jacoblund
In light of the news that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will contract with private companies to track license plates, it is time for the City Council to revisit license plate readers in Northampton parking lots.
The system was initially sold to us using the mantra “More high-tech, everyone else is doing it, it will be cheaper.”
Our license plate reader system is owned and operated by Parkeon Corp., a subsidiary of a European investment firm. Do we even know where our data is ending up? Do we even know how much revenue Parkeon is generating from ancillary services such as reporting license plate information to ICE?
Parking enforcement personnel have to manually enter license plate information to verify payment. How much of a savings is that? Being able to pay for parking with credit cards and debit cards is certainly a convenience, but we don’t need license plate readers for that.
Why should ICE even bother creating its own database? We are doing it for them.
John Riley
Northampton
