Through the scanner darkly, darkly; and the future of information

scanner eye by jvaughan

The digitization of everything is an elixir for some people. It spawns visions. If we could only open up all the data…how about taking the college facebook and putting it on line …. why not street-level and satellite-level photos of every home in the U.S. of A. Ok! Build and sell a picture database of all the license plates on all the cars and trucks on the road? Gee, I don't know. The Department of Fatherland Security recently moved to create a national license-plate recognition database to garner data from commercial and law enforcement tag readers. Then, with NSA skulduggery still a little too current, they canceled it a' sudden. Note that commercial tag reader systems remain out there. DRN or Digital Recognition Network provides "data that puts your company in the driver's seat" helping you repo your assets (e.g., cars) and reduce asset charge-offs. Together with Vigilant Solutions of Livermore, Calif., the company is fighting a Utah law that banned the private, commercial use of the license plate scanning technology. DRN was the only speaker at a hearing on the topic at the Mass State House earlier this month. They see it as their first amendment right to make money taking pictures of stuff. When you think of all the big data uses of license plates beyond immigration, repossession, well its boggling. Probably their more big data apps to come, that we cant even think of, but why not collect the data for that big day in the future? The undercurrent is, if I don’t want the NSA or DFS to do it, why would I want some Starbuck's guzzling nerdster to? Re-jiggering of status quo is what massive levels of data can do. Google has met a few people who don't want pictures of their houses in Google's database and, apparently, will remove them if you ask. I don't think First Amendment rights to take pictures are a foundation for massively scaled reproduction, and would not my license plate in some software company data services offering. In "Who owns the Future," Jaron Lanier lays down some framework for a more credible understanding of where we want to go with data and privacy. By asking questions of the future he takes a sharper picture of the present: "... as technology advances i this century, our present intuition about the nature of information will be remembered as narrow and shortsighted." - Jack Vaughan

Related 
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/19/dhs-plan-for-national-license-plate-tracking-system-raises-privacy-concerns/
http://www.googletutor.com/asking-google-to-remove-your-home-from-maps-street-view/
http://betaboston.com/news/2014/03/05/a-vast-hidden-surveillance-network-runs-across-america-powered-by-the-repo-industry/
http://consumerist.com/2014/03/05/the-repo-man-might-be-scanning-your-cars-license-plate-and-location-selling-the-data/
http://www.drndata.com/Content/Docs/DRN%20Vigilant%20Utah%20Press%20Release.pdf
http://www.drndata.com/
http://vigilantsolutions.com/