Automatic number plate recognitioncomes to Athens Ohio

[CoolBreeze]

Does this mean that West Virginia cars are safe in Athens?


ATHENS COUNTY, Ohio (WSAZ) -- New technology is helping law enforcement officers nab crooks like never before, and the Athens County Sheriff's Office has the latest electronics wizardry.

The device is mounted on the back of a police cruiser. Its infrared lights signal two cameras to take digital photos of just about every car on the road. The device warns officers not only about the vehicle, but where its from and why its wanted.

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http://www.wsaz.com/news/headlines/78571812.html

Automatic number plate recognition: (ANPR) can be used to store the images captured by the cameras as well as the text from the licence plate, with some configurable to store a photograph of the driver. Systems commonly use infrared lighting to allow the camera to take the picture at any time of the day. Concerns about these systems have centered on privacy fears of government tracking citizens' movements and media reports of misidentification and high error rates.

One of the biggest challenges with ALPR technology in the US is the accuracy of the Optical Character Recognition (OCR)—the actual identification of the characters on the license plate. Many variables affect OCR accuracy, starting with the fact that each state has multiple license plate designs that must be recognized by the ALPR system. Also, the shape of the characters, color of the plates and whether the characters are raised or flat can affect accuracy. Many times the letter D is mistaken for a Q or an O and some colors, especially reddish tones, are hard to read and as a result many system vendors will quote accuracy rates that are misleading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_ ... ecognition

[cgarison]

The PPA in Philly has used these devices mounted on vans to drive through parking lots to find cars that owe the city parking fines.

Intstead of a siren noise, the PPA computer plays the "Ka-Ching" of a cash draw when it spots the tags of a vehicle that has unpaid fines.

[Jet Black]

Remember when this used to be a reasonably free country?

[Hoosier Daddy]

Technology is usurping our ability to hide.
Not sure whether that is good or bad.

[genlock]

I see nothing at all wrong with this.
The registration tag is a government license that must be displayed.
It is simply a different way for the officer to read it.
If it is stolen, illegal, falsified or otherwise a problem,
the officer needs to look into the problem.
I am not sure that it will help with the WV residents who have
registered their cars in Ohio to escape taxes tho.

[cgarison]

I am not sure that it will help with the WV residents who have
registered their cars in Ohio to escape taxes tho.

New York is finally going after residents living in the city and registering cars in Pennsylvania. Their strategy is to persue cars with Pennsylvania registrations that have numerous unpaid parking fines. The sad part of their strategy is that the top 10 Pennsylvania offenders are people that reside in PA (mostly in Philly and Allentown) and commute to NYC for work. I guess Bloomberg's strategy was not as successful as he thought it would be.