Tourists Visiting During Saint Patricks Day Find Ways Around City Of Myrtle Beach Spying
In a statement made this week to the Myrtle Beach press, city spokesman Mark Kruea touted that automated license plate readers set up by the city of Myrtle Beach last May 2016, at three of Myrtle Beach’s entrances/exits, captured 8,145,274 license tags during the first six months alone.
However, in our highly informed social media age, tourists have caught on that the city of Myrtle Beach is placing them into its database. Over the past two days, MyrtleBeachSC.com reached out to 100 tourists about the city of Myrtle Beach license plate scanners for their opinions. In doing so, we learned that the market is already responding with newer, smart technology.
Said April Tucker of Cincinnati, OH, “We always stay at Ocean Lakes [campground]. Never in Myrtle Beach. And when we do go into town, we get an Uber. Better to be in Uber’s database than in the government’s spying machine.“
Her comments sent us on a fact-finding mission. We learned that more and more tourists are visiting the neighboring coastal cities of Surfside, Garden City and North Myrtle Beach. These cities do not spy on their vacationing tourists. Tourists coming into Myrtle Beach to visit venues like Broadway at the Beach, by an increasing percentage are now calling Uber or Lyft, two new ride sharing technologies. This ensures they are not data captured by the city of Myrtle Beach’s data collection systems.
“The beaches are better in North Myrtle Beach, the rooms are nicer, and no one is spying on me here,” said Beth Eiseman of Bridgeport, Connecticut. “Yesterday, our group, down for Spring Break, decided to visit the event at Market Common. We chose to use Uber. It’s cheap when divided by four. We can always find a ride and we aren’t permanently trapped in a government database.“
Uber and Lyft are two nationally known technology based ride share programs that have caught on especially among millennials. We found that Generation Xers and Baby Boomers are also catching on as well.
Four golfers staying at the Surfside Beach Resort Ubered a ride up to the Masters Club in Myrtle Beach. “It’s just safer this way, said the app owner. We aren’t doing anything we are ashamed of, I just can’t afford a DUI and I don’t want to be in Myrtle Beach’s database,” said Jimmy Jones of Pennsyvania.
One local Myrtle Beach downtown merchant we spoke with was not happy with the license readers. “No residents voted on the city of Myrtle Beach employing this strategy,” he said. ” Good for the tourists! I think the license plate readers are hurting my small business. My business is entirely tourist dependent.” Like so many, this merchant asked us not to report his name in fear of retaliation from the city of Myrtle Beach.
