Santa Monica, CA – Nation’s First ‘Find Your Lost Car’ System Launched

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    Unsure of her license plate number, Andrea Minnich of San Pedro uses a “Find Your Car” kiosk at Santa Monica Place. Because she’s “basically nobody,” she said, she wasn’t too concerned about privacy. (Mariah Tauger, Los Angeles Times / January 9, 2011)Santa Monica – Anyone who has ever tramped through a dim, Escher-esque parking garage in search of a “lost” automobile might welcome an abracadabra technology that could help locate it.

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    But what if that magic involved an array of 24/7 surveillance cameras and was also available to police and auto repossessers? What if it could be tapped by jilted lovers, or that angry guy you accidentally cut off in traffic? Would the convenience be worth the loss of privacy?

    Those are some of the questions civil libertarians and others are asking as technology capable of spying on motorists and pedestrians is converted to widespread commercial use.

    Santa Monica Place recently unveiled the nation’s first camera-based “Find Your Car” system. Shoppers who have lost track of their vehicle amid a maze of concrete ramps and angled stripes can simply punch their license plate number into a kiosk touch screen, which then displays a photo of the car and its location.

    In Sacramento, the Police Department and Arden Fair Mall partnered to install license plate readers on mall security vehicles. The vehicles roam parking lots and garages in search of “hot list” vehicles provided by the state Department of Justice. If a car with a “hot” plate is spotted, mall security guards view closed-circuit TV footage to locate the vehicle’s driver and alert police.

    To date, the scans have helped police recover 44 stolen vehicles and arrest 38 individuals, according to mall security manager Steve Reed.

    Continue reading at LA Times


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    yaakov doe
    Member
    yaakov doe
    13 years ago

    If I wanted to locate the car of the man who closes up his store and takes his cash home with him, could I just punch in his plate number and know where to wait for him at closing time?