Licensed to Spy? How to Protect Your Privacy in a World of 24/7 Surveillance Cameras

Some resident in the upscale Paradise Hills neighborhood of Golden, Colorado didn’t consider their monied enclave to be a crime magnet with ‘bullets flying’ and burglars ‘terrorizing’ families - but that’s how the Homeowners’ Association described it in a pitch to install license plate cameras to record drivers entering and exiting Paradise.

“Usually, the car break-ins here are from bears, as opposed to people,” Skip Erickson, 71, told The Washington Post. “And yet suddenly there was this paranoia that we had to protect the neighborhood at all costs.”
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The dark side of paradise

Paradise Hills certainly isn’t the first community to tighten security in a crackdown on crime. Flock Safety - the US industry leader in automatic license plate recognition cameras (ALPR) - has already installed devices in more than 1,500 cities and 40 states which capture data from more than 12bn vehicles every year.

The company says its goal is to ‘eliminate crime while respecting privacy’ but some wonder if community license plate cameras - on top of an estimated 180,000 CCTVs already in use in America - may be a snap too far.

“Location-based information like license plate data can be very revealing,” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “By matching your car to a particular time, date, and location, and then building a database of that information over time, law enforcement can learn where you work and live, what doctor you go to, which religious services you attend, and who your friends are.”
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