PlateShapez – Tool for generating adversarially perturbed license plate overlays

https://github.com/bennjordan/PlateShapez

32•Rhea_Karty•5mo ago

Comments

Rhea_Karty•5mo ago

Background: from this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ)

Floxk AI is a startup that apparently runs highly suspicious police data collection services. As a fun bonus, it sells this data to private bidders and retains no liability for any mess-ups.

Apparently, it uses a Bluetooth system to relay some of this information. And seems to generally have awful security...

Any thoughts? Or further projects on this?

toomuchtodo•5mo ago

Flock Safety

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Rhea_Karty•5mo ago

A lot of news... not too much technical.

The real scandal seems to be the use of data brokers' data, re-selling/owning the data collected from publicly funded cameras, and also using bluetooth and ostensibly other outdated security.

toomuchtodo•5mo ago

The scandals you mention have been reported on in depth by 404media, which has led to state and congressional investigation. A Google search will provide technical details about their cameras and the Android/hardware stack that operates them.

theamk•5mo ago

for such a well-documented repo, the complete lack of sample outputs is surprising.

I don't want to run the code, just show me some perturbed plates!

nxpnsv•5mo ago

I guess benn jordan assumed you would watch the video on yt before finding the repo

ChrisArchitect•5mo ago

Aside: this is the third or fourth time this week I've seen a repo/project shared here with some visual output component and no examples shown in the Readme or anywhere and multiple people asking about it. What's with these maintainers missing that key aspect? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

on_the_train•5mo ago

Might actually be interaction bait. Just like those Reddit posts with false info or typos. Gets people to interact, just like us

lantry•5mo ago

I watched the video, and I think the creator of the repo might be concerned about liability. Also, the perturbed plates don't look that interesting, they just look slightly dirty

LargoLasskhyfv•5mo ago

Next level: Produce solution for actually dirtying a given plate whith patterns of applied "dirt", easily removable, just in case...

radar1310•5mo ago

Highly illegal in most likely all states.Every state has laws against obstruction of license plates.

hackable_sand•5mo ago

Don't get caught I guess

spicybright•5mo ago

If you see the video, the initial iteration just looks like specs of mud on the plate with the letters+numbers still fully readable. His ultimate goal is a custom plate frame that looks normal to the human eye but can block camera readings.

I can see this as being legal because it's still human readable.

Plate readers aren't expected to be 100% reliable as is (angles, lighting, network goes down, etc.) Plates get dirty, sometimes rusty. Also you can't test your own plate for machine readability against all the different types of systems cops use, so how could you reasonably know the issue is on your end and how to fix it?

vintermann•5mo ago

Well, you know the issue is on your end if you specifically installed a system which is designed to foil a specific type of license plate reader.

Turlututu•5mo ago

My guess is that either the system flag you as plate-less and warn cops about it.

Or trigger a human read of licence plate capture.

xnx•5mo ago

Post COVID, where the streets are full of terrible/reckless/dangerous/uninsured drivers with missing or fake (ghost) tags, I have a hard time opposing license plate enforcement.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF•5mo ago

Stop stalking me

rickytheguy•5mo ago

I've been wondering for a long time about adding a layer of UV reflective material to a license plate (maybe even a spray?), built specifically to either alter the image so a camera sees different numbers/letters, or to block it altogether. With this it wouldn't be obstructing the licence plate at all for human eyes, so it's feasible that you could easily get away with it.

Vectors and HNSW for Dummies

Sanskrit AI beats CleanRL SOTA by 125%

'Washington Post' CEO resigns after going AWOL during job cuts

Claude Opus 4.6 Fast Mode: 2.5× faster, ~6× more expensive

TSMC to produce 3-nanometer chips in Japan

Quantization-Aware Distillation

List of Musical Genres

Show HN: Sknet.ai – AI agents debate on a forum, no humans posting

University of Waterloo Webring

Large tech companies don't need heroes

Backing up all the little things with a Pi5

Game of Trees (Got)

Human Systems Research Submolt

The Threads Algorithm Loves Rage Bait

Search NYC open data to find building health complaints and other issues

Michael Pollan Says Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary Change

Show HN: Grovia – Long-Range Greenhouse Monitoring System

Ask HN: The Coming Class War

Mind the GAAP Again

The Yardbirds, Dazed and Confused (1968)

Agent News Chat – AI agents talk to each other about the news

Do you have a mathematically attractive face?

Code only says what it does

The success of 'natural language programming'

The Scriptovision Super Micro Script video titler is almost a home computer

Discovering the "original" iPhone from 1995 [video]

Psychometric Comparability of LLM-Based Digital Twins

SidePop – track revenue, costs, and overall business health in one place

The Other Markov's Inequality

The Cascading Effects of Repackaged APIs [pdf]