SC Considering Changeable Electronic License Plates

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What do you guys think about electronic license plates that can be changed on the fly by the DMV or police?

South Carolina may soon lead the way into the future with electronic license plates for cars and trucks. Using so-called electronic paper, technology similar to what is seen on digital readers like the Amazon Kindle, these new license plates would be capable of dynamically changing from normal numbers and letters to a word like SUSPENDED, UNINSURED or STOLEN.
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Doesn't matter. LAPD will still spray your car down with bullets regardless of what the plate says.
 
Yeah, this will work fine until someone hacks their license plate to say something else. I see the potential here of unlimited access to say, handicapped spaces, with a software hack.
 
We could start a betting pool on how soon these get hacked.

My guess: Exploits found before officially put to use.
 
That would be a crack up to see a thief cruising down the street with the license plates saying "Stolen" or an IA's car showing "Uninsured". I'm all for it!
 
California probably wouldn't do this cause it might offend somebody and not be politically correct.
 
Anything that works with electric are hackable, right? This opens up a can of worms.

But a license plate made of metal? Less headaches.
 
" and we forgot they have a GPS on the plates so we can track stolen or uninsured cars."
 
This reminds of the brilliant idea they had here in California that all new handguns have to stamp the serial number on the brass. So a badguy just grabs a handfull of brass from the range and scatters it at a crime scene and next thing you know an innocent person is being raided by SWAT.

Someone swaps your plate with a stolen one and all of a sudden you're getting pulled out of your car at gunpoint.

Nice
 
J So said:
This reminds of the brilliant idea they had here in California that all new handguns have to stamp the serial number on the brass. So a badguy just grabs a handfull of brass from the range and scatters it at a crime scene and next thing you know an innocent person is being raided by SWAT.

Someone swaps your plate with a stolen one and all of a sudden you're getting pulled out of your car at gunpoint.

Nice
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Yeah but why swap. Like mentioned above you just need to hack it to be another plate.

And traffic cams. Hate your boss? Rent a similar car put a mask and gloves on and really fast through traffic lights.
 
In 10 minutes the California senate will approve a measure to spend $10 million to do a feasibility study on electronic license plates. The contract will naturally be awarded to a company controlled by Sen Feinstein's husband.
 
Sounds like just a new way for them to track you using cellular triangulation.

Plus, I don't want to pay for all this crap... tons of government employees to oversee and manage this, transmitters and receivers, some kind of motion power source, etc... or a tin stamped plate they can make at prison.

Thanks but no thanks.

Stop spending my money and reduce my taxes.
 
Just require a password, authentication code, and a PIN that change every 15minutes from authorized places to make such changes all on a 2048bit (or more) encryption. No average schlub watching a YouTube video would be able to hack that.
 
Bet these things won't fare well in even a minor accident... or in a parking lot with kids who want to vandalize them.
 
I would hack my license plate to say "oink oink" or scroll "here piggy piggy" and when I get pulled over I would just play stupid ;p
 
The plate is going to say, "SUCKER", after one pays the jacked up fee for the new plates. :D
 
Ducman69 said:
Sounds like just a new way for them to track you using cellular triangulation.

Plus, I don't want to pay for all this crap... tons of government employees to oversee and manage this, transmitters and receivers, some kind of motion power source, etc... or a tin stamped plate they can make at prison.

Thanks but no thanks.

Stop spending my money and reduce my taxes.
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Exactly. Let's take the extremely cheap labor we get from prisons for something they can actually do (license plates) and make it really complex - so it's made in China to be feasible.

I'm all for tapping our prisons for cheaper labor to compete with China/etc. - taking jobs away from them is not the start.
 
Ducman69 said:
Sounds like just a new way for them to track you using cellular triangulation.

Plus, I don't want to pay for all this crap... tons of government employees to oversee and manage this, transmitters and receivers, some kind of motion power source, etc... or a tin stamped plate they can make at prison.

Thanks but no thanks.

Stop spending my money and reduce my taxes.
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Exactly. Lots of expense and no benefit, other than giving the state the ability to track cars (which I'm sure is all they are worried about anyway).

And plenty of ways to be abused, because let's face it, the government isn't going to do all that they need to do to stop the things from being hacked. And if they aren't built into the car, you don't even need to hack them. Just switch it with another car's plate.
 
What do you guys think about electronic license plates that can be changed on the fly by the DMV or police?
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I would say that would be awesome because in like 5 minutes a hack would be available to allow you to run as many red lights (with cameras) as possible then change the plate back to your original...

Then I would say it's a fucking idiotic waste of time, that a flat stamped metal plate is god damn easy to deal with and cheap, where as what essentially is an LED/LCD TV on the back of your car is so fucking clown shoe stupid I don't know what is.

Cops have computers in their cars now, cops have dash top video, how hard will it be to link those two together with some letter recognition software read all the plates, and then compare them against a data base... oh wait private companies have already done this!
 
sounds like a scam to increase taxes then divert funds into another project.


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King Icewind said:
Just require a password, authentication code, and a PIN that change every 15minutes from authorized places to make such changes all on a 2048bit (or more) encryption. No average schlub watching a YouTube video would be able to hack that.
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Um, open it up and rewire the display to take a signal from a computer you control?
 
I see this an a defacto tracking device. I'd never go for it.
 
Hacking aside, this will probably cost even more and now your damn plates can break down! I would also be most worries about MVA knowing where your car is if these are connected to them via cell signal. I say screw this, people would lose even more freedom as result of this. Besides, with lousy service MVA is providing and all the things they fail to catch, how can you trust them to run digital plates anyway?
 
Honestly, I don't care. I am betting the state of Texas would not go for it in the first place. + If you have a pickup and actually use trailers regularly? how many of those trucks have flat license plates? Will they be liable if their trailer cracks this one and it is illegible? With the metal ones you can just kind of straighten it out and call it a day.

While it sounds neat and I would be on the list to modify one. Right now.. I think it will be a no go.
 
How James Bond'ish LOL. (remember the rotating plates?)

I can see someone hacking their plate and putting "F U PIG" on it when a cop pulls up behind them. :D
 
Hacking not required, any thief with their grain of salt will just jam the frequencies used to update the plate. Cell phone jammers can be bought for ~$200 or less online. If stealing a car would bring that much attention to you, they'd sure as crap do something about it.

Another solution for a thief - get a junker registered in a fake name, and use those plates on a stolen vehicle instead of the real plates.

This idea is a waste of tax dollars, over complicates things, and doesn't solve anything... and this is coming fro a social liberal.
 
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