2/24/16
License plate recognition readers or scanners (LPR’s) are no longer new technology. Despite being plagued from the beginning of their use by concerns over privacy violations, data retention/storage and the possibility of the retained data being abused or exploited for purposes for which it was never intended, use of LPR is now widespread. Some of the cities around the valley who currently use the technology include Avondale, Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale, Mesa, Paradise Valley, Peoria, Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tempe.
In the US the LPR was originally intended as a means to recover stolen vehicles. As such, the data retained was said to be public and impersonal, and therefore unprotected by the right to privacy. However, LPR technology has been in common use for about ten years now, and uses for the data have been greatly expanded.
Police and government agencies across the country routinely collect and can store data, in some cases indefinitely, including photographic images, date/time and GPS coordinates, for use both now and in the future (for instance, to put a suspect at the scene of a crime, to identify witnesses to a crime, or to track someone; several states have also used the data they collect to aid in traffic pattern recognition, prediction and alerts). Some states have enacted legislation imposing limits and/or procedures for the storage, handling, dispersal and destruction of the stored data, but they are relatively few and Arizona is not among them.
Around the country, LPR can and is being used for some of the following purposes by law enforcement and other government agencies: Revenue collection (unpaid fines/fees/city or state taxes, or electronic tolls), collection of intelligence, monitoring specific locations such as government facilities, airports, or public events, recovery of stolen vehicles, monitoring borders, parking enforcement and identifying/locating wanted felons, persons with outstanding warrants, persons driving with suspended or revoked driver licenses or vehicle registrations, missing persons, gang or terrorist group members (known or suspected), protection order violators, immigration violators and sex offender registrants. From the list above, the recovery of stolen vehicles is the only use of LPR data by law enforcement which specifically deals solely with a vehicle; the remainder are targeted at persons, specifically.
The Town of Paradise Valley installed LPR technology in June of 2015, and suffered some public scrutiny for its decision to “camouflage” the devices inside of fake cactuses. The disguise of the devices was claimed to be an attempt to make the devices less unsightly instead of to hide them from the public, though LPR have similarly been hidden without justification in other jurisdictions (in containers made to look like traffic barrels, ladders, or in unmarked parked cars). After its first two weeks of implementing the LPR’s in Paradise Valley, of their four “successes” the only stolen car “hit” was a false alarm; the other three were arrests of people on outstanding warrants.
Because the data collected is subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), in many jurisdictions it is freely available to anyone who asks. This raises the ugly possibility of misuse of the data by private parties.
In addition to which, the information is possible of abuse by those in positions of authority. A notorious incident in 2004 led to the firing of the Edmonton, Canada police chief and several officers after a reporter, critical of the department’s supposed exploitation of traffic cameras to increase revenue, was added to their LPR list of “high-risk drivers” in an act of retaliation. Earlier this year, the New York Police Department settled lawsuits filed against it after allegations it targeted Muslims, in part by using LPR’s installed nearby to mosques.
A few years ago the Department of Homeland Security made a proposal to combine state monitoring systems into a federal database. In 2015, the Los Angeles Police Department made a proposal for using their stored data to send letters to the home addresses of all vehicles entering known areas of prostitution.
Perhaps most alarming, many private companies are now employing LPR systems, for which there is no control or regulation of the data collected. Casinos, museums, hospitals, private investigators, loan and repossession companies, and parking lot operators are only a few examples.
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