- According to the article, "[u]nder the ‘automatic license plate recognition’ project [I guess that’s what they are calling it], once a car enters Medina, a camera captures its license-plate number. Within seconds, the number is run through a database. If a hit comes up for a felony — say, the vehicle was reported stolen or is being driven by a homicide suspect — the information is transmitted instantaneously to police, who can ‘leap into action,’ said Police Chief Jeffrey Chen. ‘These cameras provide us with intelligence,’ Chen said. ‘It gets us in front of criminals. I don’t like to be on a level playing field with criminals.’" Even more intolerable is the stunning admission by City Councilmember Lucius Biglow who stated that crime prevention should outweigh any concerns over privacy, due to the simple fact that "[p]rivacy is considerably less nowadays than it was, say, 50 years ago,[…],I think most of us are pretty well-documented by the federal government … simply because of the Internet and credit cards."
- All information captured on the cameras is stored for 60 days, even if nothing negative turns up. This allows the police enough time to mine data if a crime occurs later.
The question then arises, since nearly half the people of Medina, WA, voted to have this system in place, and based on the comments by City Councilmembers and the Police Chief, does anyone living in Medina, WA, really care about their privacy? Obviously not. Questions then arise about how the data is being secured, maintained, and disposed of. What happens to the liability of the City if there is an unauthorized release of information? What if someone makes a Freedom of Information Act request to see the data? A slippery slope towards the erosion of our privacy rights is amongst us. And people have the gaul to ask our legislators for a national privacy law?
To read the article, please click here: Cameras Keep Track of All Cars Entering Medina