• blitzen@lemmy.ml
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    9 hours ago

    There’s YouTube video out there, the name escapes at the moment, where he figures out how to basically insert “noise” over his license plate that can lead to flock cameras not recognizing it. Fascinating stuff.

    Two big issues IMO. 1) maybe it fools cameras now, but who knows if it continues to. 2) it’s illegal to cover your plate, probably doubly with the intent to obfuscate. My solution is bike rack. “Oops, didn’t meant to cover my plate” is good plausible deniability.

    • Shortstack@reddthat.com
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      7 hours ago

      It’s Benn Jordan

      Also, the way they catalogue info is not just license numbers, but any unique combinations of bike racks, bumper stickers or the like. So your bike rack would make you very trackable in a way, but at least your identity would be harder to pinpoint

      And about the intentional obfuscation, all kinds of princess pavement trucks and entitled BMWs deliberately use smoked license plate covers, and nobody bats an eye. So if there’s a law against that, it either has no teeth or is not enforced

      • blitzen@lemmy.ml
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        48 minutes ago

        Ya, he mentioned the “identifiable” thing in the video. I’m not really how much truth is in that. Even if true, I feel better about being logged as “unidentifiable [color] [make] [model] with bike rack,” over [license plate number] which can be used to look up my name and address.

        Even if his license plate trick worked under his conditions, there’s no way of knowing if it’s tricking Flock cameras or if it is, if it confines to do so with updates. And you never know if it fails, you’ll continue to think it’s working while it’s not.

        Neither way is perfect, so perhaps the better solution it to assume your vehicle is always tracked and to take alternate forms of transportation when engaging in something you don’t want logged.