From Trump campaign signs to Planned Parenthood bumper stickers, license plate readers around the US are creating searchable databases that reveal Americans’ political leanings and more.

  • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I once saw a teardown of one of the flock safety fixed position cameras, but I’ll be damned as I can’t find it anymore.

    It’s a very simple system, much like a trail camera. It has a motion sensor, a camera, a sim card, a gps module, a battery, and a solar panel.

    They simply stick the pole in the ground along a right of way and the camera knows where it’s at because of the gps, it doesn’t need any kind of wires installed. The camera isn’t super high resolution, it just has a narrow lens on it so that it can capture text. These things are made with inexpensive off the shelf parts. I can’t speak for the Motorola systems, but I image they have some object recognition built in because they are mounted to a vehicle. I believe those are a much older design, but I have seen parts for sale on ebay, so they have probably updated it in the past few years to make it cheaper to produce.