I am headed up to Harvard this evening to attend the Privacy Symposium. I am very much looking forward to this industrial-strength dose of privacy discussions. This will also be a bit different for me as the majority of speakers are lawyers. Usually, I sit in conferences listening to techies and the occasional auditor. The Privacy Symposium speaker list is lawyer and professor heavy with a few representations from the tech world. It ought to be a nice change.
The subtitle of this Privacy Symposium is “Privacy in Transition.” Well timed. I look around my neighborhood and my city and I can practically see those transitions in real time. I’ve talked about the security cameras in my neighborhood before. This weekend, the Washington Post reports that DC is planning on sing license plate readers to “fight terrorism.” Find stolen cars – sure. Find Osama bin laden – not so much. The District has got to release data retention plans for this data quickly. For now, the word is that this data will not be retained. The systems checks plates against “Federal databases” and looks for matches. (How long until we have a No-Fly list equivalent of license plates?) I have to imagine that the data retention policy will change very quickly. How long until third parties get access to this data? I can see the District using the revenue it makes from selling access to this data to divorce lawyers to pay for school repairs.
At any rate, I’ll be in Cambridge this week mulling some of these ideas over hearing more on matters like these. See you there.