Maybe states could offer CAPTCHA license plates that would be easily readable to a human police officer or other first responder with a legitimate need, but unreadable by license plate OCR.
Or license plates could become programable e-ink displays that display a new hash every X minutes so that a person with a legitimate need could rapidly identify the vehicle but which would defeat bulk passive data collection.
On the other hand, wouldn't organizations collecting this information go quickly further for emissions other than visible light? A car's occupants are likely carrying around devices emitting GSM, Bluetooth and Wifi radio signals, as well as onboard systems. The model for this is Google's collection of household radio emissions with the StreetView surveillance patrols or the gargoyles in Snow Crash.
Or license plates could become programable e-ink displays that display a new hash every X minutes
Once a week would likely be enough. The point is that you can no longer associate "Plate ABCDEF was at this location at this time" with "Car owned by person X was at this location at this time" without making a lookup in a database that's owned by the government.
Comments
Maybe states could offer CAPTCHA license plates that would be easily readable to a human police officer or other first responder with a legitimate need, but unreadable by license plate OCR.
Or license plates could become programable e-ink displays that display a new hash every X minutes so that a person with a legitimate need could rapidly identify the vehicle but which would defeat bulk passive data collection.
On the other hand, wouldn't organizations collecting this information go quickly further for emissions other than visible light? A car's occupants are likely carrying around devices emitting GSM, Bluetooth and Wifi radio signals, as well as onboard systems. The model for this is Google's collection of household radio emissions with the StreetView surveillance patrols or the gargoyles in Snow Crash.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/15/google-ad...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
Once a week would likely be enough. The point is that you can no longer associate "Plate ABCDEF was at this location at this time" with "Car owned by person X was at this location at this time" without making a lookup in a database that's owned by the government.