License plate readers now subject to regulation

by Matt Caulder, NC Capitol Connection, December 1, 2015.

For years North Carolina law officers have been using automatic license plate readers to track vehicles – but only today has there been state law to regulate how police use the devices and what they do with the data they scoop up.

While a new state provision regulating automatic license plate readers (ALPR) went live today, the technology has been in use in areas of the state as far back as 2012.

The systems can be mounted on vehicles or set up alongside roadways to collect license plate data on all vehicles within view of the cameras, including time, date and location of the vehicle.

On a busy street, the devices can photograph dozens of plates per minute, raising concerns among privacy advocates.

“Automatic license plate readers have the potential to create permanent records of virtually everywhere any of us has driven, radically transforming the consequences of leaving home to pursue private life, and opening up many opportunities for abuse,” the ACLU says. “The tracking of people’s location constitutes a significant invasion of privacy, which can reveal many things about their lives, such as what friends, doctors, protests, political events, or churches a person may visit.”

But at least one major NC police agency disagrees that the devices are a threat to privacy.

When asked about the possible invasion of privacy of tracking movements, Raleigh Police Director of Public Affairs Jim Sughrue said that he believes the good outweighs the risks and that he believes the public agrees.

The license plate info can help solve crimes and find missing persons.

“I believe the public thinks the benefits make the cameras worthwhile,” he said. “Imagine what they would say if the technology was available and we weren’t utilizing it?”

Until today, however, there was no official regulation on the use of the technology or how the data is stored in North Carolina.

Under the new law, data can only be kept for 90 days following collection, unless there is a preservation request or unless the data was collected in response to a local or federal warrant.

The data can only be used in the course of criminal and missing person cases as well as motor carrier safety regulation violations, which include nearly all moving and non-moving violations, including expired registrations.

The Raleigh Police Department, for example, has had a policy regarding the use of ALPRs since 2012 that allows for the retention of the records for six months, but will now change the policy to reflect the state law, Sughrue said.

“Raleigh Police will comply with the law and, if our policy needs to be adjusted, state law takes precedence,” he said.

The new state law also requires that the data only be shared with other law enforcement agencies, and not with private services as some agencies across the country have.

The data collected is also shielded from inspection as a public record by the statute.

Previously, policies for the preservation of the records were left in the hands of the agencies collecting the data.

The Raleigh Police policy already limited the use of the records to law enforcement agencies, as the statute also dictates.

Raleigh goes so far as to limit internal access to the data as well.

“That is [already] in our policy, we tightly restricted the use of the information created under ALPRs,” he said.

Sughrue said that currently the city utilizes one mobile ALPR on a marked police cruiser in each of the six city districts per shift, and has a few stationary units that can be set up around the city.

The technology has been used to locate stolen vehicles, vehicles connected to crimes and even one missing person, Sughrue said.

“They certainly are handy from time to time,” he said. “It is another tool in the tool kit.”

As far as the statute cutting the department’s timeframe to retain the records in half, Sughrue said that reduced timeframe should not be a problem.

“I think that the three months will be sufficient in almost all of our cases,” he said.

The three-month timeframe gives officers a chance to investigate crimes in an area and then make a reservation request, if it is suspected that the footage will be relevant to a certain case.

ALPRs part of overall city surveillance

In addition to around 10 ALPR systems, the city also utilizes downtown cameras, used mostly for event surveillance Sughrue said.

The proliferation of video surveillance has increased in recent years as cost of surveillance drops and federal grants put acquisition of the equipment in reach of many smaller departments as well as large cities.

The locations of the fixed cameras are generally not broadcasted widely due to the danger of people disabling the cameras, Sughrue said.

http://nccapitolconnection.com/2015/12/01/license-plate-readers-now-subject-to-regulation/