Local Blogs
By Erin Glanville
About this blog: While state and federal politics dominate the headlines, local issues have an enormous impact on our everyday lives. This blog will attempt to shine a light on topics of public interest and facilitate greater participation in the ...
(More)About this blog: While state and federal politics dominate the headlines, local issues have an enormous impact on our everyday lives. This blog will attempt to shine a light on topics of public interest and facilitate greater participation in the civic process in our community. Born and raised in California and a graduate of UC Davis (go Aggies!), I had an opportunity to live and work - inside the beltway - of Washington, D.C. while completing my graduate work at Georgetown University. Upon completion, I returned home and embarked upon a career in high tech with companies including Tandem Computers and Cisco Systems, eventually settling in Menlo Park with my husband. After the birth of our middle child, I became an at-home mom but continued to stay involved with community issues close to my heart. That involvement has included work for Site Creations, a non-profit dedicated to public art, guest lecturing at Foothill and De Anza colleges, board membership for SOLO Aquatics, and serving as Nativity School's auction chair, parent-teacher group secretary and co-president. But these days, I'm mostly just mom to three great, and very busy, kids.
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The Privacy Balance
Uploaded: May 18, 2014
The Menlo Park City Council made a difficult but prudent and thoughtful decision this week when they adopted an ordinance putting stronger limitations around the use of the data captured by the Menlo Park Police Department's new automated license plate readers. The new ordinance also creates penalties or consequences for unauthorized use or abuse of that data. (
See the original story.)
The City Council had the choice between adopting a resolution that would provide guidelines to help address public privacy concerns or actually passing an ordinance that would definitively protect privacy. The problem with a resolution is that it can be more easily discarded when situations arise that appear to be "an exception to the rule". Ultimately those exceptions become the watered down rule.
This was not an issue about not trusting the Menlo Police Department or diluting the law enforcement tools the Department has at its disposal. If those where the issues the City Council was focused on, the Department would not have been given the technology in the first place. To quote Mayor Mueller, this was the challenge of finding a careful "middle ground" that provides checks and balances to responsibly address privacy and abuse concerns.
Council can always let out the reins once a longer track record has established. In the meantime, safeguards that error on the side of privacy are appropriate.
Democracy.
What is it worth to you?
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