Big Brother is here.

[kickingzebra]

I saw some spray advertised in Aussie, that would basically bugger up the speed cameras, looked normal to the eye, but when flashed by camera, could see nothing.. I also wonder about polarised number plate covers, swear black and blue I have seen heaps of them on porsches etc... Or a play on the electronic welding mask theme, as soon as it senses arc (or in this case light, or infrared, or ultravoilet or whatever the heck it is) it turns an LCD cover black... Haha, no recognition today!!!

Privacy seems doomed, and we'll all play along nicely... (if they destroy old license photos, how come I had a license re issued once, without having a new photo taken?? huh, huh??? the busstids!!)

CS Lewis was smarter than most of us, and he ended up convinced of the accuracy of the bible, and he isn't the only one! I dare say there is much that we don't know, but could learn from the good book

[Patrick]

Paranoia prevails yet again...bloody "P"... it reads plates and checks them against stolen ones... nothing more, nothing less...

But what the hey...we are watching you all....

[Lou Girardin]

Paranoia prevails yet again...bloody "P"... it reads plates and checks them against stolen ones... nothing more, nothing less...

But what the hey...we are watching you all....

Heard of the thin end of the wedge?
That's just before they jam the whole "big Brother" thing up our collective arses.

[Patrick]

Watching watching watching....have a wine Lou, (watching) I know you want one...watching... red isn't it??????? I know... i've been watching......

[Ixion]

How long I wonder before the introduce the facial recognition cameras that they have in the UK? (And one UK bureaucrat wanted to make the fact that said cameras couldn't see a biker's face behind the helmet, a reason to ban bikes completely!).

Mind you, Mr Scumdog and his skull mask might have them guessing.

BTW I have heard it said that the UK number palte cameras are linked through a computer program that enables them to monitor your route , by place and time - (ie by switching from one camera to another and synchronising the clocks) .

Bloody technology. Vote Neo-luddite- a free Zorch motorcycle for everyone.

[Paul in NZ]

No problem to check rego and wof on the fly. If they're already sending the plate # back to the server, and a yes no result for the rego and wof is only adding another 2 bits to the response back. It's bugger all data to send and recieve, could be done over the cellular network, or packet radio, or some other cool stuff that the police use.

It's no problem to send that data back once the processing is done but managing the number of potential plates withing view of the camera at any one time is a lot of action to handle.

The way these things work is not quite what you expect. (without knowing their exact system and assuming it's like the ones I HAVE played with)

It's first job is to find and recognise that an object IS a car registration plate. They come in a reasonably large number of possible configs so there is a fair bit of smarts involved even getting that far. Throw in multiple targets to track and complication is rising already.

OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is good but far from perfect. Probably it will recognise some but not all the characters so the gui probably won't tell the operator that the blue car 3 from the right is definately being driven by a master criminal etc. What it will do is say that there is a possibility (usually expressed as a %) that this vehicle is one of the vehicles of interest. Please check. Ie it increases the chances of success by flagging these things up to the operator.

By way of example. If a computer checks a fingerprint or a face, it rates it according to a score. It might tip out 3 or 7 potential matches and it's up to the operator to decide! However, it finds these canditates for a database of millions which speeds things up a mite.

Cheers

[Paul in NZ]

How long I wonder before the introduce the facial recognition cameras that they have in the UK? (And one UK bureaucrat wanted to make the fact that said cameras couldn't see a biker's face behind the helmet, a reason to ban bikes completely!).

Mind you, Mr Scumdog and his skull mask might have them guessing.

BTW I have heard it said that the UK number palte cameras are linked through a computer program that enables them to monitor your route , by place and time - (ie by switching from one camera to another and synchronising the clocks) .

Bloody technology. Vote Neo-luddite- a free Zorch motorcycle for everyone.

Wadda ya mean before?

I think you mean when did they?

And yes, it can recognise bikers wearing helmets with disturbing accuracy as long as it can see the eyes.

Does it work they way you think it does? Nope! See my last post.

[sAsLEX]

Has anyone considered running a non-prescribed plate? Would one that is subtley(sp) different but still quite similar to the naked eye be enough to fool the software??

The software and camera would more than likely use edge detection using a Gaussian and laplacian filter to get the letters and Numbers out by some tricky matrix multiplication......so not likely....10 cents of lecky tape would fool it...and the cops will become relient on it and wont notice the lecky tape

[sAsLEX]

And yes, it can recognise bikers wearing helmets with disturbing accuracy as long as it can see the eyes.

So it recognises someone through only their eyes through a visor?

Would think it would need more reference points from about the face than just the rought measurements it couold make of the eyes from the distances they would be at?

[NodMan:Me]

We can do that in 20 mins in South Auckland.

shit I only got two last night...guess that blows my chances of a transfer to south aucks then....must be time to retire!!!

didnt see you out Harris Rd last night BC...dont you work the real shifts???
catch ya round before you catch me EH BOY!!!

[imdying]

It's no problem to send that data back once the processing is done but managing the number of potential plates withing view of the camera at any one time is a lot of action to handle.

It's first job is to find and recognise that an object IS a car registration plate. They come in a reasonably large number of possible configs so there is a fair bit of smarts involved even getting that far. Throw in multiple targets to track and complication is rising already.

OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is good but far from perfect. Probably it will recognise some but not all the characters so the gui probably won't tell the operator that the blue car 3 from the right is definately being driven by a master criminal etc. What it will do is say that there is a possibility (usually expressed as a %) that this vehicle is one of the vehicles of interest. Please check. Ie it increases the chances of success by flagging these things up to the operator.

From the description of the system active in NZ, I would assume that the car in front of the police is the one being scanned. That pretty much only leaves one plate to scrape. It's not really that difficult to scrape the plate from that picture, it's only a matter of how many dollars one wants to invest. OCR is quite reliable on things like typewritten text, as the fixed 'font' improves accuracy greatly. As the number of possible characters is essentially 'controlled', it's a lot easier to tune OCR software for them. I would expect a system like that to be continually taking pictures and scraping them, and then comparing those scrapes together to confirm the accuracy of the result.

[ManDownUnder]

I didn't realise Gone with the Wind was that old.

You still talking about the tattoo on Lou's arse?

[ManDownUnder]

The software and camera would more than likely use edge detection using a Gaussian and laplacian filter to get the letters and Numbers out by some tricky matrix multiplication......so not likely....10 cents of lecky tape would fool it...and the cops will become relient on it and wont notice the lecky tape

I can see that working well.

Unless the response comes back with a Red Honda Civic, for a plate attached to a bus... or the reg or warrant on the vehicle in question lapses and you get pulled over for it...

things start to unravel rather quickly at that point...

[Lou Girardin]

Watching watching watching....have a wine Lou, (watching) I know you want one...watching... red isn't it??????? I know... i've been watching......

Not quite cold enough for reds yet. We did have a lovely Cloudy Bay Pinot the other night though. With Fava beans and a tender piece of liver.
It tasted just like pork.

[Patrick]

So the beans fit through that gimp mask OK then?