Man astonished to find he'd been photographed 112 times by police license plate reader tech

[Fire Walk With Me]

http://cironline.org/reports/license-plate-readers-let-police-collect-millions-records-drivers-4883

When the city of San Leandro, Calif., purchased a license-plate reader for its police department in 2008, computer security consultant Michael Katz-Lacabe asked the city for a record of every time the scanners had photographed his car.

The results shocked him.

The paperback-size device, installed on the outside of police cars, can log thousands of license plates in an eight-hour patrol shift. Katz-Lacabe said it had photographed his two cars on 112 occasions, including one image from 2009 that shows him and his daughters stepping out of his Toyota Prius in their driveway.

That photograph, Katz-Lacabe said, made him “frightened and concerned about the magnitude of police surveillance and data collection.” The single patrol car in San Leandro equipped with a plate reader had logged his car once a week on average, photographing his license plate and documenting the time and location.

(More at the link.)

[AnotherMcIntosh]

1. Scenic Sausalito began photographing the license plates of all tourists years earlier.

Maybe some of the Sausalito residents thought that the unnecessary surveillance would be generally limited to tourists. It turns out that they were wrong.

The expanded surveillance in Sausalito, San Leandro, and elsewhere is a result of mission creep.

[felix_numinous]

2. Psychological abuse.

There has to be a better way to have a safe society than feeling stalked. We can do better than this.