School Board Member Featured in SF Chronicle on Police Surveillance

San Leandro school board member Mike Katz-Lacabe was featured in a San Francisco Chronicle article regarding police license plate readers tracking cars.

After the City bought the license plate reader the San Leandro Police Department in 2008, Katz-Lacabe—who is also a computer security consultant—asked the city for a record of every time the scanners had photographed his car, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The photos are taken with a camera-equipped car dedicated to capturing plate numbers (see photo above).

Katz-Lacabe was featured in a Wall Street Journal story last year, that examined the practice of randomly tracking license plates—a process that merged video cameras, databases and cheap data storage.

He expressed in the WSJ article that the practice ropes in all citizens including a majority of whom are innocent and under no suspicion; and that information is being stores indefinitely.

To read the San Francisco Chronicle article, click here.

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