License
plate scanners were in the news recently. The new Lexington Parking
Authority has at least one car equipped with these scanners. As it
drives down a street it records
license plates from both sides, and computer software tells the
operator if there’s a “hit.”
A
“hit” would mean that car has three or more unpaid parking tickets. A
call is made, and soon a “boot” is placed on that car, immobilizing it
until the owner pays the tickets.
Good idea. Law violators should pay up and not avoid fines.
Why
not go a step further? Let police load stolen car plates into LexPark’s
software and search for those vehicles ,too. Why limit it to just
parking tickets as long as we’re
out there looking? The police can use all the help we can give them.
This seems such an obvious way to help.
But,
The American civil Liberties Union points out police in 38 states are
already doing various forms of license plate scanning, and there are no
uniform rules and regulations
for handling this information..especially storing it.
ACLU’s
survey shows Grapevine, Texas has stored 2 million plates; Milpitas,
California, a town of 68,000, has 4.7 million plates stored. Maryland
has been storing such data
for a long time, but its own records show out of every million plates
recorded, but 47 have any relation to a potential crime.
Technology
can be a useful tool, but I would encourage LexPark or the LPD to
store such records only as long as they may be needed for a court case.
After that, they should
all be erased and recycled..saving taxpayers money and ending the
specter of Big Brother’s long nose being stuck, needlessly, into the
business of Lexington drivers.
With
NSA recording our phone calls and e-mails, with the Post office
photographing all our mail, this is one more possibility for unnecessary
intrusion into our lives we don’t
need..and we should nip it in the bud…now.
I'm just sayin'...
No comments:
Post a Comment