Your Garbage Truck Is About to Start Spying on You. Your Car Already Did, and Got Fined for It.
This is getting out of hand.
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So that they can get pictures of license plates tied to addresses to sell to repo companies so that the tow truck can come get your Hellcat.
Obviously the reader should confirm this for their own jurisdiction but there is no law against either removing or covering up your car's plate(s) as long as you're parked on your own private property. Just gotta remember to uncover them before you head out because that is illegal.
Car covers are also an alternative if you're a renter assuming you aren't required to have a parking pass or plates visible for parking enforcement.
Anyone wanna build smart licence plate covers? Like it either rolls up or flips up to hide the plate.
Maybe actually have it just flip down your plate when parked to obscure it. I would say power tinting to obscure it but technically its illegal to cover it most places.
"Smart" in this context wasn't as much of a thing back then, but The Transporter had a similar option.
I would ensure it’s impossible to activate it from inside the car. Otherwise, eventually someone might worry about you cheating toll booths.
(…actually sounds like in Texas they’re just banned outright?)
Or being a baddy burglar!
You could just use strong magnets and take your license plates with you like the olden days.
Interesting but I just meant flipping down not completely making it look like no plate. I would say tie it to the ignition/power button so when off it flips down or up depending on what is less obvious. Like some cars have a bump above the plate that would be less obvious going up meanwhile trucks have ledges or tow hitch that would make it less obvious flipping down.
It's better a manual one, if a police officer stop you and they make you turn off the engine, you are now in trouble
Reminds me of one time when I was a child my dad got pulled over, I (unaware of what was going on) took my seat belt off.
Cop almost wrote a ticket for it.
The cop was def an asshole
Not inherently true- most places ban having "unregistered" vehicles on residential areas, and if they can't see a plate when they're looking to cause problems, they're going to claim it's unregistered and make it your problem.
Ah my neighbor battles this every year lol, they have to prove the vehicle is actually functional. It becomes more of a battle then you would think if you have the will to fight them...
Unfortunately a huge percentage of car owners have to street park.
The only way to stop or reverse this is to get conservative capitalists out of our government.
I mean aside from literal bloody revolution, which some people say is the only way. And, as much as this may be true, it will take a lot more than what has been happening so far to incite that sort of action, so the next actionable step is to vote for and support socialists to push back against the filthy rich and their corrupt cronies that infest our government at every level.
So basically everyone including the Democratic Socialist Mayor of Seattle.
On the east Coast the formerly fiery Mamdani has gone silent on this issue since becoming Mayor.
I can find examples of this kind of thing from all over the United States. I'm using Mayors Wilson and Mamdani because they directly refute the idea that "Socialists" will stop this. They clearly will not.
If you think the left doesn't do this too I've got news for you.
The problem with these, and all, automated systems that detect EVERYTHING is that current code enforcement hardly detects 0.1% of existing violations, by design. That's how they roll. They only kick into action when somebody complains.
Think of speeding tickets - how easy would it be for our roadside ALPR systems to time your transit from point A to point B, calculate your minimum average speed to make the trip in that time, and mail you a citation when you're over the posted speed limit? Not hard at all, but that's not how speeding tickets roll in this country (and most others, too.) If they really wanted total enforcement, your car already knows when you're speeding, it can already wirelessly tattle on you to roadside monitors, they could effect 100% citation coverage if they wanted to, but whoever tries that is comitting political suicide.
One of the reasons HOAs are such groaners is that the types of people who run for HOA president occasionally (not always) go in for this "100% enforcement" mentality and due to the utter apathy of HOA residents who can't be bothered to depose their despot, they can persist in that mode for years. Last HOA I lived in had fearless leaders who "lived in the back" and hired an outside company to write upkeep violations, but only on houses in the front of the neighborhood.
When I lived in a big city with a code enforcement department instead of an HOA system, things went along for decades without much flap, the occasional citation on the really persistently bad violators - as things are expected to work, but then some new neighbors moved in and attended the city-neighborhood meeting and started chanting "just enforce the law, JUST ENFORCE THE LAW" and, so, code inspectors were sent to walk the neighborhood by foot and write every violation they could see from the street. Our 400 houses got more violations written up in one day than the entire city of 40,000 homes received in the prior year.
So, these systems that "observe 13,000 violations in a single week" need to chill out, turn the filters way way up and figure out what the 13 most important violations in the city are each MONTH and work with those property owners to get them fixed. Use the photo-scans to pre-screen citizen complaints, ensure that there's even a problem worth sending an inspector for when the neighbor says "there's been a junky car here up on blocks for the past 2 years and somebody needs to do something about it" the records can show whether that's true, or a gross exaggeration before prioritizing which citizen calls get seen this week and which need to chill out and "wait their turn."
On the one hand, yes, fully enforcing these things would be gross overpolicing.
On the other hand, the selective enforcement is, by design, a way to manufacture an excuse to harass and persecute minorities/undesirables.
The correct solution is to relax or abolish the laws themselves until they diminish to the point that fully enforcing them is reasonable.
Absolutely, and this is another thing that's going to prevent "fair" algorithmic enforcement from happening.
I have always thought this, but I don't get my jollies out of selectively "sticking it to" people different than me for the same things I get away with all the time. Apparently, a lot of our government, police, and voters do...
It is like work monitoring that can monitor every keystroke and trip to the bathroom. If you expect people to be 100% rule abiding, perfect and predictable I've got news for you. The people putting these systems into place would never stand for them being applied to them.
Norway does this.
Norway does a lot of sensible things that seem impossible in the USA.
You’re not suggesting the automated mailing of speeding tickets based on average speed is reasonable, are you?
I'm Norwegian. Read in the news that there was a guy who used to set a timer and count the seconds when driving through a tunnel with average speed cameras so he wouldn't get fined.
Just keep the speed limit, you'd get there at the same time. Sometimes i wonder how these people even survive.
I know that Colorado does this as well. Probably other states in the USA do too. https://www.codot.gov/programs/speedenforcement
If it's clearly posted, that's fine - and appropriate in certain mountain pass situations.
If it's a surprise when the fine arrives in the mail, that's pure unadulterated evil.
Pop up fines - impediment to free travel - arbitrary tax collection. I mean, if you want to go back to Roman times where any government officials you happen to meet can just grab you by the shoulder and "collect taxes for the emperor" because you happen to be within reach - you can call that "not evil" if you like. I call it regression of civilization.
There's signs posted in advance that say something along the lines of "Speed Enforcement Camera Ahead". The only reason they'd be a surprise is if you're not paying attention to signage. They're in the mountains, but I've mostly seen them out in the flat eastern parts of Colorado where the roads are mostly long straight stretches over flat terrain. Which makes sense, since that's where it's easy to speed.
Depends on how you look at "makes sense." It's easy to speed, it's relatively safer to speed (except in blinding snow conditions when the cameras probably don't work too well...) So, if "makes sense" is about maximizing revenue, then sure: more people will be breaking the law where the law itself makes less sense...
And so does the Netherlands. It ain't magic.
I was looking at this, wondering what I asked Claude to get this, before realizing it is Lemmy.
True, but once it's automated, it can easily be archived for future reference. Then it's in your file for who knows what future use.
Abuse of those files is another problem. I'd say it's a separate problem that's possibly even more important to deal with, but it's different from over-enforcement based on the stated purpose of the data collection.
How's it going America?
Oh...
The Land of Free* *Terms and conditions apply.
The only condition: don't be poor
Not an actual product
For illustration purposes only
Our garbage trucks already have been for years… I learned that when I got an “overloaded bin” fine, with a video of my neighbor’s bin being dumped as “evidence.” I had to do a dispute and make them reverse it, not because I care about a dollar or whatever insignificant fine amount, but because, like… fuck off with that shit, you know?
That's enraging.
I'd consider organizing a campaign to leave bricks/debris on the sides of roads on pickup days and throw their garbage on the front door step of whichever gov't body made that decision.
Where I am there is considerable legal precedent preventing surveillance like that.
Yes, absolutely fight for principles if you have the time and energy to. That was messed up.
There's an interesting article written back when it was revealed that the post office was recording the envelopes of every piece of mail it handles and what kind of data they could extrapolate from it. [If you've mailed a letter at the counter in the past few years, you'll know that they bug you if you haven't put a return address on the envelope.] Anyway, it's called "Finding Paul Revere" and I found it an interesting read.
AI writing detected in an article about the evils of AI. It’s like rain on your wedding day.
Sorry, I can't continue or provide the next lyrics of a copyrighted song. If you'd like, I can summarize the song, explain the meaning of that line, or discuss why "rain on your wedding day" became such a famous example from Ironic.
I'm sure nobody's going to get outrageous fines due to an AI's false positives.
I genuinely hope it does nothing but drown people in false positives, to the point where the people who put this idea forward have to leave the state under witness protection.
Unfortunately, it's probably just going to end up fucking a bunch of innocent people over, and the people who put the idea forward will take a nice vacation before returning to their life as normal.
on an unrelated note, a pseudo-napalm is relatively easy to make with common everyday ingredients. You know, just for intellectual curiousity and nothing more.
A body bag would also be acceptable. Where are all the heavily armed libertarians when you need them?
Why the fuck is "overgrown grass' illegal?
Who wants to live in these places
Us paranoid tried to warn everyone back in the early 2000s
George Orwell warned us back in 1948.
You're not wrong but more to the point I was trying to make is that the actual technology existed around that time, we started to see people abuse it, we warned others, snowden dropped documents on the NSAs effort and large datacenters and not many people batted an eye.
Yes. I remember the data center the NSA built. I took notice.
1984/
I remember watching Enemy of the State with Will Smith in 1998. That movie was so fucking ridiculous with cameras everywhere. Oh...
Of all places, the fucked up red run Florida Oblast. I thought the MAGA nutters were all about "freedom."
Freedom (like free market, etc) means the freedom for corps to do whatever they want. The exact opposite of what Adam Smith meant.
Classic Murica: redefine a specific term and claim it's in line with the original definition. If you can't beat the facts, play with the terms behind those facts. Win!
Freedom in the US means the right to ride your Harley Davidson fart noise machine wherever you want.
Freedom until they are in charge.
It's not for them, it's for their neighbors.
I don't have a garbage truck. I let the city handle that.
Welfare slob huh? Stop relying on my tax dollars and get your own damn garbage truck already!
You don't have to pay for trash collection service in your city?
The idea of putting Cameras on City Vehicles and using AI to find problems, including Code Enforcement issues, is a good one IMO. The problem, as the article notes, is what that data is going to be used for in the future. We used to call this a Slippery Slope argument but the past 10 years have proven that if data is harvested that it will eventually be misused; it's some kind of parallel to Godwin's Law that I am going to coin as "Flock's Law".
In this specific instance Flock's Law tells us that the authorities will inevitably start scanning the photos / videos for people in order to track movements, the Police will be in the database stalking people, and you'll start getting tickets for over-filling your trash can.
Meanwhile all people really want, and what won't happen, is someone to come by to get that absolutely jungle of a lawn mowed, fix a broken sidewalk, replace a missing street sign, or move the damn boat / camper / trailer / junk car that has been parked in the street for the last year.
I guess they won't be satisfied until we are all wearing mechanical suits that will prevent us from doing anything "illegal!"
or have cameras in your own house monitoring your every move. like that dropout/collegehumor skit, where republicans have cameras in every move to monitor as a "thought" police.
Remember the stories about how wifi does a good job of telling where people are in the house? They might already be on that way.
I just put my wifi in a metal box. /s
On a more serious note, how does one fight this? Will putting the router in a wooden or plastic box interfere? What about putting it outside the house but within range?
That is just the start. Next: they want predictive AI to predict every aspect of your life.
After that, they will figure out how to manipulate the WiFi, to control your behavior subtly.
Then, comes make you do crimes, just to punish you for them.
Yeah but they forget about us adhd people. We can't even predict what we're doing next.
I don't know where I am!
Whovians will understand. Prescient? ;-)
you already have that: your TV, your tablet, your securiy camera, your baby monitor, your doorbell, your neighbor's doorell, your goddamn router from the ISP. your phone.
the game ended when Elon Musk got Trump the votes he needed. there is no freedom any more. all we can do is resist until they disappear us.
I feel like we might as well just shoot right to the 1984 reference
Or just electro shock collars
You guys get shock collars? We get the kind that explodes your head.
The American defaultism is so fucking tiring, it's such a constant "here's this thing that's only a thing in the US but it's written like it's global". There needs to be a rule of at least having (US) in the title for posts that use whatever title they link to.
Isn't one of the most common rules in news communities that the title must be exactly the same as the title of the article? That's why this happens to you. News sources don't always say "oh, yeah, this is just for the US, BTW." In their headlines.
Rules have a purpose to serve. They can be changed and allow certain tags.
Or let's say we leave the title and make it a [US] flair or marker or however that could be named. Not sure if lemmy already has that functionality.
Just saying there are possible solutions to this.
Oh, I don't disagree with you, just giving the actual reason why these are all worded like the US is all that exists.
What if I dont have a garbage truck?
Straight to jail!
Well your neighbors might
I assume they are rural enough to not get trash service so likely not.
So, they’re creating a landfill near their house? Talk about shitting where you eat.
You go to the landfill.
Unless you live in Birmingham, then you just live in squalor after 1 day of bin strikes.
While we're at it, how do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 minutes?
About? Imagine my surprise when I logged into my WM portal to see if they picked up, and boom, full HD video of them dumping my trash into their truck, my property in full view.
That's nice they have that technology... the videos they send businesses are so crappy we can't even tell if it's our container when they try to charge overages.
Not to be that smug guy who drives old cars, but I can fairly safely gaurenteed my vehicles, from '84, '85, '93, '06, and '07 are not spying on me.
The problem with old cars is that, eventually, they will die, and all we'll have is the surveillance boxes, no alternative.
This is part of why it's so vital to keep the fight for surveillance-free vehicles, even if, for a brief moment, you are still able to avoid part of this monstrosity.
I've said this in other threads, but you are gonna see the value of old shitboxes skyrocket as they will be the last haven of privacy on the road.. Until they make it illegal to drive any vehicle that doesnt record you constantly via audio/video, require a breathalyzer to start, plus 2 blood samples, a piss sample, and a Semen sample/Cervical scraping before allowing you to turn the key and enter the roadway/
That's quite a lot to get a car running.
My bike is unregistered and essentially unregulated. I don't even need to follow actual roads. This grass field? Yeah can cross that. True freedom.
Government endorsed mastrubation? Sign me up!
No, it will be via cold, unpleasant, mechanical prostate electroshock.
I already said "sign me up", you don't have to sell me on it.
Some people might be into that...
Jesus would cover his eyes, if his hands didnt have holes in them.
Yeah but if everyone else's is, you're getting tracked too. Just like Facebook does. It's dogshit.
Why do you have 5 cars?
Because I'm a gearhead and I like them.
I would've hoped that was obvious... So, to be more specific, if that's what you were asking:
I'll also mention that all of these vehicles combined are worth like 10-15k, which is signifigantly less than if I owned a single "nice" vehicle, and I haven't had to go into debt to own any of them.
I'll also also mention that, even as a gearhead, I generally agree with the fuck cars movement and whatnot. I want better public transit and such to get those that'd rather not be driving off the roads. Plus, driving in cities suck, I'm relieved to leave my car at home or a park 'n' ride and take transit into town. For how "free" America supposedly is, people sure don't have the freedom to not own a car.
That ended up being rather lengthy, but what'd you expect asking someone about their hobby...
Will be checking out your YT channel. Thanks bro.
Appreciate it! It's just my name, Joel Kalich. I also upload to my own PeerTube Instance if you prefer, https://joeltube.com/c/joel_kalich_
Watched a few of your videos last night. You're fun.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed them.
Definitely subscribed, cool to see another Washingtonian gearhead. :)
Wow, max $15k combined? Sounds like junkyard findings or something! You must be really handy, I take it.
Maybe a bit more... I was talking about current value as well, not what I paid.
Hard to say what Grandpa's car is worth, it could be worth thousands to the right buyer, but it's also pretty heavily used. The Subaru is worth about 2k. BMW about 7k. Volvo about 3k. Motorcycle about 1.5k. They're just not expensive vehicles haha.
I am fairly handy, yeah, not a professional by any means haha, but I can get quite a lot done.
Some people like and collect cars... Just like any other hobby.
Mine doesn't. Specifically downgraded big time to a nearly dumb car (AA is the only modern feature and this I can control)
I hope for the future those dumb things will still be built or else I'd have a problem...
What’s “AA”?
Android Auto, I assume.
Android auto, sorry. I also hate forced onboard navigation that either gets stale or where you have to pay for updates. At least after warranty ends in my case.
Some people prefer paying with money over paying with personal data.
Having said that, these days the paid solutions also collect your data ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Exactly...that's why my only viable solution is the AA one. Phone on VPN with a dummy account. Automatically switched to airplane when car off and to my phone's hotspot when car is on. Google has no usable data here. Not perfect, yes.
If you're going to all that effort, why not just use something that's powered by OpenStreetMap like OsmAnd?
Really tried. They just totally suck for us. Sygic isn't great either but way more helpful (with lane-assist or speedcam warnings and such). And the yearly sub costs a tiny fraction of what Bentley would want for a post-warranty service with nav-update 😁
Sadly found no better alternative so far, especially because I effing hate google and have it removed 99,9%.
What do they suck in?
So.. yours does track you.
No it does not. The AA phone is a dedicated one without SIM and a dummy google account. Whatever they track is not only useless, it couldn't even leave the phone.
And the car itself has no uplink or anything that would need one. The best the onboard system can do is show the time and play radio. Without the phone the car is dumb as a wet rock.
My car doesn’t even shift for me and has no cameras or cellular radios, nor any software that can make internet connections.
If she’s spying on me she’s being quite clever about it.
Interesting, bylaw stuff like this is usually complaint based, active enforcement just creates hostility with the city.
Of course if you’re a common nuisance maybe you should be actively enforced, but it’s not just about having enough staff. There’s a balance between relations as well.
And also, maybe the city should maintain their crap before actively targeting enforcement too….
this article sounds like AI too, i am going crazy
Not my garbage truck
My garbage truck can't handle anything but regular trash, can't afford the trucks with the arm and often can't even show up on trash day - they're late a day ~30% of the time.
Perks of living in a poor area, I guess.
Our code enforcement are two guy who are supposed to cover 1,400 miles....
Non-yahoo link: https://theautowire.com/2026/07/15/your-garbage-truck-is-about/
Cape Coral is turning into one giant HOA?
LLM Alliteration detected :
"That's the announcement. It isn't the story."
Why can't you all MFs just write a piece without these, like typed by your own hands. Also is about an Ai surveillance piece.
What alliteration are you talkimg about?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliteration
be nice if someone sued kws for the same shit. there is no real reason they need your name, address,ph no, and ss# just to watch risque videos or play mature-rated games online
scan, or act as mass surveillance as people become aware of flock cameras.
Guess I'm glad not to have trash service in my town for once LOL
I prefer to set all documents on fire but maybe do this in a planned way to avoid attention
Ai slop article
Not where I live. Few people even have smartphones and there's no garbage trucks.