The panopticon grows taller every day, as motorists who try to learn what information is gathered by the automatic license plate readers face roadblock after roadblock, with three cases set to determine once and for all what can be seen.
Autoblog reports the advocacy groups, journalists and private citizens supporting the cases aim to help uncover how and what data is collected and used by police, while the police support keeping the electric eye solely on others under the premise that the data is part of ongoing investigations. Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reporter Steve Orr, who filed a FOIA request with Monroe County officials about his own vehicle, disputes the reasoning:
What investigation is that? Most people in the database are not, and haven't been associated with an investigation. There's no criminal concern here… They're saying, "OK, maybe there's not an investigation now, but there could be one down the road"… What it says is that we're all suspects in waiting.
Another case in Los Angeles calls out both the LAPD and Los Angeles Sheriffs Department for the same issue and the reasoning behind it. According to Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Jennifer Lynch, the data collected would be held for, at most, two days before being deleted, as it wouldn't be necessary to hold onto it for longer during a stolen vehicle investigation.
However, most law enforcement agencies can hold onto plate data for two to five years, if not indefinitely. Further, the data could be pooled with other agencies, eventually coalescing into a picture of a given driver's personal life as tracked by the plate readers. Without public oversight in how the data — obtained from a public piece of identification — is used, it would become "too easy for the government to overreach," per the American Civil Liberties Union.
The post Privacy Advocates Take Law Enforcement To Task Over Handling Of License Plate Data appeared first on The Truth About Cars.
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