"Al Gidari, director of privacy at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, says cities need to work through such issues before starting these projects. That includes deciding how long to keep data, who has access to it and under what circumstances. And legislators, he says, need to grapple with new questions, like whether you can appeal if a smart parking meter gives you a ticket.
"There's this raft of thorny privacy issues that haven't been worked out, but all the data's already been collected by the time we get there," he says. "They ought to all [stop and] take a deep breath.""