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License Plate Reading SUV Disguised as Google Street View Car

How come they haven't thought about this sooner? It's just brilliant. What's the best way of hiding a police car in plain sight? Easy: pretend it's another vehicle everybody knows all too well that's also supposed to have cameras all over the place.
Google Street View marked SUV with license plate reading technology 1 photo
Photo: Matt Blaze on Twitter
Brilliant. There's only one real drawback here: what if Google doesn't appreciate the state officials using its name and logos, and decides to sue? Oh, well, it's not like the government agency (whichever it turns out to be is) is paying the fines out of its own pockets, is it? Besides, maybe Google has better things to do these days, like coming up with a working autonomous car, for example.

The white SUV (with the mandatory tinted windows) bearing the Google Maps logo on one of its side windows was spotted in Pennsylvania by one vigilant taxpayer. Seeing through the disguise with ease, Matt Blaze decided it had to belong to the Pennsylvania State Police. He published the photo on Twitter, asking what the hell this was all about.

The one thing that gave the vehicle away was the license plate reading device mounted up top where the 360-degree cameras should be. The poorly done sticker on the side didn't do anything to raise the vehicle's authenticity either, and so Matt immediately thought it was a bad camouflage job on the PSP's part.

However, the police department replied to his tweet by denying the vehicle was operated by them. One Pennsylvania State Police trooper confirmed to Gizmodo that the vehicle was indeed equipped with license plate reading technology, but could not issue any information regarding who might have been using it.

Matt Blaze isn't buying it, though, replying back to PA State Police's and insisting it had a PSP (Pennsylvania State Police) placard in its window. After this, Twitter fell silent on the matter, so we're still left speculating. We see two options here: number one, the car belonged to PSP, but since it was supposed to be undercover, they naturally won't admit to it; two, the vehicle had a double-layer camouflage, so that if one was to fail (Google Street View car), it could fall back on the second (PSP squad car). That means there's a different government agency using it. Either that, or it's the aliens. Yes, I'm sticking with the aliens.
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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