Much ado has been made about a plan to set up some 200 cameras around the state whose purpose will be to scan the bar codes at the bottom of our new Oklahoma licenses plates in search of people who are not listed as having auto insurance.
Rep. Mike Reynolds, said "That’s a horrible idea, It’s Big Brother at its finest.”
While I agree with Rep Reynolds that it is a horrible idea, I agree for reasons that are altogether different. I won't go into the big brother issues, I'm sure that other bloggers, radio talk show folks, the public, and our good legislators will do an excellent job going over those issues.
No, this is a really stupid idea for several technical reasons.
1. Most of the time the bar code will be completely covered up by folks with OSU, OU, NRA and other various vanity license plate covers. Or in my case, the bumper of my truck covers the infamous bar code.
The location of this bar code is such that any attempt to capture it electronically with an acceptable rate of success is doomed to failure.
2. The bar code is so small I honestly doubt the ability of any camera to capture a clear image of it. I took this image of my parked car from about 5 feet away.
If only there were some other way that we could take a picture of a license plate and somehow match that plate to the owner of the car. Surely there must be some other identifying mark other than the bar code that we could use....OHHH WAIT THERE IS!!!!!! IT'S THE STUPID PLATE NUMBER!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The sheer stupidity of this plan is so astounding to me that I really can't get past it so that I can get angry about the Orwellian nature of it.
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