I've been considering this for a while. Nice to see it happening.
But, it needs to be categorised.
License plates. Facial recognition. Private. Government. Etc
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024
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Privacy
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It is! There's community-decided standards for how to tag most of these things: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:man_made%3Dsurveillance
Instead of making a whole new software why not just add number plate cameras to the osm database and make a software that pulls them out and makes it convenient to read?
Because that could easily make OSM banned in most countries?
Yeah it would be bad if that happened. Governments really hate privacy.
It's not just about privacy. In this case it's also about law evasion and possible hiding assistance.
that is part of privacy
Not really you can just download the osm world file and start your own instance.
Still the governments are so crazy now it can trigger them.
Why? Can you ban FOSS apps nowadays?
Why?
I think it's obvious.
Can you ban FOSS apps nowadays?
Yes especially if it's Australia.
Hell yeah. Except every cop and traffic camera has the ability. So that's gonna be alot of mapping. Probably impossible given cop cars and LEO are on the move constantly.
And there are plenty of hidden cameras as well. I know for a fact that many of the portable signs that display your speed and flash a warning if you're over the limit are ALSO able to read license plates and immediately alert the police. They were using it to look for stolen vehicles when I became aware of the system, but that was 7 years ago and all it takes is a little tweak to suddenly have a record of every car passing by.
I used to work for a company that would put temporary cameras out to record particular intersections or stretches of road. It was all temporary traffic safety studies, not an active search or dragnet surveillance, so my conscience was mostly clean. It was still wild to see how much technology can be quickly put out to record and track drivers.
On top of cameras we had Bluetooth sniffers that would get put up on every leg of a 4way intersection and just collect Bluetooth hardware addresses. It doesn't identify you, but it is able to tell which direction you took at that 4 way because your Bluetooth address only showed up on two of the boxes.
One of the more surprising methods for hiding cameras were those big orange traffic barrels. When they stack on top of each other, there's a 6-8in gap between the tops where you can stash stuff. If you ever see two of those barrels stacked on each other, look for a little window cut out near the top of the top one. There might be a camera sitting on top of the bottom barrel and hidden by the top barrel. They'd point it to capture back license plates, so you don't see it when driving towards it.
This would be illegal in EU now, at least if the BT addresses or car plates were logged.
Got a source on those speed signs also having ALPRs?
Yes. I worked for a city and was tasked with occasionally reading emails that had been reported. I got to read some interesting ones, but the one I'm talking about: The auto-theft detective was informing patrol officers about the setting up of the device I described. It would send an email when a vehicle's license plate was scanned and was returned with a STOLEN result. The majority of the email was about how the officers should not mention the device and only say that they had received a tip about a stolen vehicle.
We aren't talking about the permanent sorts of signs, like those described by @reversalhatchery@beehaw.org
where I live those run off of a little solar panel. if we're talking about the same thing, I doubt that it has ALPR function
Yea this is not feasible or sustainable lol May as well track every bird on planet earth.
I love maps that are just population maps lol
finally, Alaska is almost entirely green
A more generalised map of CCTV can be found here with data crowdsourced by people like you on OpenStreetMap.
If you'd like to help map our world, the app StreetComplete is a wonderful place to start (think Pokémon GO but actually beneficial for the world)
If you want privacy and you drive a car, I got bad news for you. Public Transit is privacy.
Transit card is linked to your credit card which is linked to your identity. Unless you pay cash and obtain a new cars/pass each time.
I use a virtual card for the metro system, and in some places, you can reload your card with cash. I don't think you even need to use your real name when getting a metro system pass
Is this like a automated toll system? Because we have them all over our highways.
It depends on the country I think? We have them too, but we don't have road tolls. They're used to monitor traffic and actual tracking if the police is looking for a specific licence plate in relation to a crime here.
They just check if you have sticker or they scan the license plates if you've bought the highway mark. They look like cameras hung on iron plates.
"You don't want to go down that road" taken literally