By: Diane Benjamin
In communist China every person is required to carry their phone at all times so the government can track them.
Starting January 2nd Normal is doing the same thing if you park in one of their garages. When you enter your license plate will be read. They want you to enter your bank account or credit card info to pay. They will also have your phone number which means it can be sold (or given) to anyone who wants to abuse it.
If Normal wants people to come to Uptown free parking would save them money. Are you going to download their app? Do you have any faith the system won’t be hacked? Do you want government to have access to your bank account or credit card? What will Normal do with all that license plate data, create a voter list?
More details can be seen here: https://www.normalil.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=2746&fbclid=IwAR2yeHcWVNGclb8-5ppIDMIOtZZo6GlvU17IbkXvShdt11NWBrhrY4O5-Zo
I wouldn’t have done this story if people hadn’t contacted me about this invasion of privacy. Download the app at your own risk. If you trust government you aren’t paying attention. Payment can be made without the app at a kiosk. One hour is still free. Plan to stay for less.
This statement from the link must mean the Town will be picking who gets fined and who doesn’t:
Ha ha ha ha ha! Merry Christmas and thank you china.
It was safer when it was town vs gown. Now its town + gown.
No thanks, I will not be downloading their app. We were just uptown a few nights ago with friends for dinner and all agreed there are plenty of places to eat and shop on the eastside of town with no app or parking fees required.
Of course these comments need to be verified, it appears that Passport Parking has issues or had issues in the past. https://justuseapp.com/en/app/501324867/passport-parking/reviews
WOW – 13.5% had a positive experience using it!
Yeah. Linking a bank account or credit card to any app, especially one that lets your local Government access your money never good.
One more reason not to use the parking decks. I park on the streets if I can find a space, if not, I leave. I use the actual parking lot at the library, I I know, It’s shocking but my choice. Another smart city concept used to track it’s residents. Like Hitler said, “It’s all for our good and safety.”
“I was Just following orders.” Echoed by useful conformists throughout history.
Options. Why can’t they still have the option for inserting paper monies? Because the chose not to, that’s why.
Don’t let them excuse this decision with excuses such as, it’s due to cost savings, or staff shortages, simplicity (whose? The Villages?) with accounting, or some other nonsense.
As Diane points out in the article, the collection of data, bank accounts, credit cards, license plates, facial pictures, are unnecessarily intrusive and will be stored in a database which will be either sold to as “meta data” or utilized for some governmental purpose it was not initially or legally intended.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/metadata-can-expose-persons-identity-even-when-name-isnt-1422558349
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/03/how-nsa-can-use-metadata-predict-your-personality/81538/
Free parking for an hour in the deck I thought goes away first of the year well as free amtrak parking. The city was also talking about charging for on street parking. Killed Bloomington downtown business years ago when they tried it good luck Normal.
College avenue parking deck used to have a section set aside for customers and business owners. If you went into the deck at 7 or so in the morning you would have a space available on the heartland bank level or second floor going up. The parking deck was policed so that students would not abuse the convenient parking spaces for customers and business owners. All that is gone students are now allowed to park anywhere. You go into the deck at 7 in the morning now and it is not unusual for you to have to go to the 4th or fifth level to find a open parking spot. Some parked cars even have covers on them, the parking garage is now a storage place.
Students are here only part of the year and only for maybe 4 years business owners and customers are here for years, why do we have to give up some of our conveniences for them. Oh I forgot you are dealing with the leaders of Normal the explains it.
ISU is so desperate for enrollment that they let the students do whatever they want.
local stores are testing this too – (I wont name them but popular) pathetic surveillance capitalists acting like they are innovative and protecting citizens
its a sham sham your the proof of concept (Illinois leads the way in deceptive stalking and data and device abuses and calling it innovation- China model)
Patriot Act abusers all funneling money and data to each other “for safety and fir the good”
puke – technocrats abusing the system and citizens
Geotracking and “stalking” is Republicans and Dems in leadership positions dream come true {selling your private data and location and activity for Human Factors agendas }
public private partnerships at its worst
Mclean county =Communist China
This would also likely discourage people to attend council meetings.