My article last month on police automatic licence plate recognition programs in BC has been read online by over 17,000 people after being featured in slashdot and elsewhere. This month I follow up with an article that recaps what happened at the Reboot Privacy and Security Conference when my co-researcher Christopher Parsons sat on a panel with Victoria Chief of Police Jamie Graham, and then I went to ask Graham a question and… It also recounts our stunning new findings: What the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada really said about the program. Indeed, you can read the full text of the OPC’s letters to the RCMP about the ALPR program yourself right here.
Hi F Rob, I do think some of the large police numbers in Victoria do have something to do with this small municipality actually being the operational downtown centre for a much larger metropolitan population, so all of our stats on policing are a bit skewed… But you are raising some legitimate questions!
Thank you to yourself Rob, and the other researchers who have pursued this issue, successfully engaging the involvement of the Privacy Commissioner. The police, ICBC, etc., should all take a good look at their own underwear first. What a bunch of hypocrites.Their culture of contempt towards the public, and even within their own organizations, is mounting. Surveying the public opinion on this is a wise move. I definitely don’t feel the police need more powers to spy on us. They do it enough already, and where does all the money for this come from? I’d rather see the public interest served with more MRI’s and health care professionals. Somebody told me recently,per capita we have more police than many other comparable jurisdictions, yet our crime rates are very low here in comparison to other jurisdictions. I have not seen the stats myself, but if there are so many police, is it not logical to think they should be able to do their job serving and protecting us without relying on more and more big brother technology and systematically eroding our civil liberties?