TS Privacy Policy
Privacy Statement
Transportation Services respects your privacy. The Transportation Services website does not collect personal information about visitors.
In particular, cookies are not used to collect information about users. Cookies are only used on restricted access portions of the website.
When cookies are used in these areas, they are only for the purposes of keeping user identity intact between page views of a single session
so they only have access to the information for which they are authorized.
Personal information that you provide via email or through other online means will be used only for purposes necessary to serve your needs,
such as responding to an inquiry or other request for information.
This may involve redirecting your inquiry or comment to another person or department better suited to meeting your needs.
We do, however, use server logs to collect information concerning your internet connection and general information about your visit to our website.
This information may be used to analyze trends; to create summary statistics for the purpose of determining technical design specifications;
and to identify system performance or problem areas.
This means we sometimes acquire, record and analyze portions of the data that is entered into,
stored on, and/or transmitted through this site by you.
This information is only released -- when legally required -- to help law enforcement investigations, legal proceedings or internal investigations of TAMU rule and regulation violations.
These groups would use the information to track the electronic interactions back to the source computer(s) or account(s).
License Plate Recognition Program
Transportation Services utilizes license plate recognition hardware and software (“LPR”) for parking enforcement.
Locations
LPR data is collected on Texas A&M streets and parking lots and certain remote locations including, but not limited to the RELLIS campus.
Transportation Services utilizes a number of fixed and mobile vehicle-mounted systems which are driven by trained personnel in parking locations throughout the university.
Data Collected
The LPR system captures photos of observed vehicles: (1) a context photo of the vehicle and its immediate surroundings and (2) a photo of the license plate.
Typically, these photos are taken from the rear of the vehicle, although there are occasions where a photo is taken from the front.
The photos are not of a resolution that allows identification of the vehicle occupants.
Along with the photographic data, the system also records the global positioning system coordinates and date/time information of the observation.
Further software processing of the license plate image generates a text version of the license plate number which is also stored with the record.
Use of Data
The intended use of data collected by the LPR system is for parking enforcement and law enforcement investigations.
LPR data may be used to determine a vehicle’s access permissions in a given parking area and support the issuance of a parking citation if needed.
Any use of the data for purposes outside of these stated purposes must be detailed and approved in writing through administrative channels.
Data Retention
Data collected by the LPR system not resulting in parking enforcement action or not part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation is retained for 30 days.
Data resulting in parking enforcement action is retained with the citation record according to established University data retention policies.
Access to Records
Access to records created and maintained by the LPR system is restricted to trained Transportation Services personnel performing their duties.
All personnel with access to the system use unique identifiers and passwords to access records and all login, record additions, and other activity is logged.
Access to the system by others is prohibited.
Determining what data we have about you
Students, faculty and staff with Texas A&M identifications may view information we have about their vehicles at any time via their parking account.
Questions
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your use of this website,
please contact the Webmaster or through regular mail at:
Transportation Services
Attention: Webmaster
1250 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-1250
Definitions
COOKIES: A cookie file contains unique information that a website can use to track such things as passwords,
pages you have visited, the date you last looked at a specific page, and to identify your session at a particular website.
SERVER LOG INFORMATION: The following information is collected from server logs for analysis:
User/client host name – The host name (or IP address if DNS is disabled) of the user/client requesting access
HTTP header, "user agent" – The user-agent information includes the type of browser, its version, and the operating system it is running on
HTTP header, "referrer" – The referrer specifies the page from which the client accessed the current page
System date – The date and time of the user/client request
Full request – The exact request the user/client made
Status – The status code the server returned to the user/client
Content length – The content length, in bytes, of the document sent to the user/client
Method – The request method used
Universal Resource Identifier (URI) – The location of a resource on the server
Query string of the URI – Anything after the question mark in a URI
Protocol – The transport protocol and version used
