Poll: Worried Police—and Others—Are Tracking Your Car?

To most Southwest Minneapolis residents who pass through downtown, the Minneapolis Police Department's portable closed-circuit television cameras are hardly a strange sight. But according to the Star-Tribune, those cameras can also read, identify, and record your license plate numbers.

Along with special plate-reading cameras that are starting to be mounted on the department's squad cars, the department is feeding a large database of information about where cars move in the city. The information is kept on police servers for around a year, the Star-Tribune reports, and could—in theory—be used by police to track your car and travel patterns around the city. The plate number is public data, but the plate owner's name is not, the paper reports.

The fact that Minneapolis police keep the data for a year worries privacy experts. But does it worry you? Should license plate data be as trackable as your internet browsing history?