Foiling Flock – the company that is getting paid by your local government (meaning, being paid by money taken from you by your local government) and other percolations of the panopticon being installed behind every bush (and atop every traffic signal) to track and mulct us in real time – is the new game of the mid-2020s.
It is fundamentally the same as the Spy vs. Spy game depicted in the long-gone Mad Magazine comic books – except we’re the ones being spied upon and we have no interest in spying on others. That’s the game of the government-corporate nexus. This thing uses what’s styled “public-private partnerships” to do what government either can’t afford to do by itself or is precluded from doing itself by having corporations do it on government’s behalf – using money extracted by government or by using the threat of government. The public-private partnership that exists between the government and the insurance mafia is an obvious case-in-point but far from the only one.
Another one are these ALPRs you have probably heard or read about. The acronym stands for Automated License Plate Readers – and they do more than just that. Reading is the beginning. The ALPRs are also transmitting what they are reading – to a computer network that ostensibly exists to “flag” Bad Guys, such as car thieves but which, in fact, records the comings and goings of everyone who drives a car in view of an ALPR. This data about you is used to create a profile of you. They – the people who control the ALPRs – want to know all about you. These ALPRs will be extremely handy – to those people – when the time comes to “lock us down” again, for our own good, of course. For now, they are used to enforce toll-mulcting on roads already paid for by the tax cattle who drive on them, who pay every time they fill up their tanks.
Those Flock cameras you see sprouting all over the place are of a piece only more sophisticated. They are capable of noting other identifying details about your vehicle, including such things as bumper stickers and dents. It is almost as creepy as John Wayne Gacy’s clown suit.
How to flummox these cameras?
Well, there’s mud on the plates – the ear tags – all of our vehicles (and thereby, us) are obliged by law to wear. A little dab’l do ya! Bending them a little in just the right way is another way. Both of these ways have the admirable attribute of plausible deniability, too. If you get pulled over – i..e, if you are waylaid by an armed government worker – on account of your mud-smeared or inadvertently bent plate, it’s plausible that just happened rather than you deliberately did it. The cop might suspect but he cannot prove you smeared mud on or deliberately bent your vehicle’s plate. It could have just happened. The cop – the armed government worker – might give you a ticket but that’s the most he can legally do. At least, so long as your plates – and your papers – are all “in order.”
You assume more risk if you attach one of those translucent covers that makes it more difficult for an ALPR or Flock camera to read your plate because if a cop notices it and pulls you over, there’s no denying you did it. Depending on where you get pulled over (laws very state to state) you might get more than just a ticket, especially if your papers are not in order.
This brings us to the headline of this article – and the call sign NCC-1701. You may recognize it, if you’re a fan of Star Trek. The original Enterprise – the fictional starship that was commanded by James T Kirk (played by the irreplaceable William Shatner) carried that designation. In what has got to be one of the greatest anti-ALPR (and FU to Flock) countermeasures yet deployed, some intrepid souls created real-looking license plates displaying that call sign.
Send the bill to Captain Kirk!
Of course, you run the risk of being taken to jail if you try to disguise the identity of your car this way – but it’s almost worth the risk, for the same reason it’s worth throwing a pie in Bill Gates’ face (or a shoe at The Chimp) and other such expressions of disobedience and contempt.
The only other thing mitigating against this is that – apparently – some people actually have legitimate NCC-1701 plates – acquired through their state DMV – and these poor people have reportedly been getting notices about unpaid tickets and so on from the scoffaws who made fake NCC-1701plates for their vehicles. The ALPRs and Flock cameras read the fake plates, cross-reference the letters and numbers with the real plate owners and sent out the notices (and sicc’d the debt collectors) on them.
So maybe it’s not the right thing to do – even if the spirit behind it is right.
. . .
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Here’s a robotic AGWess lauding Oklahoma City’s ALPR system’s ability to identify and track (in ‘real time’ — she says that thrice) a stolen vehicle driven by murder suspect. But you don’t have to worry about the government tracking you in your vehicle — if you have nothing to hide. Right?
https://www.bitchute.com/video/aHqcSGXG437W
A few years ago, the small town nearby me got themselves a police motorcycle. The police chief said “This new tool will greatly enhance the city’s ability to fight crime. Why, with this new motorcycle, an officer will be able to pull up right next to a vehicle, look right into it, and be able to see whether or not the driver is wearing a seat belt.”
I laughed when he got run over. I laughed again when they showed his pink pistol.
Sadly, I don’t have an Aston Martin DB3, but I’m starting to think it may be worthwhile to have some rotating license plates. One real to put off the pork, and a couple similar enough to not be noticed. Wouldn’t be hard…
I absolutely hate the flock cameras. There are six of them on my 30 mile commute to work. They’ve been appearing at most major intersections in my area of Florida recently. And don’t think a plate cover will work, because that’s now a crime punishable by jail time in Florida. We definitely needed that law and yet another reason to be harassed by the 5-0.
To quote Ayn Rand;
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt.”
During COVID, there were probably those who wanted to make it a crime to not comply with nonsensical face diaper & COVID vaxx mandates.
“Show me the man,
and I’ll show you the crime”….
Friendly “Uncle Joe” Stalin,
The greatest mass murderer of Russians, ever…
So much for the purported “free” state of FL!
Two weeks ago I got caught by a camera while accelerating from a stop light. I wanted to get ahead of really slow moving traffic. I expect to get a notice n the mail soon. I just don’t know how much money they’ll want from me. If its only 6 to 10 above the 30 mph limit then it’ll be $30 but over that it will be $100.
That’s the second time in two years I got caught. One of these days I’ll escape this city. This shitty place is full of diversity. Its getting like that all over as our demographics are changing rapidly everywhere. Obama and his communist/socialist white hating team figured out where all the White people live and are sending the vibrant ones there. Don’t believe me; just take a look at what happened to Minneapolis MN.
60 million people from shit hole countries have arrived in the USSofA during the last 30 years. And there are plenty more where they came from. They will transform/terraform this country into the image and likeness of where they came from.
Fewer places to run, no where to hide thanks to our traitorous leaders who only care about their gold.
ALPRs of the sea:
‘A 27-year-old crude tanker that was supposedly scrapped in 2021 is due to reach Venezuela late this week, according to ship-tracking data, in the latest example of how the South American country keeps its embattled oil industry alive.
‘The tanker identifying itself as Freesia I is likely to be a zombie vessel, meaning it is in fact another tanker assuming the identity of a dismantled ship. This tactic is occasionally employed by boats ferrying sanctioned oil to obscure their trajectories and cargoes.’
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/zombie-ship-shows-trump-targeting-071930230.html
Pre-2001 — before vital records offices were locked down — this tactic used to work to acquire a new identity. A Newark Star-Ledger reporter went to a rural county and obtained the birth certificate of a kid who died in infancy, after being born in the same year as the reporter.
He then parlayed the birth certificate into a drivers license in the deceased kid’s name — and wrote a ‘how-to’ article about it. But this was before REAL-ID. Show up at the DMV today with only a birth certificate, and they’ll hiss ‘Not enough!‘
Star Wars is a story of fighting tyranny.
Star Trek is a story of AGWs of the universe. Just like a COPS episode, the AGWs are the side of the moral good, wink wink.
But this would be a good reminder that if you have a personalized plate of something popular like MKYMSE, BUMBLB, etc, maybe you shouldnt be so generic.
Some Karen’s complained to WA DMV, guy had a personalized plate:
GOTMILF
Yep, they pulled it as “offensive”.
‘How to flummox these cameras?’ — eric
Pissed off about a toll increase on the George Washington bridge, I covered the final character of my license plate with a piece of paper that matched its background color. Cruised across the bridge, made an illegal turn on 14th street, etc, and never heard a peep. Problem is, an observant cop is going to notice a missing character.
Then I learned at deflock.me that besides plate numbers, Flock also indexes identifying features such as window stickers, body damage and bike racks in their database, making them searchable. On one vehicle, I have a custom spare tire cover. Several friends have spotted me on the highway by that cover, and told me so. It never troubled me, until I learned that Flock records that shit. So it’s going to replaced with a plain, nondescript cover.
Then I plan a new experiment: one of the characters of my plate number is ‘F’. It’s easy, using a small rectangular piece of black electrical tape, to add a bar at the bottom and change it to ‘E’, without altering the number of characters. What I want to find out is whether Flock will generate an exception report, stating that the spoofed plate number doesn’t match the vehicle make and model. Will cops actually get a real-time alert and stop me for that? We’ll see.
Flock was defeated — fired — in Flagstaff last week. It’s a university town with plenty of old-school civil libertarians. I’m gonna have a go at the Flockers when their contract comes up for renewal next year in the nearest bigger town.
Hi Jim,
One of the NY papers – think it was the Post – did a story on people altering their license plates to beat the Toll cameras. I was shocked, shocked I say, to find out that almost all of them were AGW’s. Only the little people pay tolls.
And, since you brought up Star Trek, this is most pertinent. Kirk is accused of killing someone based on video evidence. The argument made in his defense is truer now than ever…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXS2nm27kWs
Great memories, Mark!
For all its cheesiness and campiness, the original Star Trek had some great episodes, written by top shelf sci fi writers. By the way, did you know Gard Goldsmith – my friend, the guy I do shows with regularly – was a writer for one of the later spin-offs?
Watching the third season of “Picard”, I wondered if someone in that writers room read your material.
And then I saw a Barchetta roll out of the 25th century equivalent of a barn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXVkle0d8Is
Hi Eric,
I first started watching Star Trek in high school English class, as my English teacher in high school was a fan of Star Trek and occasionally put on an episode for the class to watch. Back then, the episodes didn’t seem like much, but over the past several years, given what we’ve been forced to endure, plus other issues just since the start of the 21st century, various episodes seem prescient when compared to modern day society, such as the one where a computer was supposed to replace an entire starship crew but an experiment that was being conducted failed when it came time for a war games simulation. The computer mistook the war games simulation for a REAL WAR and fired upon a fellow starship. And people think AI is some panacea for modern day problems.
Even some episodes of its spin off, Star Trek: The Next Generation, seem prescient or got certain concepts right like the value of individuality over collectivism re The Borg.
Perhaps the episode The Game was Next Generation’s most prescient. It’s about people being addicted to a video game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zAMDnozmlI
Landru (nice ST reference BTW): “The crime rate is still going up no matter what they say so obviously they’re not being installed for safety reasons or at least not for our safety.”
Next they’ll start explaining the reason for the crime rate increasing is precisely because all those cameras are reporting crimes that weren’t reported before.
The crime rate is going up despite the ubiquitous cameras because the criminals don’t have driver’s licenses and they drive stolen or borrowed cars registered to someone else. And because so many of them are black (excuse me, I meant “Black”), and you can’t arrest blacks in the post-St. George of Fentanyl environment, because that would be “racist.”
It’s much easier and safer for the cops to pull over some fat, hapless suburban white dude with a mortgage and kids when ALPERS detects that his registration is a week out of date than it is to pull over some urban black gangster with a felony record and an illegal gun in a stolen car.
Much safer for the cop’s pension, too.
“you can’t arrest blacks in the post-St. George of Fentanyl environment, because that would be “racist.”
Here’s something else “racist” now against (B)lacks; you can’t discipline them in schools anymore for disrupting class or threatening classmates! In an effort to install “equity” and address the “disparate impact” of disciplinary action, many schools are simply deciding to stop holding minority students accountable for misbehavior in the classroom. The Left argues that because those students misbehave more, and are therefore subject to punishment more frequently, the system is “racist.” America First Legal has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Cherry Creek School District in Colorado for leniency towards (B)lack students when compared with other races as the district feels it’s “culturally responsive” discipline.
Who’s being racist or bigoted now??
100% true here in WA, the Seattle animal that took out granny in the middle of the day was well known to police for prior assaults. “Equity policing” and “restorative justice” makes the libtards all fuzzy and warm inside but normal people avoid WA population centers like the plague.
“ It’s much easier and safer for the cops to pull over some fat, hapless suburban white dude “
Soon to get worse here in WA, the legislature is hell bent on lowering BAC to .05
meanwhile the vibrant new residents from south of the border drive with abandon drunk and high, their specialty is wrong way freeway head on crashes. If not broken from the crash they always run and if caught little happens to them. The WA State Patrol most wanted list is over 90% “THEM”.
I’ve had the experience with being the recipient of someone else’s license plate error. I received two parking tickets from Pittsburgh because a meter maid didn’t know how to perform the simple task of writing correctly.
What defense do you have? Travel hours to Pittsburgh to try to convince a low level judge that it wasn’t you? Luckily, I have live hours away and was at work both times and my state legislator was able to take care of this for me. I don’t wish the hassle on anyone.
To the larger point, any sense of freedom left us long ago. It is only through the magic of government schools and media that we still think we are a society of freedom fighters and lovers of liberty.
What the hell is going on with PA Turnpike costs?
Non-ez pass toll one way across the state is $100. OMG. About 300 mi. EZ-pass is somewhat better at $50.
I was curious and looked up NJ Turnpike all the way, $20 ez or no ez, 125 miles.
“It is not possible to make a lasting compromise between technology and freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social force and continually encroaches on freedom through repeated compromises.”
Maybe ol’ Teddy K wasn’t so crazy after all? Violent, yes, but not crazy.
William Shatner might be the most overrated actor of all time. He has one character, William Shatner…that’s it. The overacting is unbelievable. He’s the antithesis of Clint Eastwood.
Eastwood evokes more in one steely glance than Shatner does in a whole movie. Although I do like the Trek franchise. The supporting casts bring more to the table than the captains.
Merry Christmas to all. Live long and prosper.
Hi Mark:
I lost a lot of respect for William Shatner after he skipped going to Leonard Nimoy’s funeral. I understand that they had a falling out but after all the years they had worked together it was still the wrong thing to do.
I hope you, Eric and everyone on the site has a very Merry Christmas.
My old Garmin Nuvi almost sounds like an old time video game with the sheer number of times it beeps to let me know of cameras. It seems at almost every intersection now there is a camera.
Cameras are everywhere now it seems. The crime rate is still going up no matter what they say so obviously they’re not being installed for safety reasons or at least not for our safety.
And as Eric pointed out, even if you deface your plates AI assisted cameras will be able to identify you because if they can identify which streets you are always driving on and too they can match that with DMV records of ownership which has your address. Probably not 100% but if you own a 1973 mustard yellow Mustang I’m guessing they can identify you right quick.
I think my FJ is enough to identify me. Why do I even need a license plate.
If I don’t post again today, I’d like to wish everyone a Murray Christmas and a Hoppe new year.
https://web.moera.org/@tigra/tigra.moera.blog/post/6d0288bd-f107-48ac-b374-bd4cf1edbc68