If you find yourself driving through the leafy confines of Tiburon, California, anytime soon, you might want to get your car ready for its close-up.

According to a recent San Francisco Chronicle report, the Tiburon town council has unanimously voted "to install six cameras that recognize license plate characters" of cars traveling on the only two roads that lead into the Bay Area town. The report goes on to note that "plates will be compared to databases of stolen or wanted cars, with matches triggering an immediate alert to local officers."

Some would say that such a policy treats motorists as suspects for a crime that hasn't even taken place, while others would argue that it is merely a case of "better safe than sorry." You can imagine where the opinion of local law enforcement and the more security-minded residents of the town fell on the issue. "I think it makes the community safer," Police Chief Michael Cronin confided to the Chronicle, while noting that the town is yet to come up with a plan for physically constructing the camera system.

"If it lowers the crime rate even a little bit, then it's a great idea," Tiburon resident Yami Anolik told reporters. While it might be laughable to consider the crime rate in a town of less than 9,000 people and a six-figure median income as an area of concern, an information sheet distributed by the Tiburon Police Department noted that for the years 2007 and 2008, thefts and burglaries in the town netted about $700,000 in losses.

The Police Department's press release goes on to put the price tag of the new system somewhere in the neighborhood of "between $135,000 and $200,000" with the cost being split between the town and the counties of Belvedere and Marin.

If you aren't convinced that this is a wise expenditure, you aren't alone. The TPD doesn't seem entirely sold on the program's cost effectiveness either, at least not as long as they admit that "no one can say for certain whether the system will help the TPD capture criminals, but it is likely to provide a very valuable tool to develop leads for solving crime." That isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.

The concerns of some critics of the plan have less to do with the price and more to do with what can be viewed as local government getting a little bit too nosy. William Rothman, a local resident who is against the project, described it as a "creeping invasion of our privacy rights."

Of course, as the TPD notes in their press release, "It is well established that one does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy driving a car down a public street such as Tiburon Boulevard. License plates are required to be posted on vehicles precisely so that they can be easily and publicly identified."

So at the end of the day, what exactly is anyone getting out of this proposal? The price tag is known, at least within a $65,000 range it is, but what is not known is whether it is a) going to be terribly effective and b) if it oversteps the boundaries of privacy. The privacy criticism might be the more emotional argument, but also more easily debunked. The TPD is right in its assessment that there is no such thing as privacy on a public street, but there can be something said for treating everyone entering and exiting your town as some sort of "person of interest." That isn't exactly rolling out the welcome wagon.

As for concerns over the cost effectiveness of the program, that is something that will only be accurately measured after (surprise!) the public dollars of the town of Tiburon and two counties has been spent. Again, not exactly an air-tight plan we're dealing with here.

No one is saying that local law enforcement shouldn't be given every advantage in combating crime in their own backyard. But a project with an unknown price tag, questionable effectiveness, and dubious legality? You don't need a hi-def camera to see the cracks in that plan's foundation.