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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."
City councilman Johnny Khamis dismissed such criticism: "This is a public street. You're not expecting privacy on a public street."
This argument did not work for Google Maps, who have been forced by various state and municipal governments to blur the license plates and faces of people captured.
But I guess they aren't the government... if the government does it, it's fine.. (???)
"...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.
If the trucks would discard all data as they scan that doesn't match an on-board stolen vehicle database I might agree with you.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Car repo and bail bondsmen have been doing license plate scanning and logging for a while. Going far beyond what the garbage trucks will do. For example the repo/bond guys in addition to logging while driving down the street they also cruise parking lots of grocery stores, walmart, etc to log plates. There is a huge national database of these logs. Many police departments actually subscribe to this database.
It is invasive, because it allows the wholesale collection of information on people without any effort, and the create a massive database on every vehicle owners movements.
I'd be fine if they read the plates, checked whether or not it is stolen, and then dumps the data, never storing it, but we know this won't happen. They will keep the data for years. And my faith in any police force of government body has been shaken enough that I no longer trust them, and the data will ultimately be abused by someone, whether it's an officer checking up on their spouse, or a politician looking for dirt on their opponent.
No, if they want to use the garbage collection resources as a means to read plates, then have the garbage men write every plate down on paper, or manually type it into the computer. Because the city is right, on public streets there is no expectation of privacy. Back in the day, law enforcement had to do the legwork by hand, let that continue.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
This. The whole 'no expectation of privacy' argument is and always has been stupid, and this councilman is a moron for saying it.
I don't expect to be invisible on a public street. I do expect that unless I do something memorable that people who observe me aren't going to recall seeing me or do anything anything all concerning their observation of me hours, days, months, or years later.
This business is completely different and totally beyond what I expect when out and about.
They won't do this.