Gantries installed along the Massachusetts Turnpike have been equipped with cameras as part of the Department of Transportation's initiative to fully digitalize toll collection. The Boston Globe turned to our Technology for Liberty director Kade Crockford to detail some of the ways in which the Department's plan to film and register passing vehicles may put your information at risk.
Still, Crockford said the state should be more transparent with the Pike-driving public about what exactly is being collected and what is being done to protect the data from hackers and to limit access to the data by state employees, law enforcement officials, and lawyers.
“Information like this in a centralized database is a target for hackers and it could also be used internally by people at the Department of Transportation,” said Crockford.
“If I’m a divorce lawyer, I might want to know if my client’s husband got off a certain exit at a certain time,” she added. “And law enforcement could have plenty of reasons to want access to this information.”
Crockford said there’s always the fear that, down the line, the Transportation Department or other state leaders may change course and decide they do want to use the speed data to ticket drivers.
Read the full article: What those gantries on the Pike are secretly doing
