Is your car camera-shy?

At last, a smart parking garage. The Santa Monica Place mall has installed the nation’s first camera-based “Find Your Car” technology in its garages to help shoppers who can’t remember where they parked. Punch your license plate number into a kiosk touch screen and a photo of your car and its location will appear. (Unless you park on the roof, where there are no cameras.) It will no longer be necessary to leave bread crumbs to find your way back to your car.

But could that abundance of camera data be abused by marketing companies, retailers, repo folks and divorce lawyers, all searching for more information on you than where you parked? An executive at Macerich Co., the corporation that owns Santa Monica Place and dozens more malls across the country, says flatly that that won’t be happening. “No way,” assures Robin Dean, Macerich’s assistant vice president of asset management. “The sole purpose is for customer convenience.”

But Santa Monica Place will share the data with law enforcement agencies that request it, just as it does with images from the 100 to 200 security cameras already in the mall, according to Dean.

The new cameras won’t provide video footage. They take still photos every few seconds. According to the distributor of the system, the images can be deleted whenever the facility chooses. Dean estimates that Santa Monica Place will store its data up to 30 days.

Shoppers could be photographed at any point after they enter the mall itself. But that’s nothing new; they’re subject to security cameras in most malls, not to mention a variety of other places. And as they drive the streets of Santa Monica on their way to the mall, their license plates might be captured by the handful of automatic license plate recognition cameras that police are using to find stolen cars — the same technology the mall is using.

So get your car ready for its close-up. By the way, there are no signs in the mall’s garages indicating that your car is being photographed. Now you know. But the mall should post signs advising drivers.

Basically, the “Find Your Car” system is a welcome aid for navigating the maze of a typical mall parking garage. But Santa Monica Place officials should make certain that they do not share the garage data with anyone other than police. This technology should be relieving harried shoppers of one worry, not adding another.