[250] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] NYC Mayor Pushing for London Style Vehicle Tracking
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Fri Jun 8 02:16:00 2007
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Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2007 22:36:57 -0700
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NYC Mayor Pushing for London Style Vehicle Tracking
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000250.html
Greetings. Get ready New Yorkers, his honor Mayor Bloomberg is
pushing ahead to impose London style "congestion pricing" for Manhattan,
with the approving nod of the feds.
(See: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/nyregion/08congestion.html )
Such a system, which has already helped to turn London into the "Big
Brother" capital of the western world, entails placing hundreds of
cameras to read vehicle license plates as they enter the
"designated" areas of the city. Vehicle owners are then charged for
the privilege of driving in those locales.
Of course, such a system is also dandy for building and maintaining
a massive database of driver activities for a range of other
purposes. This is likely (regardless of any claims of data privacy)
to become fodder for all manner of officials and clever attorneys --
just as "FasTrak" toll data in the San Francisco Bay Area already
has. But with the NYC system, you won't have any way to "pay cash"
and avoid being tracked.
If New York City proceeds with this plan, you can bet that other
U.S. communities will consider following suite as quickly as they
can pour concrete for the camera mounts.
This is the kind of invasive technology -- with massive "data creep"
potential -- that privacy-conscious people should really be
concerned about today, not services like Google's existing
"Street View" application.
It's time to get our priorities straight, folks.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, IOIC
- International Open Internet Coalition - http://www.ioic.net
Founder, CIFIP
- California Initiative For Internet Privacy - http://www.cifip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
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