A vast hidden surveillance network runs across America, powered by the repo industry by Shawn Musgrave.
From the post:
Few notice the “spotter car” from Manny Sousa’s repo company as it scours Massachusetts parking lots, looking for vehicles whose owners have defaulted on their loans. Sousa’s unmarked car is part of a technological revolution that goes well beyond the repossession business, transforming any industry that wants to check on the whereabouts of ordinary people.
An automated reader attached to the spotter car takes a picture of every license plate it passes and sends it to a company in Texas that already has more than 1.8 billion plate scans from vehicles across the country.
These scans mean big money for Sousa — typically $200 to $400 every time the spotter finds a vehicle that’s stolen or in default — so he runs his spotter around the clock, typically adding 8,000 plate scans to the database in Texas each day.
“Honestly, we’ve found random apartment complexes and shopping plazas that are sweet spots” where the company can impound multiple vehicles, explains Sousa, the president of New England Associates Inc. in Bridgewater.
But the most significant impact of Sousa’s business is far bigger than locating cars whose owners have defaulted on loans: It is the growing database of snapshots showing where Americans were at specific times, information that everyone from private detectives to insurers are willing to pay for.
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Shawn does a great job detailing how pervasive auto-surveillance is in the United States. Bad enough for repossession but your car’s location could be used as evidence of your location as well.
I suppose as compensation for lenders and repossession companies taking photos of license plates, ordinary people could follow lender and repossession employees around and do the same thing.
While thinking about that possibility, it occurred to me that the general public could do them one better.
When you see a banker, lawyer, CEO at a party, school event, church service, restaurant, etc., use your cellphone to snap their picture. Tag everyone you recognize in the photo.
If enough people take enough photographs, there will be a geo-location and time record of their whereabouts for more and more of every day.
Thinking we need photos of elected officials, their immediate staffs and say the top 10% of your locality in terms of economic status.
It won’t take long before those images, perhaps even your images, will become quite important.
Maybe this could be the start of the intell market described in Snow Crash.
Some people may buy your intell to use it, others may buy it to suppress it.
I first saw this in a tweet by Tim O’Reilly.