New Hampshire Man With 'COPSLIE' License Plate Wins Free Speech Battle, Lifetime Of Police Harassment

from the sir,-do-you-have-any-idea-how-fast-I've-decided-you-were-going? dept

A win for free speech (as expressed by vanity license plates) has just been handed down by the New Hampshire Supreme Court. The plate at the center of the case -- "COPSLIE" -- was originally deemed to be "offensive to good taste" by a lower court, which felt a "reasonable person" would be offended that the driver of this vehicle believed that cops do, in fact, lie.

And they do. They do it more often than most people think. Everyone knows it, even the judges, and yet no one does much about it, because throwing a handful of exculpatory wrenches into the criminal "justice" gears only creates headaches for those least willing to deal with them (prosecutors, judges, DAs -- basically anyone who doesn't get jailed/fined as a result of the lies). Cops lie because they're a) human beings and b) many of their incentives are perverse.

So, when David Montenegro tried to state that fact via a delivery system easily viewable by any cop he drove by, the state told him he couldn't because some "reasonable person" (most likely a cop) would be offended by his factual statement. Montenegro could have made this statement about any group (politicians, priests, parents, kids, school administrators, lawyers, the media), but he chose to highlight this aspect of policing.

Montenegro knew the DMV's lazy rationale was faulty. In fact, he proved it. He submitted a backup request -- GR8GOVT -- which was approved. So, he took his case to the state's Supreme Court, which exposed the arbitrary nature of the DMV's "reasonable person" excuse.

The challenged portion of the regulation prohibits vanity registration plates that “a reasonable person would find offensive to good taste.” The phrase “offensive to good taste” is not defined in the regulation. Further, to the extent the phrase could be construed to prohibit obscene material, we note that a separate provision in the regulation prohibits vanity registration plates that are “capable of an obscene interpretation.” …

Taken together, [the dictionary definitions of the words in the regulation] lead to various potential interpretations of the phrase “offensive to good taste.” For example, one such interpretation could be that no vanity registration plates are allowed that are “insulting to the standard of morality or virtue of individual preference.”

The DMV stated that it had a "reasonable person" standard for offensiveness while also noting that different people would naturally find different things offensive. It's one thing to have a set standard. It's quite another to deploy contradictory stances as official policy. Because when you do that, you don't actually have a policy -- you have an informal straw poll.

To the extent the DMV argues that its reasoning for denying the petitioner’s requested vanity registration plate [COPSLIE] in this case aids in interpreting the phrase “offensive to good taste,” we disagree. The DMV initially denied the petitioner’s request because several DMV employees believed the text to be “insulting.”

There's where the true issue is. The blue team protecting itself and the government in general insulating itself from criticism through arbitrary enforcement of vague policies.

So, Montenegro gets the win and the plates he always wanted. In addition to securing a bit more free speech, Montenegro will also receive a lifetime of hassling by The Man and, quite possibly, the Home Version of said hassling.

Cops may not like someone confronting them (via license plate) with the fact that many citizens don't find them particularly trustworthy. But they'd be better off just letting this plate cruise by (while being passively collected by a license plate reader) without retaliation. Montenegro's already made one point. There's no need to make the rest of his points for him.

Filed Under: copslie, free speech, license plates, new hampshire, police harassment

Los Angeles Police Department Claims EVERY License Plate Is Part Of An Investigation

from the the-words-'relevant'-and-'all'-are-apparently-synonymous dept

The ongoing battle between the EFF and law enforcement agencies over the use, control and disposal of automatic license plate reader data has produced some seriously strange responses from law enforcement officials.

One person's request for anonymized data from the LAPD's database resulted in this bizarre response last year.

When one citizen requested anonymized ALPR data from the LA County Sheriff earlier this month via a public records request, his request was denied primarily on confidentiality grounds. Again, he wanted anonymous data, but was denied based on confidentiality.

So, even anonymized data is confidential. That in itself is a strange assertion (or would be, if obfuscation wasn't the normal state of affairs in citizen-law enforcement interactions). Supporters of ALPRs claim the data is not "personal," being that it only tracks a vehicle and not a person, but, somehow, it still can't be released without sacrificing "confidentiality."

The EFF (along with the ACLU) is attempting to pry some license plate data free from this same police department. The LAPD recently filed a brief stating its reasons for denying the group's FOIA request and made another surprising argument.

The agencies took a novel approach in the briefs they filed in EFF and the ACLU of Southern California’s California Public Records Act lawsuit seeking a week’s worth of Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) data. They have argued that “All [license plate] data is investigatory.” The fact that it may never be associated with a specific crime doesn’t matter.

The LAPD uses the "investigative records" exemption to justify withholding the data. Here's where it first explains its reasoning…

The ALPR data sought in this case- electronic records consisting of vehicles' license plates, and the date, time and location those license plates were captured by the Department's ALPR cameras constitute "records of. . .investigations conducted by ... any local police agency" which fall squarely under this statutory exemption.

And here's where it flat out tells the court that all license plate data is "under investigation."

Releasing the subject ALPR data held by the Department would likewise "expose to the public the very sensitive investigative stages of determining whether a crime has been committed." All ALPR data is investigatory - regardless of whether a license plate scan results in an immediate "hit" because, for instance, the vehicle may be stolen, the subject of an "Amber Alert," or operated by an individual with an outstanding arrest warrant... The very process of checking license plates against various law enforcement lists, whether done manually by the officer or automatically through ALPR technology, is intrinsically investigatory - to determine whether a crime may have been committed. The mere fact that ALPR data is routinely gathered and may not --initially or ever-- be associated with a specific crime is not determinative of its investigative nature.

There it is, Los Angeles drivers. Simply by driving, you are "under investigation." You may not even need to drive. You could never leave your house and still be "under investigation." As the EFF points out, this isn't how the law is supposed to work.

This argument is completely counter to our criminal justice system, in which we assume law enforcement will not conduct an investigation unless there are some indicia of criminal activity. In fact, the Fourth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution exactly to prevent law enforcement from conducting mass, suspicionless investigations under “general warrants” that targeted no specific person or place and never expired...

[A]s we argued in the Reply brief we filed in the case last Friday, the accumulation of information merely because it might be useful in some unspecified case in the future certainly is not an “investigation” within any reasonable meaning of the word.

This is the prevailing law enforcement mentality on display: take publicly available data (as they argue in favor of ALPRs, license plate/location data has no expectation of privacy), lock it up, hold onto it for as long as possible, and when the public wants a peek behind the curtain, claim doing so would compromise investigations and harm the public.

This argument gives us little hope that law enforcement agencies are going to be in any hurry to install tough data disposal guidelines. As far as both the LAPD and LA Sheriff's Department are concerned, this data has investigative uses that preclude timely disposal or, indeed, any disposal at all. If you start eliminating "non-hit" data, you might toss out some plates that might aid in some theoretical investigation in the future.

These assertions are made even as the agencies acknowledge the privacy implications of ALPRs.

In another interesting turn in the case, both agencies fully acknowledged the privacy issues implicated by the collection of license plate data.

LAPD stated in its brief:

[T]he privacy implications of disclosure [of license plate data] are substantial. Members of the public would be justifiably concerned about LAPD releasing information regarding the specific locations of their vehicles on specific dates and times. . . . LAPD is not only asserting vehicle owners’ privacy interests. It is recognizing that those interests are grounded in federal and state law, particularly the California Constitution. Maintaining the confidentiality of ALPR data is critical . . . in relation to protecting individual citizens’ privacy interests”

But when these agencies say "privacy," they're only using it as an angle to prevent the public from seeing the collected data. Confidentiality is again cited as a reason to keep the public from looking at ostensibly public records. They're not concerned with any drivers' privacy, only in keeping the wall propped up between the public and law enforcement.

The LASD even admits that other law enforcement tools can be used to connect "anonymous" license plates with people, and use the combined info to track people as they move around Los Angeles. But this bit of clarity isn't accompanied by any push for better privacy protections.

The agencies use the fact that ALPR data collection impacts privacy to argue that—although they should still be allowed to collect this information and store it for years—they should not have to disclose any of it to the public.

There's nothing in this for citizens. If license plate data has "no expectation of privacy," the police should have no problem with turning over anonymized data, much less records pertaining directly to the requester. But the law enforcement community continues to use a double-standard that allows it to circumvent the annoyance of limiting itself to pertinent data while maintaining a wall of opacity to further distance the public from all the data it's gathering on them.

Filed Under: investigation, license plates, los angeles, privacy

The DHS May Have (Publicly) Dumped Its License Plate Database Plans But It Still Has Access To Millions Of Records

from the horrible-'setback'-puts-the-DHS-right-back-in-its-original-position dept

As we recently covered, the DHS and ICE asked for bids for a nationwide license plate database before killing off the plan a few days later, apparently realizing more massive government surveillance wasn't exactly what Americans were looking for at this point in time.

But all is not what it seems. As Kade Crockford at PrivacySOS points out, contrary to what's been reported by a majority of the coverage on this issue, the government doesn't need to build a nationwide license plate database because it already has access to one.

[C]ontrary to widespread understanding, DHS’ solicitation for bids had nothing to do with asking a contractor to build a nationwide license plate tracking database. Such a database already exists. The solicitation was more than likely merely a procedural necessity towards the goal of obtaining large numbers of agency subscriptions to said database, so that ICE agents across the country could dip into it at will, as many have been doing for years already. There was never a plan to "build" a plate database. A database almost exactly like the one DHS describes is a current fact. It is operated by a private corporation called Vigilant Solutions, contains nearly two billion records of our movements, and grows by nearly 100 million records per month.

So, instead of being a "win" for privacy-minded Americans, it's not even a tie. The government already has access to collected plate records. It was just looking to expand its existing access. Plate readers, some operated by federal government agencies like the CBP, are adding millions of records a day, and these records are loosely governed by a patchwork of state and local statutes, most of which allow for the retention of "non-hit" data for periods as long as five years.

As I pointed out in my post detailing the cancellation of the bid solicitation, nothing much changes for ICE. It, like many, many, many, OH MY GOD THERE'S SO MANY other law enforcement agencies (click on that pulldown menu and get ready for a whole lot of scrolling), already has warrantless access to a variety of license plate databases. And, as I noted when the news of the bid solicitation first hit, Vigilant seemed to be vying for the top spot, having recently sent out a press release touting its ALPRs' effectiveness in fighting crime, as well as filing a lawsuit against the state of Utah for violating its First Amendment rights by preventing it from setting up shop.

Crockford goes further in his earlier post on the subject, suggesting a national contract with Vigilant is as good as signed.

The department doesn’t intend to build its own license plate reader database, and it isn’t asking corporations to build one. Instead, it is seeking bids from private companies that already maintain national license plate reader databases. And because it’s the only company in the country that offers precisely the kind of services that DHS wants, there’s about a 99.9 percent chance that this contract will be awarded to Vigilant Solutions. (Mark my words.)

According to documents obtained by the ACLU, ICE agents and other branches of DHS have already been tapping into Vigilant’s data sets for years. So why did the agency decide to go public with this solicitation now? Your guess is as good as mine, but it may simply be a formality so that the agency can pretend as if there was actually robust competition in the bidding process.

So, apparently all that's really been achieved is the removal of the bidding process from the public eye. Vigilant may already be in the process of hooking ICE up to the ALPR database mainline and everyone involved is now just waiting for the furor over massive domestic surveillance to die down. The privacy concerns are even less likely to be addressed now that the process has been pushed out of the sunlight. As a private company, Vigilant has the luxury of ignoring constitutional issues, leaving that up to its customers to sort out. All it wants to do is be the top company in the ALPR business. Everything else is someone else's problem.

The bottom line is: nothing was avoided or prevented here. It was a momentary setback for ICE itself, but the government (including entities on state and local levels) already has millions of license plate records to sift through, with millions more being generated every single day.

Filed Under: database, dhs, homeland security, ice, license plates, privacy

Lawmakers Issued License Plates That Make Them 'Invisible' To Traffic Cams And Parking Tickets

from the and-yet,-reps-complain-about-the-public's-cynicism dept

There are rules for the common people and rules for their "leaders," and only in rare cases do the same rules cover both. Chris Morran at the Consumerist points out how politicians (yet again) are being allowed to ignore the same laws that affect their constituents. Colorado legislators are immune from speeding tickets and parking tickets thanks to the special plates issued to lawmakers -- ones that aren't included in the DMV database.

According to CBS Denver, the info for these particular license plates is never entered into the DMV database, so when some state senator goes zooming by a speed camera, he or she won’t get a ticket, because the camera system looks up the license plate number through the DMV. Since no info comes up, no ticket is given.

This appears to be true for parking tickets as well. See, even though a parking enforcement officer might leave a ticket on the car, cities like Denver that rely on the DMV for addresses of vehicle owners come up empty when they try to collect on those tickets.

On the parking ticket side alone, there are $2,100 worth of unpaid tickets linked to these "invisible" plates. The Dept. of Public Works has decided it's "too costly" to pursue collection of those fines. Of course, now that this is public knowledge, a politician has "stepped up" to right the wrong.

One state lawmaker recently stated his intention to close this loophole through legislative action in the next session, by simply doing away with the plates altogether.

“[I]t’s absolutely unfair,” said state representative Chris Holbert. “We should be held accountable like any other citizen. We are elected to represent the people and there’s no reason for us to be treated differently.”

If only this sort of behavior were an aberration. Earlier this year, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad's speeding SUV was pursued by a highway patrol officer who decided (or was instructed) not to pull it over after realizing whose vehicle it was. Like in Colorado, certain public vehicles are issued plates that aren't listed with the Iowa DMV, which makes these vehicles automatically exempt from traffic cam tickets, parking violations and apparently, even speeding clocked by an on-duty state trooper. It should be noted that the trooper raising the complaint about the governor's speeding driver (another state trooper) was placed on leave after making this public.

After this small debacle, Governor Branstad too "stepped up" to rein in the injustice, except that his idea of "reining it in" falls far short of Colorado legislator Chris Holbert's plan. In Branstad's view, the problem isn't with the plates, per se. It's that there are too many of them.

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad is upset about the number of specialized license plates that have been given to state, local and federal agencies.

More than 3 thousand plates have been issued that exempt the vehicles from getting traffic camera tickets. Brandstad has ordered state transportation officials to cut the number of the special plates.

Over 350 agencies in Iowa have these plates at their disposal (over 3,000 issued so far), a ridiculous amount considering the plates were originally intended for undercover use by various arms of Iowa law enforcement. Branstad probably isn't looking to give up his ticket-dodging plate but presumably will be forcing several others to play by the same set of rules as the public -- that same public these public servants are supposed to be serving.

But that's nothing compared to the staggering level of abuse (ranking between 'Chris Brown' and 'Foster Home' on the Abuse Chart) taking place in our nation's capital. Back in 2008, a report by the US Committee on Transportation detailed the astounding number of violations racked up by government employees and officials.

Municipal, state and federal government agencies are among the biggest offenders when it comes to illegal parking and non-payment of parking citations. A report released last week by the US House Committee on Transportation documented 4000 cases last year where employees in federal vehicles skipped out on paying parking tickets worth $700,000 in Washington, DC and New York City. The total does not include unpaid tickets in foreign countries and other cities throughout the fifty states where 642,000 automobiles registered to the US government are in use.

"Over one-half of all workers in the southernmost section of Manhattan are government employees," the report explained. "Essentially, all of lower Manhattan is a free parking lot for government vehicles."

Federal workers were not alone in ignoring parking laws. City workers in Washington and New York also disregarded citations issued by fellow employees. DC government vehicles generated 329 unpaid tickets worth $33,360 while New York city and state vehicles skipped out on paying 2562 tickets worth $490,939.

The worst offender? The FBI, which the report found to be responsible for the largest number of delinquent parking tickets by a single agency. The FBI, properly chastened, examined the cases listed and, because it's such a shit-hot investigative agency, found itself "unable to come up any suspects who may have been responsible for illegally parking FBI vehicles on 218 occasions."

To the surprise of roughly no one, those responsible for enacting and enforcing laws are seldom as interested in following them. Apparently, performing the "business of government" is such a total sacrifice that illegal parking, speeding and other traffic violations should be waved off so that our nation's do-gooders are unimpeded in their good doings.

Filed Under: colorado, elected officials, iowa, law breaking, lawmakers, license plates, terry branstad

UK Police's 'Ring Of Steel' Spying On Every Car Entering And Leaving Town Ruled Disproportionate

from the what-about-the-digital-ring-of-steel? dept

The UK is famous for its abundant CCTV cameras, but it's also pretty keen on the equally intrusive Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras that can identify cars and hence their owners as they pass. Here, for example, is what's been going on in the town of Royston, whose local police force has just had its knuckles rapped by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for the over-enthusiastic deployment of such ANPR systems there:

The use of these cameras has effectively made it impossible for anyone to drive their car in and out of Royston without a record being kept of the journey. The scheme is regularly referred to as 'the ring of steel'.

Following a joint complaint about the scheme from the privacy groups Big Brother Watch, Privacy International and No CCTV, the ICO began an investigation to see whether the use of the cameras was justifiable and complied with the Data Protection Act. The ICO found that the constabulary failed to carry out any effective impact assessments before introducing the system of cameras. As a result it has not been able to give a satisfactory explanation to justify their use.

The ICO has now ruled that the collection of the information is unlawful -- breaching principle one of the [Data Protection] Act -- and excessive -- breaching principle three. Hertfordshire Constabulary has been issued with an enforcement notice ordering the force to stop processing people's information in this way, unless they can justify the ANPR cameras use by way of a proper privacy impact assessment, or similar such assessment.

This decision is welcome not just because it orders this disproportionate scheme to be halted, but also because it lays down a general principle of proportionality for surveillance. That's particularly interesting in the context of the revelations that all the UK's communications are being scooped up by GCHQ, the local version of the NSA. That other "ring of steel" hardly seems proportionate either, so the obvious question is whether it might be challenged on the same grounds mentioned in the enforcement notice from the ICO (pdf):

In particular, the Commissioner is mindful of the provisions of Article 8 of the ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] in that licensed vehicle keepers have the right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence which has been unlawfully interfered with [by the police in Royston in this case].

Article 8 of the ECHR is as follows:

Article 8 -- Right to respect for private and family life

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

It's true there is the get-out clause "except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security". But equally there is the important word "necessary": is it really absolutely necessary that every single communication going into and out of the UK be spied upon for national security? It might be a question worth asking the European Court of Human Rights....

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Filed Under: anpr, cctv, license plates, uk

License Plate Data Isn't 'Personally Identifiable' Until The Public Asks Police For Access To It

from the this-rule-is-for-us-and-this-rule-is-for-the-everyone-else dept

Law enforcement agencies display a deliberate cognitive dissonance when it comes to data they claim has no "expectation of privacy." As was recently detailed here, license plate scanners are in operation across the United States, most with little to no oversight over the use of the location information obtained. Even worse, disposal of "non-hit" data seems to be an afterthought -- in some cases, the information is held onto indefinitely. One law enforcement agency was even quoted as saying the use of the data was "limited only by the officers' imagination."

These agencies excuse these efforts by claiming the information they obtain is public. After all, the vehicles are driving on public roads where anybody, even a license plate scanner, can see and record the license plate. They also argue this is no different than an officer writing down a plate number and calling it in. (Although I'd like to see an officer write down 786 plates in one hour, as one plate scanner did in the Motherboard article.)

As Shawn Musgrave points out, this information travels almost exclusively one way.

A report released this week by the ACLU explores the widespread deployment of automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) scanners by law enforcement across the country. As police tout the advantages of ALPR and seek millions in federal funds to the equipment, many departments insist that license plate and vehicle location information don't require special protection or oversight.

When pressed to put special protections on their massive license plate databases, the law enforcement community writ large argues that license plate numbers are not personally identifiable information (PII), and thus not subject to restricted access or probable cause requirements for detectives to paw through it.

One would think that, for the most part, license plate data is personally identifiable. After all, most of us use the same vehicles for day-to-day travel. If it's not you, then it's a close family member. A plate can easily be tied to a small group of individuals, generally located at the same address. But law enforcement members argue that it isn't -- that a license plate is a license plate and nothing more.

In its 2012 guidelines on ALPR, the International Association of Chiefs of Police remind us that a license plate “identifies a particular vehicle, not a particular person.” When the Drug Enforcement Agency wanted to install ALPR along Utah highways in 2012, an official told local legislators, “We're not trying to capture any personal information--all that this captures is the tag, regardless of who the driver is.”

It's a terrible argument, especially considering phone numbers and addresses are considered personal information (according to federal guidelines), even if neither specifically identifies a person. Not only that, but plate numbers seem to be "personally identifiable" enough to allow traffic cam tickets to be sent to the person (and address) linked to the plate number. (It should be noted that a few drivers have turned this weak argument against law enforcement -- most notably, the driver who wore a monkey mask while racking up traffic cam tickets and then argued the city couldn't prove who was driving the vehicle.)

So, if license plates aren't "personally identifiable information," anyone should be able to access these public records, right?

When one citizen requested anonymized ALPR data from the LA County Sheriff earlier this month via a public records request, his request was denied primarily on confidentiality grounds. Again, he wanted anonymous data, but was denied based on confidentiality.

When I asked for data from the Boston police, the department indicated it was only willing to produce redacted records “without images of license plates and license plate numbers.” (I’m still waiting for this data after three months.)

There's the one-way street. It's not "personal" but only authorized law enforcement members are allowed to view the data. It's not "personal" enough to be subject to the same restrictions addresses and phone numbers are but agencies aren't interesting in sharing their databases of "vehicles" with the public. (Of course, they will sell it to private corporations...) It's a shifting definition that serves law enforcement's desire for massive data and little oversight.

And what happens if a member of the public manages to get ahold of the "private" database full of "public" information?

After a Minneapolis open data advocate paid $5.91 last December for a USB drive packed with 2.1 million ALPR scans complete with license plate numbers and photos, including the mayor’s, the city’s police chief successfully petitioned for a change in the public records law. In the same breath, Chief Harteau asserted that an ALPR scanner “does not record personally identifiable information,” but that its scans “should be private data, available to only the subject and not the general public.” The mayor quickly obliged.

There's your doublethink. Non-private information given privacy protection by a change in law that only benefits certain (supposedly) public servants. Seems rather possessive for data that anybody with pen and paper could acquire.

Maybe the time has come for the technology to be opened to the public, which can then drive around capturing plate and location data on law enforcement vehicles. Technology has been turned against those deploying it before. After all, if it's perfectly acceptable to grab location data on the public, law enforcement should be willing to submit to the same sort of data collection.

Filed Under: law enforcement, license plate data, license plates, personally identifiable information, public access

ACLU Presents Its Findings On License Plate Scanners, Most Of Which Is Bad News

from the more-haystacks,-fewer-needles dept

The ACLU has just released a report on the widespread use of license plate scanners by law enforcement agencies across the US. Culled from nearly 600 FOIA requests (and 26,000 pages of documents), the report shows that not only are license plate scanners widely deployed, but few police departments place any substantial restrictions on how they can be used.

The approach in Pittsburg, Calif., is typical: a police policy document there says that license plate readers can be used for "any routine patrol operation or criminal investigation," adding, "reasonable suspicion or probable cause is not required." While many police departments do prohibit police officers from using license plate readers for personal uses such as tracking friends, these are the only restrictions. As New York's Scarsdale Police Department put it in one document, the use of license plate readers "is only limited by the officer's imagination."

This "deploy first, restrict later" approach seems to be the default when it comes to new law enforcement technology. As we've noted before, law enforcement agencies (both local and federal) have been utilizing drones for investigative and surveillance purposes, most without establishing ground rules or taking into consideration possible privacy issues.

The other issue is a lack of standardized rules controlling the collection, usage and retention of license plate data. The Minnesota State Patrol deletes all records after 48 hours, but it's the exception. Most other agencies hold onto all data for anywhere from 90 days to 5 years. Responses from three agencies in Texas specified no end date, so until otherwise indicated, it's presumed to be indefinite.

Why are these agencies holding on to this data for so long? And why so much of it? The information the ACLU received indicates that license plate "hits" make for a very small percentage of records retained.

For example, in Maryland, for every million plates read, only 47 (0.005 percent) were potentially associated with a stolen car or a person wanted for a serious crime. [Other examples: Burbank, IL - 0.3%, Rhinebeck, NY - 0.01%, High Point, NC - 0.08%.] Yet, the documents show that many police departments are storing – for long periods of time – huge numbers of records on scanned plates that do not return hits. For example, police in Jersey City, N.J., recorded 2.1 million plate reads last year. As of August 2012, Grapevine, Texas, had 2 million plate reads stored and Milpitas, Calif., had 4.7 million.

This is a concern for many reasons. First, storing millions of records on plates unrelated to criminal activity opens the door for potential abuse, as would any database of its size. One snapshot isn't a problem, but multiple photos over an extended period of time turn plate scanners into tracking tools.

What can location data reveal about people? Trips to places of worship, political protests, or gun ranges can be powerful indicators of people’s beliefs. Is it really the government’s business how often you go to the drug store or liquor store, what doctors you visit, and the identities of your friends? I’m sure all of us can remember something from our past that could embarrass us. If the government comes to suspect you of something in 2020, should it have access to databases stretching back years that could dig up facts about you that previously went unnoticed?

Not only does this give law enforcement a pretty good indication of your habits, it also opens the door to misinterpretation. Someone traveling back and forth frequently from high crime areas might be assumed to be somehow involved with the criminal activity there. That's just one example, but amassing non-specific data encourages investigators to begin "connecting dots" and inferring suspicious behavior where there is none. Finding patterns is something the brain does well, even if not encouraged. But not every pattern is truly a pattern, nor does every perceived pattern indicate something of significance. (See also: numerology.)

Of additional concern is the fact that some of this retained data isn't in law enforcement hands at all.

License plate readers are used not only by police but also by private companies, which themselves make their data available to police with little or no oversight or privacy protections. One of these private databases, run by a company called Vigilant Solutions, holds over 800 million license plate location records and is used by over 2,200 law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The ACLU is calling for law enforcement agencies to adopt certain basic policies to ensure proper protection of license plate data, as well as recommending the retention period of non-suspect data be measured in days, rather than weeks or years.

License plate readers may be used by law enforcement agencies only to investigate hits and in other circumstances in which law enforcement agents reasonably believe that the plate data are relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.

The government must not store data about innocent people for any lengthy period. Unless plate data has been flagged, retention periods should be measured in days or weeks, not months and certainly not years.

People should be able to find out if plate data of vehicles registered to them are contained in a law enforcement agency’s database.

Law enforcement agencies should not share license plate reader data with third parties that do not follow proper retention and access principles. They should also be transparent regarding with whom they share license plate reader data.

Any entity that uses license plate readers should be required to report its usage publicly on at least an annual basis.

What the ACLU is asking for isn't overly-restrictive. In fact, what's listed here seems to be a bare minimum, common sense approach to data collection and retention, one that law enforcement agencies should have had in place before deploying the plate scanners. There's nothing about this that unduly binds law enforcement's hands in utilizing these scanners for their intended purpose. All these policies would do is trim down the likelihood of abuse and prevent agencies from collecting data simply to be collecting data.

Filed Under: aclu, license plate scanners, license plates, privacy, surveillance

Law Enforcement Looking To Create A Searchable Database Of Everywhere Your Vehicle Has Been

from the oh-wow...-a-Google-with-even-LESS-privacy dept

Back in August, Mike wrote about some questionable sharing of license plate information between the US Border Patrol and various insurance companies. While the stated aim of tracking stolen vehicles might seem to make this sharing justified, the fact that this is going on with no oversight or accountability is cause for alarm.

Of course, law enforcement has long had big plans for license plate readers (LPRs). The ACLU has come across a recording of a 2010 National Institute of Justice conference in which one of the speakers expresses an interest in building LPR data into a "Google" of license plate locations.

Dale Stockton, Program Manager of the “Road Runner” project at the Automated Regional Justice Information System in San Diego spoke on a panel on license readers at the 2010 conference and explained to police and prosecutors in attendance how best to share license plate data. Mind you, he was talking about the location information of people never accused of any crime.

Stockton knows this would never fly if attempted directly. He states as much in the transcript:

We're probably not going to have any centralized national giant bucket of license plate reader data. It probably wouldn't stand the court of public opinion, and it's probably something that, given where we are in the rollout cycle, wouldn't easily be done, but we can develop regional sharing capability...

But the "court of public opinion" can be routed around, according to Stockton. Despite frankly stating that the public would find a "Google of license plates" odious, he intends to do just that, through a series of back doors.

And so doing, you get those set up and then begin to share between those regions, and as you begin to look beyond your region, utilize a trusted broker like Nlets...

Every law enforcement agency has a connection to Nlets. Nlets would serve not as a storage unit but as a pointer system, something akin to a Google, so that when you check a plate, Nlets would point you in the direction of where that plate can be found, and the result of that would be a query in one state by an investigator could give an indication of plates of interest in other states, and then that information can be pulled back.

If Stockton has his way, a decentralized search system for license plates, routed through a third-party's software, will perform exactly the way he wants it to. Somehow he feels that a distributed system is OK while a centralized system isn't. Or rather, he feels that both systems are OK, but the public will only put up with the illusion that law enforcement isn't running a Google-esque system of harvested plate data.

Is the fear of a system like this overblown? Every law enforcement official at the conference runs down several anecdotes about how the plate reading system has aided them in investigating various crimes. But should law enforcement have access to nationwide plate data, much of which pertains to citizens who have never been accused of a crime, much less committed one? Stockton tries to justify the LPR system by comparing it to officers running plates in person.

One of the questions about license plate readers is this kind of hocus pocus, "you are invading my privacy; it's super intrusive." And I come from the opposite end of the spectrum. I truly believe that this technology is only doing what license plate readers have already — I'm sorry — what officers have already been doing in the field for many, many years.

The courts have indicated to us that officers can look at a plate and run it. So let's just go down quickly here through the two sides, an officer doing it and the license plate reader doing it. Officers can run plates anytime they want. The courts have held that's why we put the state plate on there, so an officer can check and make sure it's current and it's not wanted. Well, the license plate reader is doing the exact same thing. It's looking at it; it's checking that plate to see if it's wanted. The officer can pick and choose among the vehicles that he or she looks at.

The biggest difference here is the "always on" aspect and the fact that everyone is tracked. "Reasonable suspicion" and the like are taken completely off the table and replaced with an indiscriminate system that harvests data. It's a handy way to peel back another layer of privacy, as Kade Crockford of the ACLU states:

We've been making a lot of noise about location tracking of late. License plate readers rank high among the technologies that are threatening our privacy with respect to our travel patterns. Where we go says a lot about who we are, and law enforcement agencies nationwide are increasingly obtaining detailed information about where we go without any judicial oversight or reason to believe we are up to no good. Stockton says we have nothing to worry about with respect to license plate reader data and privacy, that that's all "hocus pocus." But he's wrong.

We must ensure license plate readers do not become license plate trackers.

As Crockford points out, the Department of Justice has already stated that Americans have "no privacy interest" when it comes to cellphone location information. The DOJ's rationale could easily stretch to fit this scenario. But what's "good" for the American public is rarely viewed as acceptable for those writing the guidelines or using the technology. For all the talk about "nothing to hide," officials are very touchy when it comes to making their information accessible.

Data from license plate readers in Minnesota was obtained by a St. Paul car dealer using open-records laws, and used to repossess at least one car, according to a recent article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The article included this amusing tidbit:

"When the Star Tribune published data tracking Mayor R.T. Rybak's city-owned car over the past year, the mayor asked police Chief Tim Dolan to make a recommendation for a new policy about data retention."

So, the question that needs to be asked of every politician and law enforcement member who feels this system will only be used for catching "bad guys" is whether or not they'd mind having their location tracked via license plate readers. Stockton's pushing for something he knows the public won't stand for and is using successful investigations as the ends to justify the privacy-violating means.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, database, law enforcement, license plates, privacy

New Documents Show That Feds Share License Plate Scanning Data With Insurance Firms

from the crony-capitalism dept

It's one thing for governments to make use of license plate scanning equipment to catalog what cars are crossing their borders. But it takes it to a whole different level to then share that data with insurance firms. However, it appears that's exactly what the US government is doing. A Freedom of Information Act request by privacy group EPIC, discovered that US Customs (part of Homeland Security) is sharing license plate scans with the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), which is actually an organization made up of just about every insurance company.

The reasons for such sharing of info may appear to be noble. It's technically to try to spot stolen vehicles.

The purpose of furnishing LPR information is to verify that vehicles departing from and arriving into the United States are not stolen vehicles. NICB has access to unique information regarding stolen vehicles, as well as the means of exchanging information regarding stolen vehicles with member insurance company Special Investigative Units and Federal and State law enforcement authorities.

The memorandum of understanding insists that the data can only be used for these purposes, but it's unclear if there's any real way to police that, and it certainly means that the uses by NICB are not subject to a FOIA request, since they're not a part of the government. The only "remedy" presented for a firm that uses the information otherwise is to be stricken from the "shared" list. There are also some concerns that even the sharing of the info may be in violation of existing laws.

Filed Under: insurance companies, license plates, privacy, sharing
Companies: nicb

British Cops Creating Nationwide License-Plate Surveillance System

from the orwellian dept

Britain is working hard to maintain its place as a leading surveillance society. Building on the massive "success" of its widespread use of CCTV cameras, police are now installing a system that will use the cameras to track and log car journeys. CCTV cameras across the UK are being added to the system, which automatically recognizes and stores license plate numbers, then adds them, and the location in which they were spotted, to a central database. Police, of course, say the system's great at reducing and solving crime, and one police bigwig says that arrests are up 40% in his area since cops started using the system. But just because arrests have increased, it doesn't necessarily mean crime has been reduced. He further defends the system by saying "innocent people have nothing to fear from the way we use it" -- which all too often is used as an attempt to justify pretty nasty governmental intrusions on privacy and liberty. This system sounds like another part of Britain's attempt to record the lives of its subjects in databases, alongside its database of info on every child in the country, and details of all the internet and phone traffic there. Will people there get up in arms over all this government surveillance, or are they saving their ire only for the likes of Google Street View?

Filed Under: cctv, license plates, surveillance, uk