In a progressive turn to the future, a Los Angeles mall has figured out a way to reduce the number of wandering car owners searching desperately for their cars (this according to cnet’s cartech blog). To accomplish this task, the Los Angeles mall borrows technology normally reserved for government agencies.

Have you ever traveled in or around your town and seen police cars with weird devices standing on the back side (trunk) of the car? Well, those weird looking devices are called, license plate scanners. License plate scanners are widely used by police departments to help locate stolen vehicles, or by transportation agencies to catch cheapskates who breeze through tolls without paying. Apparently, a few shopping malls are starting to use them to help people remember where they parked their car.

The way this works is simple (in a techie kind of way); systems of networked high-resolution cameras record the license plate of parked cars along with their location. When a shopper can't remember where they parked their car, they can key in their license plate in a kiosk that will tell them on which floor and row their vehicle is parked.

A potential downside to this newly offered technology is its security concerns. Although the kiosk information is intended for car owners only, there's nothing stopping stalkers from using the device to keep tabs on where you’ve parked. In fact, the kiosk works with just a partial license plate, requiring only the first few letters or numbers to return matches.

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