This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 8:59 and is filed under Autos, Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Thursday, January 18, 2007
British Columbia cops have a new tool in fighting crime and it’s called the Automatic License Plate Recognition or ALPR for short. With cameras mounted on the dash for forward viewing, the rear deck for rear viewing, and the passengers side for side viewing, BC cops can now snap pictures of every license plate in view and run them immediately against a daily refreshed database. What are the cops looking for? Vehicles used in crimes, un-insured and unlicensed drivers. When a plate that matches that description is found, an alarm is sounded and the 411 slapped up on the screen for the officer to see. This work horse can scan up to three thousand plates in an hour! Police departments in the United States are also testing this new technology out (PDF).
In this video, you’ll witness a Chevy Lumina that was used just 24 hours prior in a bank heist.
While this technology is very interesting and very impressive, it’s also quiet scary. Ripe for abuse and ready to blossom for other not so good uses, I really hope this stays in the public eye for some heavy scrutiny.
