Ken Fioretti wrote:
>
> I have a retail client who approched me with this problem: They want to convert the
>license plate numbers of their customers into addresses for tracking purposes. My
>first question is, how can I get this done?
>
> Any help would be most appreciated. I would also like to hear from anyone wishing to
>address the legal, ethical, moral, or privacy issues.
States have been known to sell drivers license info with SSI #,
address and picture if the price is right (I think it cost $5000 for
all of Colorado at one time), but I suppose for car tags the agency
you'd contact would be the state DMV.
On the ethics side of things, I think that all citizens who cannot
opt-out of license plates or drivers licenses by law if they want to
drive, ought to be able to require any other party to ask permission
of them FIRST before they use these public records for purposes
beyond what they were originally intended for.
My first question is WHY do you want to get this done? I know, the
short answer is because the client is willing to pay for it... but
that's not my point. Perhaps as GIS experts, and keepers of the keys
so to speak, we should start considering our role in developing the
information terrain of tomorrow's landscape. We do have some control
over now.
Where's the limit for personal privacy? Consider all the interesting
things we could do with GIS if we could only get everyone from
new-born babies to most experienced in living fitted with lifetime
subcutaneous transponders that would broadcast their unique Id when
scanned. You'd never lose track of yuor kids again. In a disaster,
emergency response teams could find you anywhere. Crime and mayhem
would drop to zero, because criminals couldn't hide. Market analysis
would be so much more efficient and less costly, and the governement
(or anyone) could run an accurate census every day. Tie all that
realtime micro-spatial accuracy to powerful data harvests from
electronic transactions and you'd have a dream world!
Dream world? I'd call it a nightmare. Even Machaevelli would
probably have misgivings. But if you think that's too much, then
where DO we draw the line? A question all engineers should ask
themselves every once in a while is, "Do I accept any job because it
has interesting challenges or pays well, or are there some things I
won't do on principle?"
Before you can answer that, you have to decide what your principles
are.
- Bill Thoen
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