I have an article in the Pacific Sun this week. It’s about how the town of Tiburon is looking at putting cameras on the roads going into town to scan the license plates of all its visitors.
The fortress of Tiburon may be putting a new guard at the gate. An electronic one.
The affluent municipality of almost 9,000 people is considering putting cameras on the two roads going into town to scan the license plates of all its visitors. Police think that the cameras will help them track down criminals. Since most crime in Tiburon is committed by people who live outside of town, if something happens, the police could quickly get a record of the cars that have passed through around the time the crime occurred and narrow it down to the likely culprit.
If the town council passes the measure, Tiburon would likely become the first town to record the license plates of every visitor. The measure is stirring up controversy from those who feel the idea of a camera tracking everyone’s movements is too close to Big Brother from George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
“It’s totalitarian,” says security expert Bruce Schneier. “It sounds like something the Soviet Union would try to do. It’s the surveillance of everybody. It’s not ‘follow that car,’ it’s follow every car. The East Germans tried to do this same thing, but it eventually failed. Technology makes it easy.”