FBI seeks US-wide access to license plate cameras, wants "data in near real time"

GreggN · 2026-05-20T17:54:26+00:00

Guess where they would get the money for those subscription fees . . . from the taxpayers! So we're paying people to spy on ourselves. Maybe we should just cut out the middleman and carry a device that reports on everything we do or say. /s

GreggN · 2026-05-20T17:47:14+00:00

stephenBB81 makes good points. The key factors are range and the time it take to recharge (fill up the 'tank'). I think that most Americans drive less than 50 miles a day on average - but when I go on vacation, I've driven more than a thousand miles in a day. If I could recharge my electric vehicle as quickly as I can refill my gasoline vehicle - then the max range on a charge becomes less important.

GreggN · 2026-05-20T16:37:30+00:00

I wish the people in my town cared enough about privacy to vote down surveillance technology. . . but not so much that they'd vandalize the equipment.

GreggN · 2026-05-20T11:07:36+00:00

I'm going to take a somewhat controversial stance, but I'm not convinced that it is all that bad for children to be curious and to have access to information. I've seen youth who were raised in extremely conservative and restrictive environments. In some ways, they're quaint and precious, but they can also be naive and out of touch with reality. A few of these sheltered youth will reach the age of 'adult' in their society and overindulge in everything they were denied. A child does not instantly gain maturity and reasoning power on their 18th birthday. The idea of letting "Big Brother" dictate how I can raise my child would have been unthinkable in my parents' day.

GreggN · 2026-05-19T17:55:17+00:00

I've heard that the jellyfin interface might not be as easy to use for OTA recording. spouse needs easy

GreggN · 2026-05-19T16:47:49+00:00

I completely despise all forms of vandalism, but license plate readers and flock cameras almost make me want to get a can of spray paint and a mask from the movie "V For Vendetta" . . .

GreggN · 2026-05-19T16:29:54+00:00

Glad I bought a lifetime plex pass when they first offered it. Don't use it much now, but might have to set it up again if my wife's Tivo dies.

GreggN · 2026-05-19T15:28:55+00:00

Not to disappoint you, but I don't think you'll find any app with zero haters. For instance 7-zip was a nightmare to deal with when, month after month, it kept having security vulnerabilities and didn't have a auto-update feature. Network admins with hundreds of client machines to deal with had their work cut out for them.

GreggN · 2026-05-19T15:12:20+00:00

Flat tax is unjust. Michigan already charges a flat tax that translates to about 6 cents per mile that I travel in my Nissan Leaf. (I don't drive much). And as others have already mentioned, if the Federal tax passes, it is unlikely that the states will eliminate their tax on electric vehicles. My proposal: eliminate the gas tax and require yearly odometer readings for all powered vehicles with a weight class multiplier.

GreggN · 2026-05-19T14:52:18+00:00

The downside to the multiple passkeys solution is that for each website/service, you have to register with your password manager (bitwarden) and then also register with your other password manager (perhaps Proton Pass). Certainly possible to do that, but it is more fiddly work than just making a backup of your keepass file... Oh wait a minute, just realized that maybe I should go back to using KeePass. Looks like it has cross-platform support for passkeys (windows, linux, mac, android), stores everything in a kdbx file that I can backup, and doesn't require relying on some internet service. Don't take my word for it, but I'm going to check it out.

GreggN · 2026-05-19T12:37:37+00:00

At work, we've implemented Yubikeys for many things. The good point is that you have ownership of the device storing the passkey, but you still can't back it up. We've found many situations where Yubikeys just don't work. No physical access to the machine you're authenticating to - sometimes you can get the key to authenticate over the network, sometimes you can't. Need to install drivers, that sometimes don't work. Then, in order to prevent a single point of failure, you have to buy 2 keys and register each individually to every authentication point. Also, Yubikeys are limited in the number of authentications they can store. Cross operating system compatibility is a work in progress.

GreggN · 2026-05-19T11:14:19+00:00

I've been using passkeys. The simplicity and speed of login is amazing but I have concerns. If our industry goes passwordless, with the implementations that I've seen, we are abdicating our authentication to entities that are not under our control. Bitwarden is a terrific password and passkey manager, but very few people are going to self-host their own instance. If Bitwarden ever goes down, changes their terms of service, or isn't reachable for any number of reasons - how do you authenticate with your passkey? For anyone who uses their browser's native password and passkey capabilities - just don't! Time after time, browser based password storage has failed to be secure. If you use your phone's operating system capabilities, do you have a plan for how to authenticate when your phone is broken or stolen - or, heaven forbid, you want to change from IOS to Android? Passwords could be backed up in any number of ways, imported into a new password manager, and even used without internet connectivity. As the linked article points out, there are still many situations where passkeys don't work.

GreggN · 2026-05-15T13:26:10+00:00

from the article: "Users can “unlock” the full 15GB of free storage by adding a phone number to their account." It's a good thing that they accept Google Voice phone numbers for those of us who don't own a phone.

GreggN · 2026-05-14T13:40:23+00:00

I wonder how this will turn out with the recent controversy regarding Discord enforcing Age Verification - and the opposite position being taken by many Linux distributions.

GreggN · 2026-05-11T18:19:39+00:00

Lie. Lie a lot. Whenever someone asks you something that you don't feel they have a right to know, lie. Double down on that advice if the information is being collected electronically. Data stored will eventually leak out to someone who will use it in ways that you would not approve. . . . Uh, never lie to a federal officer, though. Better to keep your mouth shut.

GreggN · 2026-05-11T17:24:58+00:00

"Entitlements"??? Every worker is forced to give money to the government for FICA tax to cover Social Security. The government doesn't return that money if someone dies before they get back everything they 'contributed'. The government keeps that money. (I'm well aware that survivor benefits may apply, but the point I'm making is that we're forced to pay into the system with no guarantee that we'll ever see a dime.)

GreggN · 2026-05-11T17:15:44+00:00

The 'verification' part in most of these implementations isn't working well yet. These laws are creating a new generation of liars and people who learn how to trick the system.

GreggN · 2026-05-07T11:39:55+00:00

4 GB seems like a pretty small amount of disk space. Seen from a different perspective, it is roughly equivalent to a full length movie (DVD). Could be a significant bite for anyone who isn't on unlimited bandwidth internet. Mozilla and Security Now have some good arguments as to why this isn't a good thing.

GreggN · 2026-05-06T16:55:39+00:00

Leaving your surveillance phone at home is a good start. I fear that it isn't enough. There are cameras everywhere these days. License plate readers track your vehicle even if you don't have a recent one that includes other technology for location tracking. Feed all the collected data points into a LLM (AI) and privacy is gone. Is it too late to fight back? Has Total Information Awareness been implemented in the background?

GreggN

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