License Plate Reader Searches Should Require a Warrant
The author, a crime analyst who works with police, argues that historical searches of ALPR data should require a warrant, citing the inevitability of ubiquitous cameras and the precedent of Carpenter v. US. He distinguishes between active alerts and historical searches, contends that deleting data doesn't prevent abuse, and advocates for state statutes mandating warrant procedures.
The important point to note about this quote is “not today”.
- malwrar
It frustrates me when people call them license plate readers. I guess you need to call them something, but they are general-purpose internet connected cameras. They will do whatever their firmware tells them to do, and could be reprogrammed at any time by anyone with access. No one expected doorbell cameras to join a mass surveillance network, but later the manufacturers added that feature. Why do we treat these cameras like they can do only one thing?
- cmiles8
Either it needs a warrant or it’s fully open and people can start creating websites showing the movements of local politicians.
This middle ground that municipalities try to carve out where it’s fully open to police without a warrant but not subject to FOIL laws doesn’t appear tenable for much longer.
There’s been too many cases of police officers stalking exes, poking around the data for fun and such so it’s clear police cannot be trusted with the data without better court oversight.
It’s certainly a very powerful investigative tool, but needs solid 4th amendment protections. The Supreme Court’s recent ruling on geofence searches of cell phone records is a good indication on where the Supreme Court’s head is at on this sort of thing, where they said no you can’t just do blanket data dumps like that without a warrant.
- Cider9986
A warrant is better than no warrant, but:
A warrant requirement is not a reasonable bandaid to consider allowing mass spying. There should be no mass spying by default.
A warrant requirement makes sense for something like the locations of customers on cellular networks, because, although it should be improved, it's been built into the tech.
When you make the optional choice to create mass spying, safeguards do not make it acceptable.
- delichon
This is a hole in the Constitution that would be better patched, at least with statute, better with an amendment. The fourth amendment says
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects...
Who is "their" here? In terms of property rights it's the people who own those digital "papers". The individuals who that data is about do no maintain or control that data, and could not destroy it, meaning they do not functionally have property rights over it. If I write in my notebook that you have blonde hair, the notebook is still my property. There isn't anything I could write about you in it that would make it yours (other than maybe "I hereby give this notebook to Joe Bloe").
Attempts to interpret the Constitution otherwise are, IMHO, attempts at good policy, but unstable as law. So we should fix it either by giving people property rights to that data (so that they can destroy or change it without permission) or to explicitly require warrants for access to PII owned by third parties.
- Zak
I don't like the article's tone of inevitability:
> I think cameras in all public spaces are going to happen. Imagine Ring comes out with a nicer camera system for homeowners....
Indiscriminately filming people in public places is illegal some places, e.g. Germany. Allowing the creation of large networks of cameras surveilling public places is a choice.
- throw7
Good article. It's a sober look at where we are at.
We lost a lot of strong privacy rights we had with landlines when we shifted to cell phones.
We're actually slowly creeping into pre-crime territory. You could have AI searching for possible pre-crime candidates based on unknown identity in the area, disparate pattern to usually movements, etc.
- carefulfungi
A warrant isn't an effective safe guard unless you trust the government to only prosecute actual crimes. The US federal government has demonstrated, explicitly, that it is willing to use law enforcement for political ends and will charge private citizens for political reasons (like the reflecting pool case).
Now is not the time to be giving more power to the executive or its policing functions.
- freediddy
Can you poison their database with ai-generated license plates on a screen? Maybe set up a van with a big screen in front of a Flock camera and start generating random license plate numbers?
- gagan2020
You should raise your voices now. For Indians, its too late. Our Indian Government used facial recognition system at mass level in recent students protests and now police is showing up on their homes.
It's better to raise the voice now for you guys than to say sorry later.
- henryaj
Any idea why this is so much less acceptable to people in the US than in the UK? In the UK we've had ANPR for more than twenty years and AFAICT there's no mass controversy surrounding it. It catches people with no licence, no insurance, who are wanted in various serious crimes. I'm surprised at the difference in attitude.
(I am aware that the UK has a less-than-stellar privacy track record... but nonetheless it's curious that for this particular technology, as opposed to the Online Safety Act, there's such a difference.)