being regulated in how they use ALPR since they are the entity that can actually infringe upon constitutional rights. | | |
| ▲ | 15155 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > if you are retaining the data private and never sharing it. "Never sharing it?" What? Free speech is literally defined by the fact that you can distribute information. Publishing your video feed (a la news helicopters, etc.) is clearly a protected activity - possibly even more so than collecting the data to begin with. | | |
| ▲ | bitexploder 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, I agree, but I am saying there are virtually zero grounds to legislate the use case I provided. They try to weasel it on "privacy" grounds and "transparency" when you share the data, but yeah. I agree. | |
| ▲ | RHSeeger 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nearly every right is limited in some way "for the good of society". You can't take pictures of the entire contents of a book and publish it. You can't run into an airport and yell that you've got a bomb. We, as a society, put limits on what we allow people to do because doing so is better for society as a whole. I expect there are plenty of cases where you can't publish your video feed. | | |
| ▲ | bitexploder 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You are of course correct. There are always limits on speech. In this area, however, we have already decided how it works. You cannot regulate what private citizens record in public spaces with no expectation of privacy and you definitely cannot regulate what they do with that data. | |
| ▲ | 15155 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > You can't take pictures of the entire contents of a book and publish it. Copyright is "mostly" civil law, not criminal. > can't run into an airport and yell that you've got a bomb. Right: now try and argue that a license plate intentionally designed for public visibility is somehow subject to the same restrictions. All 50 states have legislation requiring public display of these objects: what tailoring of the First Amendment would legally be consistent with past case law? > I expect there are plenty of cases where you can't publish your video feed. Legally these cases are few and far between, and none of these exceptions apply to the situation being discussed. You're welcome to try and cite a case or explain relevant case law - good luck. Freedom of the press is extraordinarily broad and is one of the more difficult things to limit using criminal penalties. | | |
| ▲ | IAmBroom 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > > You can't take pictures of the entire contents of a book and publish it. > Copyright is "mostly" civil law, not criminal. Does that matter? Seriously - doesn't the 1st Amendment also protect against the government raising civil complaints? I think the better point here is: Disney suing you for copyright violations is not a First-Amendment case, because Disney is not the US government - so this isn't a Free Speech issue at all. |
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| ▲ | LocalH 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I fail to see how passively recording a space that you don't own is "first amendment protected". Passively recording a space isn't in and of itself speech. | | |
| ▲ | 15155 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I can photograph and publish whatever I am allowed to see in public (with very few exceptions - think Naval Air Station Key West), this has been affirmed and reaffirmed by countless courts. The best part about publishing? You have no right to question when, how, or if I am going to do it - that discretion is also free speech. | |
| ▲ | IAmBroom 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Reproducing information is within the legal limits of "speech and press". You don't have to have a physical, lead-type printing press to be protected by Freedom of the Press, and you don't have to physically vocalize to be protected by Freedom of Speech. |
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| ▲ | IlikeKitties 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > If you are filming a public space with no expectation of privacy the government has no constitutional authority to restrict you if you are retaining the data private and never sharing it. This a shitty argument from a time where mass surveillance wasn't possible. If you have "no expectation of privacy in public spaces" than Governments could force you to wear an ankle monitor and body camera at all times since you have "no expectation of privacy". | | |
| ▲ | bitexploder 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You are mixing up the duties and rights a government has vs. the duties and rights citizens have. The one area I might start to agree is corporate personhood and giving corporations the same rights as a private citizen in this regard because their interests are very different from a private citizens. The whole point of the constitution is largely what the government can't do to its citizens. The goal is to protect citizens FROM its government by carving out our rights. These of course apply broadly, but I can't, for example, as a private citizen really violate your 4A rights very easily. | | |
| ▲ | IlikeKitties 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > You are mixing up the duties and rights a government has vs. the duties and rights the governments have. Can you correct that typo? I've been thinking about what you mean for a while and I can't figure it out. edit: Thank you |
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| ▲ | IAmBroom 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | No, it's a great right. You (personally) can't stop me from photographing you in public, Ms. Steisand. And Freedom of Speech has no sensible connection to being forced to carry objects. Your argument also assumes no one ever goes into private houses, where 1A doesn't apply. |
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| ▲ | kortex 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Hilarious! If i didnt already have too many projects and hobbies, this is the kind of thing i'd do. Maybe not a speed leaderboard, that just seems like a challenge to choon heads. But perhaps a "violation count". Also toss in a dB meter for loud exhaust (again dont make it a contest). Edge compute with alpr/face/gait/whatever object detection at the camera is basically solved. Genie is out of the bottle. I think the most fruitful line of resistance is to regulate what can be done with that data once it leaves the device. |
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| ▲ | bitexploder 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I am the loud exhaust. Where we live the noise pollution is not a concern and I have no complaints around that. Many of my neighbors have lifted trucks and go vroom cars. Ironically the performance cars are the nicest drivers :) | | |
| ▲ | kortex 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I get it, I used to drive a GTI. I don't mind just loud exhaust by itself, as long as they are tuned well. It's the pops/crackling/backfires that set off all the neighborhood dogs and sound like they split the air that are a scourge around here. These folks also are the ones driving like maniacs in inappropriate contexts. |
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| ▲ | p_ing 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is a sign put up by the county on a downward hill with some nice curves in it. It _used_ to display your speed but that was removed in favor of just flashing "Slow Down" once people used it to see how fast they could navigate the bends. |
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| ▲ | bitexploder 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Unintended consequences. Maybe it can just be annoying and show each car its count of speed 10mph over the limit as they pass |
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| ▲ | hypercube33 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Look up the YouTube on project Argus that uses drone cameras in like 2010 or something. every moving object inside a city is classified, identified and tracked in and out of buildings, cars and that's just the declassified part. I've talked to people who've told me or shown me a lot more wild systems they've built for retail decades ago to track user product interactions then tied it to loyalty and credit cards so they know what you looked at vs purchased and how long and mood age etc just from video. tie all that to public data or purchased or given data and it's basically game over for being anonymous. |
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| ▲ | AdamJacobMuller 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I'm curious what does your hardware/software stack look like for your ALPR system? |
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| ▲ | bitexploder 6 days ago | parent [-] | | It is very janky. The speed camera I have an old Core i5 that is running YOLOv8 on the integrated GPU and it can just /barely/ handle 30FPS of inference. The code is all Python and vibe coded (for science). The speed camera needs a perpendicular view to work best for how I set it up (measuring two reference points with a known distance). So the ALPR camera is separate and I basically just buffer video and built this ultra janky scheme where I call an HTTP endpoint and it saves the last few seconds and then I batch process to associate the plate later in the web app. It is all CSV and plain files; this is a perfect append only DB scenario. Eventually it will need the wonders of the big data format SQLite probably, but I am sure Claude will know what to do ;) The long term solution would be to have a proper radar circuit and two cameras facing both road directions to capture the rear plate as people often don't use front plates here even though they are required to by law. (the point, though, is you don't need a lot of GPU power to do say YOLOv8 inference on the pre-trained models) and OpenCV makes this all pretty darn easy. |
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