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Comment by gentlyyes | Hacker News Reader

It's showing my home address when entering my license plate...ugh. smh.

Really? You might want to read up on the DPPA (Public Law 103-322). I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure tracking a plate back to a home address is a big no-no under Federal law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_...

> ...is a big no-no...

Is that a euphemism for "illegal"? If it is, let's all agree to call a cigar a cigar and stop unwittingly assisting the spin machines of criminals and/or authoritarians. :)

The law was enacted to regulate what states could and couldn't do with license plate data in terms of making it available and traceable back to an individual. Under the law, no government agency can establish a mechanism to directly tie a plate back to personally identifiable information and make it freely available on the Internet. It's not illegal for a private citizen to track the info, I believe it's illegal for a government agency to make it broadly available. But then again I'm not a lawyer so I may be misreading the law, thus the reason for "no-no" as to avoid rendering anything that might remotely look like I know what I'm talking about.

> ...I'm not a lawyer so I may be misreading the law, thus the reason for "no-no" as to avoid rendering anything that might remotely look like I know what I'm talking about.

It's better to use a construction similar to the following:

"I'm not a lawyer -so I might be wrong-, but according to 123.e.(g).1 of $LAW, it looks like $THING is illegal.".

Authoritarians and other folks in power love to downplay the seriousness of their actions with soft talk and babytalk. [0] It's better to be explicit about your uncertainty and potential lack of qualifications to interpret source material, rather than to simultaneously imply your lack of expertise and reduce the perceived seriousness of a prohibited action. :)

[0] Please note that this is not a criticism of you. I try hard to say only what I intend to say and leave nothing to interpretation.

I'm missing where these records are present. I basically see plate numbers timestamps and coordinates no other columns on these datasets.

A car is likely to be parked right outside your home.

Oh I thought that these were all going to be street level data from toll booth type things.

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