This link is an excellent description of LPR issues. Government is not participating in collection programs, it is merely buying the product and cannot therefore be blamed for creating it. Probably more cost efficient for the government as well as removing them from the Big Brother hot spot.
In some states, license plates stay with the owner of the vehicle when the vehicle is sold and may be put on a newly purchased vehicle. This is a list of states and info regarding license plate rules related to sale of a vehicle.
In general the persistence of information relevance gives it greater value over time. Constant information related to a thing has greater time value over time than variable information related to a thing. When the license plate stays with the owner of a vehicle when it is sold it really identifies a person more than it identifies a vehicle. The person is constant the vehicle is variable. From a surveillance standpoint it is desirable to obtain a basic mandatory one to one relationship to which can be associated variable information. For example: A person's name, finger print, a license plate number which is applicable to a person over a lifetime of owning different cars.
While owner/vehicle ID is important information, vehicle/actual user at any given time is variable. It could even be a stolen vehicle. Possible users are those living at the same address the vehicle is frequently sighted at overnight.
The entire LPR matter goes in so many directions that are fascinating to investigate. The consolidation of the LPR info provider players under one "go to" agency is perhaps the most interesting especially when extended associated information is related to the license plate.
The information nature of telephone numbers changed substantially with portability. A telephone number now is a more persistent piece of information and therefore more valuable over time. Conversely, less valuable over time in the case of disposable phones, depending on the reasons for their use.
A surveillance model appears to be emerging indicating the growth of privatized surveillance industry. Information readily available now may not be available in the future and on the other hand winning the battle of establishing the free and legal availability of private info now may pay off well in the future, especially to those that get an "institutional monopoly" on the collection of such information. By that I mean that they as an institution and by virtue of being an institution with a self policing set of surveillance industry rules are permitted to collect private information that is in public view while private individuals cannot do the same on a free lance basis.
It would seem that the private surveillance sector would prefer the transfer of license plates remaining with the owner to give more time value persistence to owner ID. With a mix of practice among states it may be interesting to monitor change of state policy over time and the reasons behind any changes.
The most obvious outcome of the LPR situation is that vehicles will have electronic license plates. Will they be readable by anyone with a cell phone and therefore public information, as public as looking at a current license plate? Will the electronic plate identify the driver or the vehicle or both?
Given the hodge/podge nature of state license plate transfer rules at this link it appears that the surveillance sector has an interest in making more uniform national rules to accommodate surveillance and unltimately going to electroninc vehicle/driver ID. For national security reasons, of course, as well as to stop vehicle theft or any other lame reason for such massively invasive information.
MAC address information on electronic devices in our pockets are analogous to license plates on a vehicle.
While information that persists over time has value, like a person's name, fleeting information related to it has great real time information value that may decline over time if not related to other more persistent information. Real time info has potentially great real time value. Constant real time tracking is about as good as real time gets. Periodic tracking such as license plate readers mounted on long haul trucks as previously suggested in this blog would have considerable short time span value.
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