I assume it’s visible light, optical character recognition.
I don’t think the license plates have any RFID in them, but I may be wrong.
That camera has IR led’s ... I wonder what inconspicuous handheld lasers would be powerful enough to damage the ccd chip?
If you’re in a rural area with private roads, even better cameras can be found cheap for license plate recording—very low light cameras that don’t emit light and can be effectively hidden with good ballistic protection. With little traffic and slow traffic speeds (rough roads, speed bumps/dips), software motion detection works well. Cameras are best used by private folks for private reasons.
Dim solar lighting can be used separate from the cameras also to prevent cameras from being seen and to introduce outfacing light noise for more residential privacy (lower costs than using starlight tech.).
My understanding is that many readers are using IR. This allows the use of an illuminator without it being seen. OCR works well in that spectrum as well. I have also seen IR lighting kits for license plates which cause an over exposure, ruining the data collection. Not sure what the percentages are for plate readers, clearly most traffic cameras use visible light.