A novel anti-crime surveillance program that will record the license plate number of every car entering and leaving Tiburon should be up and running within six months, officials said Thursday.
The Town Council voted 4-0 late Wednesday - with Vice Mayor Miles Berger absent - to install six cameras that recognize license plate characters on Tiburon Boulevard and Paradise Drive. Those are the only two roads that feed into the Tiburon peninsula, which also includes the smaller city of Belvedere on its southwestern edge.
Tiburon will be the first community in the Bay Area, and perhaps the country, to line its borders with the cameras, which have drawn criticism from privacy rights advocates.
Plates will be compared to databases of stolen or wanted cars, with matches triggering an immediate alert to local officers. If detectives are investigating a crime, they will be able to search the records to try to find possible suspects.
"I think it makes the community safer," Police Chief Michael Cronin said. He said the town still needs to select a camera vendor and secure construction permits before installing the system.
Tiburon and Belvedere are affluent communities with low crime rates, and some residents at Wednesday's meeting said the cameras would help keep it that way.
"If it lowers the crime rate even a little bit, then it's a great idea," said Yami Anolik, a 64-year-old real estate investor whose husband, Al Anolik, spoke in favor of the cameras at the meeting.
She said she did not share the privacy concerns of some of her neighbors, explaining, "If you're driving on a public road, you gave up your privacy already. If you want to be private, stay at home." ...
via Tiburon to record every car coming and going.
The town of Tiburon should be moved to England. There are plenty of control freaks with snooping cameras on every corner over there. Yami Anolik of Tiburon may not value her privacy but others do. I don't think she understands how this can be exploited by criminals. Off the top of my head, what if someone fakes Yami's license plate on a car similar to hers while driving through her town and commits a robbery or a murder? Will she understand then? When you give up privacy to get security, you get neither.
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