Automatic License Plate Readers Are Coming to Schools
Fears around children is opening up a new market for automatic license place readers.
cars
Self-Driving Car Video Footage
Two articles crossed my path recently. First, a discussion of all the video Waymo has from outside its cars: in this case related to the LA protests. Second, a discussion of all the video Tesla has from inside its cars.
Lots of things are collecting lo…
Lamborghini horror as dad drowns after flipping £90k supercar and landing in canal
An Italian businessman and father has died after he flipped a £90,000 supercar into a canal, with friends calling him ‘a special person’ to the community.
Five Technologies Making the World a Creepier Place in 2024
The Internet can be a creepy place and it keeps getting creepier. Here’s why.
The post Five Technologies Making the World a Creepier Place in 2024 appeared first on Adam Levin.
Hacking Gas Pumps via Bluetooth
Turns out pumps at gas stations are controlled via Bluetooth, and that the connections are insecure. No details in the article, but it seems that it’s easy to take control of the pump and have it dispense gas without requiring payment.
It’s…
Cars Have Terrible Data Privacy
A new Mozilla Foundation report concludes that cars, all of them, have terrible data privacy.
All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label—making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we h…
On Robots Killing People
The robot revolution began long ago, and so did the killing. One day in 1979, a robot at a Ford Motor Company casting plant malfunctioned—human workers determined that it was not going fast enough. And so twenty-five-year-old Robert Williams was asked to climb into a storage rack to help move things along. The one-ton robot continued to work silently, smashing into Williams’s head and instantly killing him. This was reportedly the first incident in which a robot killed a human; many more would follow.
At Kawasaki Heavy Industries in 1981, Kenji Urada died in similar …
Own Your Own Government Surveillance Van
A used government surveillance van is for sale in Chicago:
So how was this van turned into a mobile spying center? Well, let’s start with how it has more LCD monitors than a Counterstrike LAN party. They can be used to monitor any of six different video inputs including a videoscope camera. A videoscope and a borescope are very similar as they’re both cameras on the ends of optical fibers, so the same tech you’d use to inspect cylinder walls is also useful for surveillance. Kind of cool, right? Multiple Sony DVD-based video recorders store footage captured by cameras, audio recorders by high-end equipment brand Marantz capture sounds, and time and date generators sync gathered media up for accurate analysis. Circling back around to audio, this van features seven different audio inputs including a body wire channel…
Applying AI to License Plate Surveillance
License plate scanners aren’t new. Neither is using them for bulk surveillance. What’s new is that AI is being used on the data, identifying “suspicious” vehicle behavior:
Typically, Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology is used to search for plates linked to specific crimes. But in this case it was used to examine the driving patterns of anyone passing one of Westchester County’s 480 cameras over a two-year period. Zayas’ lawyer Ben Gold contested the AI-gathered evidence against his client, decrying it as “dragnet surveillance.”…