USA today recently discovered that Florida police are tracking people through plate readers and toll transponders. This isn’t new. Police have been doing this for years. I first reported on this way back in 2011, when I did a post on plate reading cameras.
There are also readers that track toll transponders without charging the driver a toll. They are everywhere. Then there are people tracking your cell phone. Ask the J6 protesters about that.
That’s the reason why every vehicle I own as a Faraday bag in it. If I ever want to be more difficult to track, I just drop the cell phones and transponders into the bag.
Of course, USA today didn’t care then, and they didn’t care when I showed that NYPD was doing it back in 2014. The only reason that they care now is because they want to make DeSantis look bad. They just fail to mention that the program has been going in for far longer than DeSantis has been in office, and it taking place in more places than just Florida.
3 Comments
m · September 12, 2022 at 11:38 am
hmmm… a shame isn’t it that many of the toll transponders these days glue to the inside windshield and can’t be taken off without destroying the transponder. (At least the ones they sell at Publix)
and the plate readers… so many gotchas out there.
I did a ride-along with the police a few years ago for the experience and the plate readers were one of the most prominent things I noticed. The unit I was riding in was older and didn’t have an automatic plate reader, but the cop driving was constantly typing plate numbers in on the laptop while we were driving around. It would make a ding! noise every time a plate got entered and then it would make a buzz-buzz-buzz noise if the plate entered had something going on like unpaid tickets, expired registration etc. In a reasonably ‘nice’ part of town it would still catch at least one or two of those every shift. If I recall correctly also each time a plate was entered, the screen would show the basic info for the vehicle and the cop would glance at it to make sure it was a “green Ford” or whatever in case someone had the idea to steal a plate from another car.
Dan · September 13, 2022 at 3:40 pm
I too discovered this during a ride along. The system is named Plate Link. They don’t just cross reference your plate with a warrant database but where/when so if you must converse with LE just know the questions are designed to catch you in lies.
Don in Oregon · September 12, 2022 at 9:31 pm
Repo companies have license plate readers on their tow trucks and share industry-wide data.
http://www.reposystems.com/inner.aspx?pg=alpr
Comments are closed.