It's been doable and afforadable for years. 7 years ago when I lived in Knoxville TN there was(still is?) a firm there called Perceptics. One of their products was an imaging system to OCR license plates. I understood the system was/is in use or being tested at US border crossings.

Date: Fri, 09 Aug 1996 11:56:34 -0700 Bill Stewart wrote: At 10:45 PM 8/8/96 -0700, Lucky wrote:

...

At 21:55 8/8/96, i am not a number! wrote:

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CBS radio news this morning: 80,000 commuters traveling the central f'way in SF will have information mailed to them regarding the quake retrofit How? Their license plates have been photographed.

...

You *are* making this up, right? Please say you did.

It's possible today, and probably affordable. If not, it will be in 1-2 years, as Moore's law cranks down processing costs and video technology improves. For this application, they don't have to photograph every car, or read every plate successfully, or do it in real time. The objective is to get lots of drivers to take other routes or mass transit so they don't have to dump all the traffic onto surface streets right around the construction.

Besides, this is nice friendly San Francisco. Imagine New York City doing it: Yo! Mr. E. Koch, 1234 E. 89th St. - We saw you takin' the West Side Highway last week. You better stop that as of next Friday. We know where you live. You got a problem wit' that? Rudy.

# Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!

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