I wrote below about the LA Times and its concerns over the License Plate Recognition system installed at Santa Monica Place. Privacy is the concern. OMG – your license number will be tracked and 1984 will arrive, just a quarter of century late. Gizmodo had a comment on the situation here. The money quote:
We should always be conscious (and cautious) of how our public presence is being tracked—of course. But defaulting to worst case scenarios is an exercise in scaremongering. The notion that Santa Monica Place is going to do something nefarious with the knowledge of where you parked your car last Sunday is no more worrisome than the potential for Facebook to do something with every photo, correspondence, and personal detail it possesses from the past five years of my life. Malls—like many other places outside our homes—are blanketed in security cameras anyway. With that given, they might as well be helping us find our cars at the end of a day of horrible shopping.
A glade of sanity in a forest of unnecessary concern.
JVH
