Tiburon, CA will photograph and record license plate of every visitor to town

John sez, "The town of Tiburon, California (pop. 9,000) has a scheme to photograph and record the license plate number of every single vehicle that enters the municipality, in order to 'fight crime.' But don't worry: 'As long as you don't arrive in a stolen vehicle or go on a crime spree while you're here, your anonymity will be preserved,' said Town Manager Peggy Curran."

Melissa Ngo, a privacy rights attorney and consultant who publishes privacylives.com, said she is not aware of a situation where a town is keeping a record of all visitors.
"The point is we live in a land where people are considered innocent until proven guilty," Ngo said. "Not a land where it's supposed to be -- prove that you're not doing anything wrong by letting us watch you do everything."
Curled on the edge of the San Francisco Bay in Marin County, Tiburon is not a high-crime spot. In 2008, police report there were 99 thefts, 20 burglaries and two auto thefts.

Town on SF Bay wants to photograph every car (Thanks, John!)

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Hans

Other than the fact that it is every car, I don’t know this is different from police license cameras which are already in wide use in the US. The license cameras are mounted on police cars, and software recognizes and decodes license plates automatically as the officer drives (recording everything permanently).

I am not sure of the legality of this. It calls to mind the recent (non-applicable, but relevant) case Mills v. DC (DC 2009), covering a police checkpoint on the entrance to a crime-ridden area. The DC Court of Appeals held the checkpoints were not legal, but their decision makes it clear that rulings are anything but obvious (I think, at least).

They cite as relevant the USSC case City of Indianapolis v. Edmond (2000), which holds notably “[w]e have never approved a checkpoint program whose primary purpose was to detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing.”

This case is different, of course, since a photo is less intrusive than a roadblock. Perhaps the main crux of the Mills case was the requirement that the motorist give a reason for entering the neighborhood, and they were turned away if they could not give a good reason. Here there is no such requirement. It is not even clear that a photo could be considered in the same way as a roadblock.

It is an interesting case from a legal perspective, but Orwellian and creepy just the same.

(Standard Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer.)
Anonymous

Under the “plain view” doctrine of 4th Amendment search and seizure law, the recording of the license plates will not be considered an unreasonable search. Creepy, yes. Illegal, no.
Roy Trumbull

Belvedere, Tiburon, and Corinthian Island are a tony little cluster across the bay from Sausalito. In the days when bonds had actual coupons attached it was claimed that on a calm morning that in Sausalito you could hear them clipping coupons in Belvedere.
Another tale which I think is just a tale was about a car pulling up to Zaks in Sausalito. Next to Zaks was a boat launching ramp. The driver was feeling no pain and there was a full moon. A parking attendant was asked where Tiburon was and he pointed across the water. There was a brilliant reflection of a moonbeam lined up with the boat launching ramp. You take it from there.
ackpht

“I value my right as a photographer to take pictures of anything that I can see from a public place. This means everyone else gets that right too. Yes, even the police.”

I have met plenty of people here in the States who don’t think such rights exist. We have already seen reports of American rent-a-cops confronting photographers in public places in the name of “security”. The police in London have a healthy respect for their right to take pictures in public places- but they regard it as THEIR right, not YOURS.

Acquiescing to surveillance in no way protects your rights as a photographer.
digitalcole

Just A bunch of rich “hoity-toity” individuals creating paranoia and then feeding off of it.

Fear is a self-destructive weapon.

You can let the city manager Margaret (Peggy) Curran know that we’re not interested in having our vehicles photographed when we’re keeping their economy going by visiting and spending money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiburon,_California

Fairfax is cooler anyways and has a great pizza shop.

http://www.ghirpizza.com/index.php
Teller

#8: Bumper stickers won’t be a problem unless they say My Other Truck is a Truck. Tiburon is all Obama and World Peace. And all the residents have nice cars, 2 German and a Prius. It’s the super-natty Belvedere, the town-within-a-town, that’s the likely subtext here.
Takuan

quite right there, nameless in #45! Why, just the other day this saucy blackamoor had the insolence not use the servant’s entrance and a sharp eyed officer apprehended the miscreant!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/21/henry-louis-gates-jr-arre_n_242010.html
James

London already does this in the central congestion zone, and the borough of Hackney does the same, independently. All vehicle traffice is monitored and logged. What’s insidious is not the surveillance state, which is actually submissively desired by most, but the use of public office funds which should go on schools, healthcare, libraries, on repressive security state apparatus which should come out of the police budget. But so it goes…
Brainspore

If you have a mistress in Tiburon this might be a good time to call off the affair.
bonafidebob

Generally agree with #13 etc that taking pictures isn’t illegal, and taking them routinely is something anyone could do, government or private. That is, I could set up a camera outside my home that routinely photographed ever car going by, no problem. Even better, we see photos and footage from these cameras all the time on youtube etc, as often as not catching businesses and government people doing odd things. Similar efforts by enthusiasts tracking airplane tail numbers have exposed other, um, interesting behaviors.

Correlating them with drivers registration information however isn’t something that can be done without access to information only the government has, and I do worry about that information getting out.

But it’s easy to see a Little Brother kind of future where enthusiasts regularly track the positions of police cars and other government vehicles using the same technology. The IT infrastructure isn’t all that hard… and police cars are a lot more recognizable. I wish governments were more forward thinking about the applications of tracking to their own business.
Anonymous

It is amazing to see that in spite of California’s $26 billion deficit some communities are still able to come up with new and fresh ideas how to waste even more money. But there are other ways to protect the community even better against the dangers lurking in the evil world outside. Build a wall around it. A huge one. No exits necessary.
Anonymous

Many Tiburon (and generally true of Marin) residents are OK but most are so completely out of touch with reality that in another more rational age they’d be in asylums. I grew up there; you couldn’t pay me to live there.

There are countermeasures that can be used against this kind technology. Keep in mind that all low cost electronic cameras have silicon photoarrays and as such are very sensitive to infrared light which thankfully is not detectable to the human. Just saying.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  The database will be basically the same as the California DMV database, which is already accessible. The only extra information that they’ll have on you is that you probably ate a really overpriced brunch on the day that you visited.
Takuan

in Tiburon they fuck their cars.
Anonymous

There are far too many police in the US and far too much money funneled into ‘crime prevention’. Oh, and if no one has noticed, all the money and extra police don’t seem to be helping.
Just a thought but perhaps its time the US looks into investing in education rather than incarceration as a way of ‘controlling’ its crime.
Bitgod

It makes me wonder why a small town like this is doing this, and I would guess that the company(ies) involved with the tech is partly/wholly paying for this as a trial.
Takuan

heh!
http://www.marinij.com/sports/ci_12881481
myke

I feel the need to point out the irony in this policy which has only
been alluded to by earlier posts (unless I missed something).

- Tiburon is an expensive, monied area.
- Tiburon currently has a very low crime rate.

What is the gain for the people living there?

The reduction in crime using this system is going to be extremely
minimal. Crime is already quite low. They will certainly have at
least some loss of privacy.

What is the gain for the town government?

They might see this as a way to make more money. This could be a
means of additional municipal income much like parking tickets and
red-light cameras are used in bigger cities. I don’t see this as
being particularly effective, but it’s the only positive thing I can
think of for this system (barring someone’s cousin running the
company that is selling the equipment).

What is the gain for crooks?

For stupid crooks (admittedly, the majority), this is a negative.
Generally speaking, they are also likely to stupid to realize it is
a problem until they get caught.

For smart crooks, this is a panacea. Break into the system and you
know what kind of cars are being driven (Rolls Royce?, Ferrari?)
where the people live, and what their schedule is. When can I break
into this guys house? hmm, well looking at the data, that family is
gone the third weekend of every month. Do I want to steal that car?
looking at the data, the daughter takes it to the mall every
Thursday. Hmm, a young beautiful women visits every Tuesday at 8 PM
right after the wife that lives at X address leaves. How much can I
extort from the husband?

So overall, the town my make a little extra money and smart
crooks should be throwing parties.

Go Tiburon!
Oshkosh John

A town near where I live is a famous speed trap. It is well-known, and surprisingly few tickets are written any more. However, you don’t want to exceed thirty miles per hour going through town! It’s a crossroad town, and the lone patrol cop will always be at one of the four ends of the town.

The point? If you know out front that the place you’re visiting does not take kindly to lawbreakers, you keep going, and tread softly while you’re there!
Anonymous

This is just an honest effort to keep the lower classes out. Can’t have their wealthy enclave being available to the riffraff
Anonymous

BIG BROTHER. What a waste of time and money.
Anonymous

Fortunately, I belong to a religion which requires my car to wear a burqa at all times.

Toyota Ahkbar
demidan

‘As long as you don’t arrive in a stolen vehicle or go on a crime spree while you’re here, your anonymity will be preserved,’ said Town Manager Peggy Curran.”

Should add,,,” as long as our employees aren’t bored and have a database withing arms reach”

Or
“Your car doesn’t have an objectionable bumper sticker”

Or
“Your car isn’t too fancy,’cause that might mean you deal drugs”

Or
“You look Foreign or something”
ninjasuperspy

I drive a Tiburon, am I exempt?
Anonymous

How on earth will they ever get drug deliveries?

Don’t they know they’re in California?
Roy Trumbull

They were way ahead of us in the 30s and 40s. That’s when the song “Whose going to watch the man, the man who’s going to watch the man, the man who’s going to watch me?” came out.
Keep in mind that the cameras will be watched by someone who is not physically qualified or mentally alert enough to be sent out in a squad car. In reality this is about as effective as the slide whistle noise from a car alarm.
I once saw two guys boosting cars in a parking lot loaded with cameras.
AGC

Cars are evil.
CCTV is evil.
Two evils make a right.

(Anything that helps to stop the spread of cars is a good thing.)
Timothy Hutton

Once we put laptops in police cars, it became common for the police to search the license plate of every car in front of them at stop lights, while driving, etc. No one is complaining about that. When you drive through a toll booth there are cameras that record your license plate as well, to provide a record in case you don’t pay the toll, no one is complaining about them either.The City of Tiburon has simply taken that “informal” practice to it’s ultimate conclusion.

The only assumption I am making is that the recording of license plates will be done “passively” – they won’t stop each car, note the license plate, and then let it proceed. That I’d have a problem with, but passively recording license plates as cars enter town, I think I lost that bit of personal privacy already.
demidan

Sorry Timothy,”but passively recording license plates as cars enter town, I think I lost that bit of personal privacy already.”

Roll over,
beg
play dead
Anonymous

Clearly a lot of the commenters here aren’t from California. Tiburon is a yacht club enclave on San Francisco Bay just inside Marin County. Forbes magazine once listed the 25 most expensive zip codes in the USA; Tiburon and Belvedere’s 94920 was somewhere in the middle of that. Even now with the RE crash, you still couldn’t buy anything there for $1 million. This is clearly an anti-B&E measure taken with SF and Oakland in mind.
Anonymous

So if you want to do something illegal, ride a bicycle.
airshowfan

My car’s license plate broadcasts many many many photons in every direction, at the speed of light. I have no expectation that they won’t be captured. (Heck, I even have a vanity plate, so I guess I’m kind of hoping that my license plate does not go un-noticed). I have no expectation of privacy when I am in a public place, be it walking or driving or whatever. Same goes for CCTV; I don’t see what the big deal is. Yes, I was at this spot at this point in time, and at that spot at that point in time… I don’t see how someone could expect to keep that secret. My life is not Mission:Impossible.

Just as the information age allows us to quickly search and pool information about all kinds of people and institutions, making it harder for them to be deceptive, information about us is also easier to pool. That’s a fact of life. Get over it. (Or go be a hermit in a secluded place).

I value my right as a photographer to take pictures of anything that I can see from a public place. This means everyone else gets that right too. Yes, even the police.

Am I the only reader of this site who feels this way? I agree with almost all the viewpoints expressed on BoingBoing; Resentment over the “surveillance state” is the only big exception.
jjasper

I agree with # 5 and #13. I’m not inclined to think it’s illegal, and I really don’t care that much. I live in a large city where, with enough database magic, the government can track my movements by my transit pass card. If you drive into my city with a fast-link tag on your car, you get to use the fast lane for tolls, and they can track you this way as well.

Why should I care about cars in Tiburon? Roads are a public utility, not a private home.
ill lich

“Awww. . . they took my picture, how sweet, I feel like part of the community now (a community that is constantly snooping on each other). Next thing ya know they’ll be gossiping about me.”
Anonymous

Sounds like the kind of place where the music stops and everyone looks at you suspiciously when you walk into a bar.

I wonder if they realize how much money they’re throwing away by doing this. Both in the cost of implementation, the loss in tourist dollars, and likely the money that will be going into defending this legally.
Timothy Hutton

DEMIDAN – not sure what you’re getting at, I think the privacy others think they will lose if this comes to pass are wrong – the privacy is already gone.

I didn’t invite it, I wasn’t even asked if I wanted it, but the toothpaste is out of the tube, and you can’t get it back in…

Most new GM cars include GPS, onStar, etc., and with the government running GM (against their will, it seems), can’t they track our movements better than simple “license plate photos”? Aren’t they even contriving a “cash for clunkers” program to get more people to buy onStar-enabled new cars?

Wait, I have to go add another layer to my tin foil kippah…
Anonymous

This makes me think of that scene in Weeds season 1 where the cameras catch a naked dude rollerblading at night.
Anonymous

“Acquiescing to surveillance in no way protects your rights as a photographer.”

No, but photographers have a strong interest in protecting their right to photograph items which are in plain view of the public. Like people in public places, buildings visible from sidewalks, and, of course, cars with clearly readable license plates.

If I have such rights as an individual, and I strongly believe that I do, then foolish and overbroad arguments against public surveillance harm me as well. And arguing that license plates are “private” and must never be looked upon is, frankly, just as foolish as paranoid people who argue that candid photography should be forbidden in public places.

Incidentally, if you know the tail number of plane, including small private planes, you can easily find many details, including the name of the owner. It’s all public.
Gutierrez

Hope they have a really well made database, good software, and officers well trained in its use. More information doesn’t always mean better information. This could be a collossal waste of time and money, or worse yet, a disaster waiting to happen. If bad data is in the system or it parses a plate wrong and the officer doesn’t verify… Oops.
Anonymous

Today it’s cameras. Next it will be gates with armed guards.
Anonymous

I used to work for a Three Letter Agency and it was a basic tenet of information handling that a document that was an aggregate of lots of bits of unclassified data could become classified (legitimately, and for good reason). After all, every English language document consists of 26 letters and 10 digits, none of which is secret.

It’s more than the sum of its parts, etc.

Taking photos of license plates may seem benign, but it is the aggregate that is dangerous. It will be used against innocent folks.

License plate scanning software isn’t terribly difficult to produce, especially if you don’t really require 99.9% accuracy. If someone hacks a national database of plate numbers, this sort of stuff could be done by anybody. How long till that happens (or has it already?)

Samsam
gollux

Help Tiburon’s city budget out, divert off the highway system and take a minor jaunt through their fair city. Help dilute the database while raising the data storage costs.
dculberson

Polarized filter over your plate?
Anonymous

#1 Anonymous: “US 101 flows through Tiburon. Basically they’re saying they’ll record the license plates of all commuters who work in SF but live in the burbs.”

Wrong. 101 runs next to Tiburon. The cameras would be on the only two smaller roads that lead to Tiburon, which is on a peninsula. Drive too far and you splash into the bay.

#21 Anonymous: “I wonder if they realize how much money they’re throwing away by doing this.”

Not a problem. Tiburon is ultra, ultra-wealthy.

Tiburon Resident
Anonymous

I doubt it’s illegal to photograph license plates. There are in-cop-car systems in use today that photograph, OCR and lookup license plates in real time, I remember reading a Wired story on it.

The real answer to this is to help them. Flood Tiburon’s roads every day with area drivers. Make them have to take so many photos that it becomes unbearable. Something tells me there’s enough cars in that part of California to overwhelm them.
Takuan

the thing about databases is that sooner or later – if they exist – they DO get leaked.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8160081.stm
lectroid

@19- I’m pretty sure that putting anything over your license plate, such as polarized screens or those sprays, is illegal, especially if done with the intent to obscure your plate from law enforcement, which includes traffic-cams of all types, but then, I’m not a lawyer and don’t play one.

Also, living quite near this town, I can tell you all that Tiburon is a VERY high-end Marin town. They’re already extremely hostile to visitors of any sort. There’s little-to-no public transportation into town (even less than most of the county), and there’s very little public parking anyway. Just about enough for residents who might want to see a movie in the overpriced movie theater or pick up some imported balsamic vinegar at the overpriced market.

The views from the hills, however, are gorgeous.

Should you actually WANT to go to Tiburon for these, I reccommend taking one’s bike to a the highway exit off 101, parking along the side of the road, and biking through on a pretty summer day. Then when you’re done, bike back to your car and go have lunch in San Rafael. Don’t bother Tiburon your money. They don’t need it.
Takuan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePH-XcjqSNU
Takuan

be poetic justice if a list of all their residents and plate numbers leaked onto the web. You know, so they could be made equally welcome everywhere else.
Takuan

http://www.plateflipper.com/
Anonymous

Yes a similar scheme is in place in London but it’s failing there just as it will fail here. London is becoming, even by American standards, an extraordinarily violent city. The surveillance state the has been implemented there does little beyond infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens, it does little or nothing to protect those law abiding citizens from crime.
Anonymous

US 101 flows through Tiburon.

Basically they’re saying they’ll record the license plates of all commuters who work in SF but live in the burbs.
Takuan

so they don’t want visitors. OK.
Anonymous

OK, one of the Anonymi said: “There are far too many police in the US and far too much money funneled into ‘crime prevention’. Oh, and if no one has noticed, all the money and extra police don’t seem to be helping. Just a thought but perhaps its time the US looks into investing in education rather than incarceration as a way of ‘controlling’ its crime.”

Now, I realise that it’s a near-total waste of tie to post responses to comments such as this but, here goes….

1) “Far too many police”? Basis for this is what?

2) “Don’t seem to be helping”? It has been a major social phenomenon of the last decade or more that crime rates have been falling; a lot.

3) ” ‘Invest’ in education rather than incarceration”? Ok, this must be a liberal teacher writing (is there any other kind?) Um, let’s see, the crime rate has dropped a lot because a) police arrested criminals and b) sentencing got tougher for repeat offenders. This all represents a major social success of the last many years that has gone little-reported and badly reported by the MSM, who say, “Why have we still got so many people in prison when the crime-rate is down so low???” Duh.
travelina

I still agree with #38:
“Acquiescing to surveillance in no way protects your rights as a photographer.”
DWittSF

#19, Mythbusters failed the polarizing license plate cover.
AnoniMouse

Ummm. I hope they will publicize, and post a sign outside of town. Cause, otherwise I think this is illegal.

I know that before the police have a drunk driver road block, the police dept. is required to advertise it.
Anonymous

Is Tiburon a den of crime and vice?

What an utter complete waste of time and money.

TOWN FAIL
noen

We should have a pool on how long before their database is hacked. I say within three months.
Takuan

or maybe everyone in the area could make a point of going for a drive through Tiburon – you know, just to see what it is all about. Say, one million cars?
jtegnell

Aptly named town.