no, it isn't. everything is a data collecting service. want to not share this information? then don't do the following:
- use a credit card
- use a cell phone
- use toll roads
- buy utilities
- buy plane tickets
- use a rewards card at a grocery|electronics|drug store
- use an ATM
- visit a doctors office
- walk down a street, or into a conveience store, or into a shopping mall, where a CCTV camera can see you
- rent property
- own property
- rent a car
- have a "regular" job
- buy gas (for the car that you can't own or rent, natch)
don't do the above, and proooobbly a lot of your data won't wind up in some database. do just a few of those things, and you probably have no privacy. do all (and more) of them, and probably "big data" will know when you are going to have relationship trouble before you do
The police car one has been that way forever, because police cars have been equipped with dash cams for a while now. That said, dash cams on police vehicles have generally been positive.
Dash cams have been around for a long time, but their utility has chiefly been to record what's happening right in front of the vehicle, at minimal resolution. The result is not a comprehensive data feed of everything happening, but merely an eyewitness of events.
Not many people see the "data", and the dash cams & their data are (mostly) not used beyond some basic purposes.
On the other hand, the license-plate scanners [0] are higher resolution, pointing in every direction, are also attached to road infrastructure (numerous bridges and buildings), and their purpose is to collect and compile data which then goes into a massive, shared (among the executive branch) system ... in a way, more invasive than a giant "Google Analytics" for public roads. After all, Google Analytics doesn't make it easy (possible?) to see visitors' IP addresses, and even an IP address doesn't tell you the likely human behind it.
Therefore, to avoid leaving footprints for all these "Little Brothers" to see, it's necessary to not drive an owned car on roads that may be adjacent to many bridges, or certain buildings, or may happen to have a police car on them.
Police dash-cams reduce the potential for abuse of authority because they make a permanent record of the actions of the police (as well as anyone else on camera) while ANPR systems increase the potential for abuse of authority because they make a permanent record of law-abiding citizens that can be accessed by the police with no inherent over-sight.
I don't share the same enthusiasm for ALPR camera systems as I do for dash cams, and besides, the capabilities of the two systems are not equivalent (or else one would be unnecessary). You have to fence in your driveway or always park in a garage to have privacy (from police tracking) at your home. It feels invasive to me.
I was (trying to) excluding data collected by the police, since the original assertion was that this data can be denied to corporations. now, if you want to argue that ALP scanners are operated by contractors and the data is technically stored on a corporations systems, but access is only (nominally) given to LE, this gets a little stickier...
The biggest collections of plate-scan data are private. It started with repo-men who pay to be part of nationwide networks where they all drive around scanning every visible plate in exchange for getting hits on plates they are looking for.
But, as always, those enormous databases were too tempting to just sit on and the maintainers have started looking for other ways to monetize them - if they'll sell joe lawyer a search for $10, you can be sure they are selling access to the NSA, et al too.
You have a point. I wasn't thinking corporate access (the "private" part of the parent article) ... and more about the "public" (government) access.
After all, the license-plate scanners may be operated by local police, but you must be certain the FBI sees everything. And with them the DHS and who knows what other alphabet soup of agencies ... many of whom can also see many / all of the other items in your list.
While it's true people can try to reduce their footprint, it's pretty hard to avoid doing everything on the list ... and I suspect you only need to do a small few of those and it's more than enough to get a comprehensive assessment of you.
- use a credit card
- use a cell phone
- use toll roads
- buy utilities
- buy plane tickets
- use a rewards card at a grocery|electronics|drug store
- use an ATM
- visit a doctors office
- walk down a street, or into a conveience store, or into a shopping mall, where a CCTV camera can see you
- rent property
- own property
- rent a car
- have a "regular" job
- buy gas (for the car that you can't own or rent, natch)
don't do the above, and proooobbly a lot of your data won't wind up in some database. do just a few of those things, and you probably have no privacy. do all (and more) of them, and probably "big data" will know when you are going to have relationship trouble before you do