Digital License Plates And The Deal That Never Had A Chance
from the these-deals-never-last dept
Location and surveillance technology permeates the driving experience. Setting aside external technology like license plate readers, there is some form of internet-connected service or surveillance capability built into or on many cars, from GPS tracking to oil-change notices. This is already a dangerous situation for many drivers and passengers, and a bill in California requiring GPS-tracking in digital license plates would put us further down this troubling path.
In 2022, EFF fought along with other privacy groups, domestic violence organizations, and LGBTQ+ rights organizations to prevent the use of GPS-enabled technology in digital license plates. A.B. 984, authored by State Assemblymember Lori Wilson and sponsored by digital license plate company Reviver, originally would have allowed for GPS trackers to be placed in the digital license plates of personal vehicles. As we have said many times, location data is very sensitive information, because where we go can also reveal things we’d rather keep private even from others in our household. Ultimately, advocates struck a deal with the author to prohibit location tracking in passenger cars, and this troubling flaw was removed. Governor Newsom signed A.B. 984 into law.
Now, not even two years later, the state’s digital license plate vendor, Reviver, and Assemblymember Wilson have filed A.B. 3138, which directly undoes the deal from 2022 and explicitly calls for location tracking in digital license plates for passenger cars.
To best protect consumers, EFF urges the legislature to not approve A.B. 3138.
Consumers Could Face Serious Concerns If A.B. 3138 Becomes Law
In fact, our concerns about trackers in digital plates are stronger than ever. Recent developments have made location data even more ripe for misuse.
- People traveling to California from a state that criminalizes abortions may be unaware that the rideshare car they are in is tracking their trip to a Planned Parenthood via its digital license plate. This trip may generate location data that can be used against them in a state where abortion is criminalized.
- Unsupportive parents of queer youth could use GPS-loaded plates to monitor or track whether teens are going to local support centers or events.
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could use GPS surveillance technology to locate immigrants, as it has done by exploiting ALPR location data exchange between local police departments and ICE to track immigrants’ movements. The invasiveness of vehicle location technology is part of a large range of surveillance technology that is at the hands of ICE to fortify their ever-growing “virtual wall.”
- There are also serious implications in domestic violence situations, where GPS tracking has been investigated and found to be used as a tool of abuse and coercion by abusive partners. Most recently, two Kansas City families are jointly suing the company Spytec GPS after its technology was used in a double-murder suicide, in which a man used GPS trackers to find and kill his ex-girlfriend, her current boyfriend, and then himself. The families say the lawsuit is, in part, to raise awareness about the danger of making this technology and location information more easily available. There’s no reason to make tracking any easier by embedding it in state-issued plates.
We Urge the Legislature to Reject A.B. 3138
Shortly after California approved Reviver to provide digital license plates to commercial vehicles under A.B. 984, the company experienced a security breach where it was possible for hackers to use GPS in real time to track vehicles with a Reviver digital license plate. Privacy issues aside, this summer, the state of Michigan also terminated their two-year old contract with Reviver for the company’s failure to follow state law and its contractual obligations. This has forced 1,700 Michigan drivers to go back to a traditional metal license plate.
Reviver is the only company that currently has state authorization to sell digital plates in California, and is the primary advocate for allowing tracking in passenger vehicle plates. The company says its goal is to modernize personalization and safety with digital license plate technology for passenger vehicles. But they haven’t proven themselves up to the responsibility of protecting this data.
A.B. 3138 functionally gives drivers one choice for a digital license plate vendor, and that vendor failed once to competently secure the location data collected by its products. It has now failed to meet basic contractual obligations with a state agency. California lawmakers should think carefully about the clear dangers of vehicle location tracking, and whether we can trust this company to protect the sensitive location information for vulnerable populations, or for any Californian.
Reposted from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.
Filed Under: ab 3138, digital license plates, location tracking, lori wilson
Companies: reviver
Comments on “Digital License Plates And The Deal That Never Had A Chance”
Why do you want cheating on your spouse to be kept secret?
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When did you stop beating your wife?
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Stop?
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“When did you stop beating your wife?”
He hasn’t got a wife. He is not old enough. Indeed, I am wondering if his babysitter knows he is playing on his Mums computer…
My first question is, why is a private company receiving any kind of location data in the first place? Why is all of this data not going directly to the state, the very governing body that is requiring it in the first place? (Lack of even just barely adequate security measures aside.) Could it be that Reviver is “donating generously” to certain re-election campaigns? Inquiring minds want to know.
Aside from that, all of this data is gonna end up in the hands of ne’er-do-well’s anyway, so why should a private company get all of that moolah when the State can just as easily sell the data and have an even bigger slush fund? That’s a just plain bad business decision on the State’s part. (‘Cause once Reviver sells it, California won’t be able to follow into the same markets with essentially the same data.)
Not sure they have thought this through
Battery life five years, then what? Does one receive a fine when the battery dies? Does it warn the owner about low battery conditions?
At six hundred bucks a pop every five years, assuming their claim holds true even in cold climates, that is not insignificant in terms of the average household budget.
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I’ve had my current license plate for (checks) 12 years. The plate itself cost me nothing, as it doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to the state.
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Might still be a little difference in cost (to the state) between a metal plate and a digital dohickey with a battery.
Re: Failure modes
They appear to use a kind of e-paper display, so presumably, when they run out of power, they just revert to a static plate number (or whatever was last displayed, but hopefully they’re designed to shut down gracefully in that situation).
Also, their site says that the battery is replaceable.
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“Also, their site says that the battery is replaceable.”
User replaceable?
Like a cell phone .. lol
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I don’t know the details, but I don’t see any reason to suppose that it’s even slightly difficult to change the battery, or to say things like “six hundred bucks a pop every five years”. Let’s complain about real things instead of making stuff up.
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So are the batteries in tablets, if you can find some way of removing the glue without destroying the device.
Because It's A Third Party
“My first question is, why is a private company receiving any kind of location data in the first place? Why is all of this data not going directly to the state, the very governing body that is requiring it in the first place?”
No warrants are required if it’s held by a third party.
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Actually, if a private company is willing to do the right thing and not bend over backwards to accommodate police demands made on the flimsiest of pretexts, then warrants absolutely are required.
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Bingo.
The “third party” holds the information, free of civil oversight and regulations, and then every law enforcement agency/HOA just asks for the data after pinky-swearing to be extra careful with it.
This conversation has already gone way too far. i get off the train at digital license plates, full stop. Let’s replace some stamped metal and paint with something which can fail and cost a box of cash to replace, because you absolutely have to replace it, and pay whatever ticket you got for the invisible license plate you didn’t know was broken. GTFO.
Everything else is just insane murder on top.
How often are you changing license plates to need a digital license plate? It makes no sense
Re: Yes
It does seem like a solution in search of a problem. The use cases suggested on their site are for customized messages that… probably shouldn’t take the place of a license plate.
So now we have a conundrum… Most, if not all, states require that a license plate be legible at 80 feet distance, at all times. Meaning, no mud or other ‘natural’ coverings, no matter how temporary. No covers that might reflect light, thus rendering cameras less effective (or completely ‘blind’ to the plate’s content). No plate frames with lights that either are bright, strobing, or infrared, or some combination thereof (again, cameras).
At first blush, this seems reasonable, but what happens when the light starts fading, potentially from a battery going down, down, down…. And for grins, what happens in bright sunlight versus a dark and stormy night, eh? I’d hope there’s some kind of ambient light sensor driving a decision circuit in somewhere in there.
Speaking of strobing….. many/most users don’t know this, but an awful lot of LED digital screens are strobed at a presumably high frequency so as to conserve power. Some individuals are known to be susceptible to this action and suffer either migraine headaches or worse, temporary seizures. Don’t want that to happen while driving down the street, that’s for sure.
Damage to the plate? Suppose you like to go off-roading through the tulies? Will that plate stand up to the same abuse as a metal one? What happens if some cocksucker backs into your plate in a parking lot while you were inside shopping for something? Will the plate alert you, somewhere on the dash immediately in front of your face when you start the car that it’s been damaged by some cocksucker? Did Reviver think of that little puzzle, hmmmm?
And finally, what about that part about being customizable for vanity? How long do you think it’ll take for a cracker (not hacker) to break into the digital workings and change the actual plate numbers? I’d bet a lot of rands (ZAR) that California didn’t think of this one, and make it a requirement that a digital plate manufacturer provide extremently strong protection against this possibility. (And yes, still it won’t stop an intrepid evil-doer, but it will keep honest people honest.)
Enough questions for now. IMO, this is one place where METAL rules!
Re: Not LED or LCD
It’s e-paper. So it’s lit the same way as any other license plate.
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Requiring a screen that has to be backlit in most conditions. Do you not know what e-paper even is?
I believe I’ve just proved the converse
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You haven’t. I do know what e-paper is; do you? It certainly isn’t “required to be backlit”. Most types of e-paper devices have no built-in lighting whatsoever. Those that do, use front side lighting, not backlighting, which wouldn’t work. All of them are lit reflectively — mostly by ambient light.
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You haven’t watched TV or used a flat screen PC monitor recently, have you? You also clearly haven’t read the article AC linked to.
Objection: assumes facts not in evidence.
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Sorry, disconnected thread and mobile site doesn’t let me edit or delete.
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So quit bitching about it by providing the context: post your comment where it was meant to go, carefully checking you’ve hit the ‘reply’ button and not the ‘post comment’ one.
Motive?
This smells an awful lot like someone owns shares in said digital license plate company… shit, this country needs an overhaul.
seo
It’s e-paper. So it’s lit the same