Jay Stanley of the ACLU writes:
Data from license plate readers in Minnesota was obtained by a St. Paul car dealer using open-records laws, and used to repossess at least one car, according to a recent article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The article included this amusing tidbit:
When the Star Tribune published data tracking Mayor R.T. Rybak’s city-owned car over the past year, the mayor asked police Chief Tim Dolan to make a recommendation for a new policy about data retention.
To those of us who think about privacy a lot, it’s not just funny but also amazing how, when public officials discover that they can be at the receiving end of bad privacy policies, it tends to produce an immediate, electric effect on policy.
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