Big Brother, here for your convenience

[jducoeur]

So we got home from Colorado this evening, arrived at Logan Airport, and went over to the parking lot. I pulled out my garage ticket, stuck it into the payment machine (they now ask you to pre-pay before going to your car), stuck in my credit card to pay, and got my receipt. Helpfully, the receipt told me which row my car was parked in, in case I had forgotten.

How the blithering heck did it know where my car was parked?

I mean, this was an anonymously-taken ticket from a week ago; they *might* infer which level I might be parked in (since it was the one they were encouraging at the time), but I parked in one of a number of open rows. Yes, I did scribble the location on my ticket, but I'd be damned impressed at any OCR software that can figure out my handwriting.

My best guess (and I'm open to simpler explanations) is that they're going through Long-Term Parking each night, recording the license plate numbers of all of the cars parked there, looking them up, and cross-referencing them with the credit card submitted for payment. (Or that they are photographing your license plate as you take your ticket when entering, and doing the cross-reference that way.) That's a non-trivial piece of engineering, but entirely feasible. But man -- that's kind of creepy, and it wouldn't even have occurred to me that they were doing it if it wasn't for that helpful line on the receipt...

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Holy crap! I did exactly this little dance last week, when (after expending significant mental energy to remember) that little ticket told me where I was parked. Freaked me out, and started a train of thought. My train led to the same place yours did -- they scan the plate as you get the card, then drive the rows looking at plates. They didn't have my CC yet, so I felt it unlikely they were figuring out the plate that way; a camera on entry seemed easiest. On the way out I caught vehicles circling the lot that looked like they could provide the latter.

Given that Logan has been known to move cars around in LTP to allow for better packing and random construction, this could be vital; while I've never had my car moved, I've been warned that it might be -- something they apparently don't tell you any more -- and seen them shuffling. Given that hooking my current car up to a normal tow truck has a good chance of borking the whole transmission, not so happy with this idea.

Yay technology. :-/

[jducoeur]

Yow -- I hadn't known that they were moving cars around like that. I do wonder how they do that without blowing out a *lot* of transmissions and brakes.

And yes: if you didn't use a credit card to pay, but still got told your row number, then that implies that the second theory is more likely, with a plate scan. I knew such technology existed, but haven't seen it in action before...