St. Peterburg, FL – A St. Petersburg resident is continuing a series of weekly demonstrations to raise awareness about the city’s use of automated license plate reader cameras, saying he believes the technology poses privacy concerns for drivers.<\/p>\n
Seventy seven year old Carl Gunn spends each Saturday protesting beneath a different Flock Safety camera installed throughout St. Petersburg. <\/p>\n
During the demonstrations, Gunn holds a homemade sign attached to a long pole to draw attention to the cameras without interfering with or damaging the equipment.<\/p>\n
According to the St. Petersburg Police Department, the city has about 50 Flock Safety cameras. <\/p>\n
The system captures images of passing vehicles and scans license plates, comparing them with law enforcement databases to identify stolen vehicles, wanted suspects and vehicles connected to criminal investigations.<\/p>\n
Gunn said he began protesting after learning more about how the cameras operate and questioning the amount of information collected on drivers who are not suspected of committing crimes. <\/p>\n
He said his goal is to encourage public discussion about privacy and surveillance rather than disrupt police operations.<\/p>\n
Law enforcement agencies across the country have increasingly adopted license plate reader technology, saying it provides investigators with another tool to locate suspects, recover stolen vehicles and assist with ongoing criminal cases. At the same time,<\/p>\n
privacy advocates have expressed concerns about how long vehicle data is stored, who can access it and how the information could be used in the future.<\/p>\n
Gunn said he plans to continue visiting different camera locations each week in an effort to keep public attention focused on the balance between public safety and individual privacy rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. Peterburg, FL – A St. Petersburg resident is continuing a series of weekly demonstrations to raise awareness…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[41142,145959,187,54548,3383,142043,2161,145960,2391,11111,145716,2171,202,204,203,21530,199,201,200,15675,1777],"class_list":["post-357655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-cameras","tag-carl-gunn","tag-city","tag-concerns","tag-demonstrations","tag-flock","tag-government","tag-license-plate-reader-cameras","tag-man","tag-privacy","tag-privacy-concerns","tag-resident","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-peterburg","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-surveillance","tag-vehicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}