San Jose May Put License Plate Scanners On Garbage Trucks

An anonymous reader writes: It's bad enough that some places have outfitted their police vehicles with automated license plate scanners, but now the city of San Jose may take it one step further. They're considering a proposal to install plate readers on their fleet of garbage trucks. This would give them the ability to blanket virtually every street in the city with scans once a week. San Jose officials made this proposal ostensibly to fight car theft, but privacy activists have been quick to point out the unintended consequences. ACLU attorney Chris Conley said, "If it's collected repeatedly over a long period of time, it can reveal intimate data about you like attending a religious service or a gay bar. People have a right to live their lives without constantly being monitored by the government." City councilman Johnny Khamis dismissed such criticism: "This is a public street. You're not expecting privacy on a public street."

Comments

Time for shoe-on-the-other-foot tactics.

[geekmux]

"...City councilman Johnny Khamis dismissed such criticism: "This is a public street. You're not expecting privacy on a public street."

Really Johnny?

So you won't mind if I just set up this webcam on the public street outside of your home and feed that stream to the internet, right?

Or perhaps we'll find some volunteers to follow you and your family around day and night as you drive around. That won't seem creepy or invasive at all, I'm sure. And after all, we're just driving around on public streets, right?

Sometimes I really wonder what the hell it would take to get these morons to wake about privacy and how it feels to be monitored day and night.