Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR)

Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) Technology

The newest and fastest way for law enforcement to check the license plates on automobiles -- using cutting edge technology -- is called the Automatic License Plate Recognition system (ALPR). Police departments are currently using this technology in many areas around the United States and authorities believe this system can catch criminals and perhaps also catch terrorists who may be driving stolen vehicles. The system can gather thousands of plate numbers in an hour. There are questions that privacy groups and lawyers for the American Civil Liberties are raising about this technology; is the collecting of license plate numbers -- along with the names of the car owners, the place, date and time at which the license plate number was achieved -- and storing them in a database a fundamental violation of 4th Amendment protections? These and other issues will be reviewed in this paper.

The ALPR Technology Literature

An article in the Examiner points out that several police departments in Virginia's Prince William County are now outfitted with a technology that reads license plates as they speed by the patrol cars. The Examiner article says that the county has recovered 10 stolen vehicles through this technology, it has locate seven stolen license plates and "arrested four people in the six months" the technology has been in place (Sherfinski, 2008, p. 1). The technology is called the Automatic License Plate Recognition system (ALPR). The camera is positioned on the patrol car and the license plates on cars speeding past or going slow -- it doesn't matter how slow or fast the vehicle is traveling on the highway -- are all scanned instantly. One of the points of the story is that the Department of Homeland Security wants to receive a grant proposal in order to expand the use of ALPR throughout northern Virginia. The Homeland Security department suggests that these license plate checks could help law enforcement capture "suspected terrorists" and those suspected of being involved in "terrorist-type crimes" (Sherfinski, p. 1).

In the Washington Post (Sheridan, 2008) the writer reports that "Top homeland security officials from Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia…agreed to spend $4.5 million" on the installation of about 200 ALPR for the area around Washington, D.C. The point of this expenditure was to "thwart potential terrorist attacks" not just to find "scofflaws and car thieves" (Sheridan, 2008, p. 1). When the ALPR picks up license plate number, it is instantly run through a database and "criminal watch list" according to Arlington Police Captain Kevin Reardon. If there is a "hit" the database then reports back to the officer that this particular license plate is on a car that is stolen, or otherwise the owner is wanted for questioning. "What's going to happen to the data," asks Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an organization concerned with civil liberties matters. "The Department of Homeland Security will now have an enormous amount of information about the travel habits of Washington area residents" (Sheridan, p. 2).

Question #1: The Constitutional Amendment most applicable to this issue is the 4th Amendment. It reads: "The right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" (U.S. Constitution).

There are in fact privacy implications surrounding the use of ALPR although the courts have not looked at this particular issue (ALPR) in the context of the 4th Amendment. The courts have ruled on many cases vis-a-vis the 4th Amendment however, and there are links to the issue at hand with ALPR. David J. Warner writing in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review explains that the historical purpose of the 4th Amendment was to prevent "…the use of government force to search a man's house, his person, his papers…" and it cannot be properly translated into a "general constitutional 'right to privacy'" (Warner, 2007, p. 859). So, Warner continues, the point is two-pronged: a) was the action taken a "search"; and b) if it was a "search," was the search unreasonable? (p. 859).

Warner points to the early case, Olmstead v. United States, in which the government wiretapped a defendant's phone conversation but did not trespass on the defendant's property. The Court (Supreme Court) zeroed in on "the tort of trespass" and hence it ruled that there was no trespass and hence no "search" (Warner, p. 860). There have been adjustments to Olmstead, Warner writes. In dealing with United States v. Knotts police hid a radio transmitter in a container of chloroform that the defendant had purchased; of course police then could follow the transmitter and they did, locating the defendant in a cabin in Wisconsin. The Court ruled that the use of the transmitter "was constitutional and did not amount to a 'search'," Warner continues on page 861.

The interesting result of Knotts is that the Court insisted that the transmitter was "not used to discover any information from inside the cabin or that was not visible to the naked eye" and so, there was no unreasonable "search" (Warner, p. 861). One question regarding the use of ALPR technology will then be, is the scanning of license plates legal, since there was indeed information to be discovered (numbers on the plate lead the police to personal information)? In United States v. Karo the Court ruled that placing a radio transmitter in a 5-gallon drum (to follow an alleged drug dealer) -- which amounts to a "warrantless search" -- was an "unreasonable" search because an electronic device was used to reveal information "…otherwise not obtainable from outside the home" (Warner, p. 861-62).

Question #2: Should the data gleaned from the license plate be allowed to be stored -- and if so, for how long? And will a court order be needed to release the data compiled? The opinion of this paper is that data should not be stored for any length of time. but, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the data mined by the ALPR does in fact go into a computer database. "Without restrictions, law enforcement agencies can and do store the data gathered by the license plate readers forever, allowing them to monitor where you have traveled and when you traveled there over an extended period of time" (ACLU, 2010, p. 1). The ACLU quotes the Chief Detective for the Los Angeles Police Department, who said the "real value" of ALPR "comes from the long-term investigative uses of being able to track vehicles -- where they have been and what they've been doing" (ACLU, p. 1). As of March 2010, the only states that had outlawed (or limited the use of) ALPR were Maine and New Hampshire, the ACLU reports. The ACLU also reports a police unit could capture the license plate numbers of up to 30,000 cars in a single eight-hour shift (ACLU, p. 1).

As to releasing the gathering of information and the storing it in databases, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the U.S.A. Patriot Act basically allow government agencies get a court order to tap phones and otherwise conduct surveillance with very little evidence (Congressional Research Service, 2010). The George W. Bush Administration tapped phones without going through FISA, so alert citizens know there are no safeguards to protect privacy when the government wants to access information. A court order should be obtained, however, to keep the law enforcement services from stomping on civil rights while on a search for criminals.

Question #3: The simple fact at this moment in time is that this data should not be used except in obvious criminal cases. As to its legality, until the High Court rules on the question of using data mined from passing cars' license plates, that data will be used. It will be available and prosecutors plus police investigators will use it until they are told they cannot. If I were a prosecutor I would hesitate to use it because if the Court later rules it is unconstitutional then cases will be thrown out of court and criminals will be set free.

Question #4: a) if the ALPR turns up information linked to terrorism, the federal authorities should have the data; if a local crime can be linked to a license plate number, the local authorities should have access; otherwise, as the ACLU wrote to Chief Harry Dolan (Raleigh Police Department), "…all aggregate license plate data…that failed to raise any flags after being crosschecked through various databases" should be "purged" b) No, the public should not have access to these files; and e) Yes the FOIA request protocol should apply to citizens who wish to learn whether or not their names are on file due to the ALPR data-gathering system.