> I cannot think of a use of license-plate reader technology which is not immoral.
The parking garage I use every weekday reads my plate, and opens the gate as I have a subscription. Same thing happens when I want to leave. Is that immoral?
It's less about the technology about license-plate reading and more about what people do with the data afterwards.
I would restructure the argument as " I cannot think of a usage for storing the data of a license-plate reader for purpose of selling it which is not immoral." or something like that.
> It's less about the technology about license-plate reading and more about what people do with the data afterwards.
As someone who cares very much about probably I think this is a point that cannot be stressed enough. It is mostly about storage. Storing things is the major danger. Of course there are use cases too, and I would feel uncomfortable with the police tracking every car on the 5 freeway, but tracking requires storage.
Honestly I think your parking garage example is a great use. I can think of others. A notification of your friend or family member pulling into your driveway. Have your house do things like turn on the lights or give you a notification. It could be a good way to do parking meters. I'm sure people could think of more. Technology always has two sides to the coin, it's always a balance of using it only for ethical things. But that requires nuance.
Edit: a cool way to use these might be like we use passwords. Your license plate is a password (or let's say username). OCR is used to identify the plate, then it hashes it, checks the hash with that in the database and bingo, door opens. I think that's a level of privacy most of us are comfortable with. There's no retention of the license plate, no good way to identify who's it is, and if the database is hacked the attacker doesn't get your plate.
When I visited Seoul this was one of the coolest "daily life" things I noticed. All parking garages, even by the hour ones, operated this way. There was no ticket to lose, no ticket to accidentally de-magnetize, etc. You pulled in unhindered, and when you went to left the machine had your total up for display before you even stopped rolling to pay.
The parking garage I use every weekday reads my plate, and opens the gate as I have a subscription. Same thing happens when I want to leave. Is that immoral?
It's less about the technology about license-plate reading and more about what people do with the data afterwards.
I would restructure the argument as " I cannot think of a usage for storing the data of a license-plate reader for purpose of selling it which is not immoral." or something like that.