Automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) are a rapidly expanding surveillance technology quietly being deployed across America. Designed to monitor the movements of drivers, these systems utilize small, high-speed cameras that can photograph thousands of license plates every minute. Mounted on police cars and various infrastructure like road signs and bridges, ALPRs are becoming an increasingly prevalent part of law enforcement and traffic management.
The technology behind ALPRs is designed for speed and efficiency. These systems are specifically engineered to capture license plates even as vehicles travel at high speeds. This capability is crucial for law enforcement, allowing police cars equipped with ALPRs to scan plates while patrolling highways, busy city streets, or even while stationary at strategic locations. The cameras work in conjunction with sophisticated software that instantly reads and records license plate numbers, along with the date, time, and precise GPS location of each scan.
This collected data is often stored and sometimes integrated into larger regional networks, creating vast databases of vehicle location information. These databases are not limited to vehicles suspected of crimes; they include records of every vehicle scanned, meaning the location data of countless innocent motorists is being collected and stored. The retention policies for this data vary, but it’s frequently kept for years or even indefinitely, raising significant concerns about privacy and the potential for misuse.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been at the forefront of investigating the use of ALPR technology. In a comprehensive study, ACLU affiliates across 38 states and Washington D.C. filed public records requests with nearly 600 law enforcement agencies to understand how ALPRs are being used. The response included over 26,000 pages of documents, revealing the extensive and varied deployment of this technology throughout the country. Their findings highlight a technology implemented with insufficient oversight, rapidly evolving into a tool for routine, mass location tracking and surveillance.
While ALPRs can be valuable in specific law enforcement scenarios, such as locating stolen vehicles or vehicles linked to criminal investigations, these instances represent a small fraction of the total data collected. The vast majority of scans capture the license plates of ordinary citizens going about their daily lives. Alarmingly, many police departments are accumulating millions of records on innocent drivers, creating detailed logs of their movements. Furthermore, the expansion of ALPR technology extends beyond law enforcement. Private companies are also deploying these systems and sharing the collected data with police, often with minimal or no public scrutiny or privacy safeguards. This lack of consistent regulation leads to widely differing policies on how long location data is stored and who can access it.
The ACLU emphasizes that automatic license plate readers have the potential to create permanent records of virtually everywhere an individual drives. This capability fundamentally alters the implications of simply leaving home and engaging in private activities. Tracking a person’s location over time can reveal intimate details about their life, including associations, habits, and routines – from visits to friends and doctors to attendance at protests, political events, or religious services.
A cornerstone of a free society is the principle that the government should not intrude on citizens’ privacy by collecting data on innocent activities without proper cause. The ACLU argues for the urgent implementation of clear regulations and law enforcement policies to prevent the government from using ALPR technology to track the movements of individuals on a massive scale. It is essential to establish safeguards that protect privacy rights while still allowing for legitimate law enforcement uses of this powerful surveillance technology.
