this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

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)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

"You don't want to go down that road" taken literally

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you want privacy and you drive a car, I got bad news for you. Public Transit is privacy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I love maps that are just population maps lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

finally, Alaska is almost entirely green

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's built off of OSM. Which is how it should be.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

They have no attribution in the mobile UI.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Because that could easily make OSM banned in most countries?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah it would be bad if that happened. Governments really hate privacy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's not just about privacy. In this case it's also about law evasion and possible hiding assistance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

that is part of privacy

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not really you can just download the osm world file and start your own instance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Still the governments are so crazy now it can trigger them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why? Can you ban FOSS apps nowadays?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Why?

I think it's obvious.

Can you ban FOSS apps nowadays?

Yes especially if it's Australia.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Is this like a automated toll system? Because we have them all over our highways.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

It is! There's community-decided standards for how to tag most of these things: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:man_made%3Dsurveillance

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

This would be illegal in EU now, at least if the BT addresses or car plates were logged.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Got a source on those speed signs also having ALPRs?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

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 @[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yea this is not feasible or sustainable lol May as well track every bird on planet earth.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)