Post #2938471

So, there is actually a point there in that there is a lot of movement data harvested from cell phones, and I think that we could probably improve on the situation there if we wanted. The town government level is probably not in a great place to do that, but compared to ALPRs: Cell phones can be turned off. Cell phones can have their GPS stuff and/or location services disabled, though I realize that a limited number of people are going to actually do so. You cannot legally cover up a license plate. For Android (and I assume iOS, though I haven’t looked at the situation there), the OS permission system permits restricting an app permission to data that would permit it to infer location. It may not be perfect — for example, I’ve seen research projects that try to do things like use accelerometer data and match it to street maps to try to figure out where someone is without access to Bluetooth/WiFi beacons or GPS data. But certainly there are real efforts to limit that.