pixelbomb

Why does the everyday driver need this fancy-schmancy electronically charged license plate blocker (made especially for one of the cars in the Bullrun)? Because the future of License Plate Recognition (LPR), just got a lot scarier. Andy Bucholz, who designed one of the first mobile LPR equipment, recently gave a presentation where he outlined the future possibilities of LPR which includes,

everything from helping insurance companies find missing cars to letting retail chains chart customer migrations. It could also let a nosy citizen with enough cash find out if the mayor is having an affair.

Giant data-tracking firms such as ChoicePoint, Accurint and Acxiom already collect detailed personal and financial information on millions of Americans. Once they discover how lucrative it is to know where a person goes between the supermarket, for example, and the strip club, the LPR industry could explode.

Private detectives would want the information. So would repo men or bail bondsmen. And the government, which often contracts out personal data collection — in part, so it doesn’t have to deal with Freedom of Information Act requests — might encourage it.

Big Brother is watching … it sounds like License Plate Recognition will soon evolve to License Plate Tracking.

video

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 12:06 pm and is tagged with gadgets, tech, videos. You can discuss this entry, share pictures, and more in the pixelbomb forums. Responses are currently closed, but you can click here to generate a trackback url for your own site.