It all comes down to trust...and technology

Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to implement a London-style congestion based traffic pricing system has been getting a lot of criticism from privacy advocates recently. Chris Dunn and Donna Lieberman’s piece in the NY Daily News today is no exception:

So far, public debate about Mayor Bloomberg's congestion-pricing proposal has focused on issues like the specific boundaries of a congestion-pricing zone, the fees drivers will pay, the impact on mass transit and how much congestion pricing will actually reduce traffic congestion. Lost in this discussion has been the fact that implementation of congestion pricing could involve the creation of a massive system of surveillance cameras. Like the program already in place in London, the congestion-pricing plan being considered here would use cameras to read and record the license plate of every car, truck and motorcycle entering or leaving the congestion-pricing zone, as well as of many vehicles traveling inside the zone. The system then would match that license plate information against a database of vehicle owners to bill drivers the congestion-pricing fee. This type of plan raises enormous privacy concerns.

While it’s true that over 70% of American’s state a willingness to endure privacy invasion and surveillance as part of efforts to fight crime and save lives, traffic enforcement efforts using the same technologies aren’t nearly so popular. That’s Bloomberg’s problem. His “surveillance” cameras aren’t REALLY for general surveillance. Instead, they are specialized high-speed cameras zoomed in to focus on the license plates of Manhattan traffic. And while they’ll do an excellent job tracking the daily movements of NY commuters, they will do very little to deter crime in the areas they are deployed.