[ed. What's not to like? Moving wiretaps AND a new source of advertising revenue. Who says America has lost its innovative spark?]
This week, the California State Senate approved a bill that would create the nation’s first electronic license plate. Having already passed the state’s assembly, the bill now goes to Gov. Jerry Brown (D) for his signature.The idea is that rather than have a static piece of printed metal adorned with stickers to display proper registration, the plate would be a screen that could wirelessly (likely over a mobile data network) receive updates from a central server to display that same information. In an example shown by a South Carolina vendor, messages such as “STOLEN,” “EXPIRED,” or something similar could also be displayed on a license plate. (...)
State isn’t getting location data directly, for now
Not surprisingly, though, privacy concerns abound. After all, if the state’s authorities can send and receive data to your digital license plate, then they have to know where you are. That would make the use of the increasingly ubiquitous license plate readers completely irrelevant—law enforcement likely would be able to either directly access location data in real-time and/or get historical travel data.
The state senator who introduced the bill, Sen. Ben Hueso, a Democrat who represents San Diego, did not respond to Ars’ multiple requests for an interview or comment. It still remains unclear as to exactly why this bill was proposed and what its objectives are. The precise technical details of the program are similarly unclear, as is how long plate information would be retained and who would have access to it.
“We've been talking to Sen. Hueso on the bill, and it's gotten some amendments that address some of the location privacy issues—within the pilot, the DMV would not be receiving any location information,” Lee Tien, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told Ars. “But the company that operates the plates would [have access, and] they are going to be controlling what's on the plates.”
The privacy advocate likened the proposed system to a moving wiretap that reveals an individual’s vehicle location constantly. (...)
But the state senate’s five-page analysis (PDF) notes that one San Francisco-based company would stand to gain from this test, particularly if it gets the green light:
A supporter of this bill is Smart Plate Mobile, a company that holds a patent on a digital electronic license plate, which is essentially a computer screen that can take on the size and appearance of a standard California license plate (i.e., a 12” by 6” white, reflectorized rectangle with blue characters and “California” in red across the top). This product also allows that screen, once a vehicle comes to a stop for four seconds or longer, to display a different image on the plate such as an advertisement.by Cyrus Farivar, ARS Technica | Read more:
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