This is the erosion of privacy by public anonymity.
Is it time to start talking about civil disobedience and removing large numbers of number plates from cars in an organised protest?
Having a barcode on all our cars is turning out to be very bad for civil liberties now there's all this auto-recognition software coming in to play.
Similar to another discussion[1], the problem has arisen because it is now possible to collate this information to make up detailed map of a person's life whenever a malicious actor wants.
> Is it time to start talking about civil disobedience and removing large numbers of number plates from cars in an organised protest?
People already do this very frequently in LA, you'd have to convince the entire city to do it for the cops to notice. A friend of mine took off her license plate to avoid the red light cameras, and has been driving around without plates for two years. Never been pulled over for it. I see at least one car without plates every day on my drive to work, and it's a ten minute drive.
For those outside California, new California registrations are issued in small paper packets that are affixed inside the front windshield. There are no "temporary tags" like in many other states, so it's perfectly normal and legal for a new car to pull off Tesla's lot without any license plates.
Is it time to start talking about civil disobedience and removing large numbers of number plates from cars in an organised protest?
Judging by the number of people who go screaming past me when I'm driving near London, and how they set off speed cameras all over the place with no apparent concern, I am assuming that plenty of people already did remove their own number plates and install clones of someone else's, though possibly not for quite such ethical purposes as you mentioned.
Do camera tickets count against your license in any way in London, or is the punishment limited to only monetary fines?
It may be the case that the cameras, if limited to only giving fines and not "points" (or the equivalent) on your license, do little more than create a two-tiered system: poor people who cannot speed, and rich people who are free to speed if they are willing to pay a token 'speeding tax'.
Yeah, that's what I suspected. My question is if the traffic cameras can be used to put points on a license of a driver, or are only used to fine the owner of the vehicle.
At least in the states I checked the last time I looked into it, things like red light cameras will not put points on your license, even though being caught running a red light by an actual police officer certainly would. If you are driving somebody else's car and a police officer catches you running a red light, you will receive a ticket and points on your license; if a camera catches you then the vehicle owner will receive a fine.
Is it time to start talking about civil disobedience and removing large numbers of number plates from cars in an organised protest?
Having a barcode on all our cars is turning out to be very bad for civil liberties now there's all this auto-recognition software coming in to play.
Similar to another discussion[1], the problem has arisen because it is now possible to collate this information to make up detailed map of a person's life whenever a malicious actor wants.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7427562