The trouble with crime-fighting automated license plate readers
Eleven years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police need a warrant before a GPS tracking device can be attached to someone’s car.
Eleven years later, police all around the country are tracking cars through license plate readers that do the same job with no warrant required. These license plate readers are mounted alongside roads and on police cars. There is no limit to the imagination as to the places they could be (and are) installed.
The system is considered helpful whenever it catches real criminals, but without regulation, innocent people can suffer from unnecessary surveillance.
The Illinois Northwest Herald questions whether these devices could give law enforcement (or the government) the ability to track innocent citizens as they go to “protests, a church, a bar, a union meeting, a cancer treatment center, a political protest or a therapist?”
Could a family member of a registered citizen be targeted just because their car has to be registered? That is a constant concern for me.
Florida, along with all states, needs to make sure that this particular tool used by law enforcement is closely regulated so that no rogue officer can misuse it.
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As I have read today’s many FAC commentaries I can’t help but wonder if today’s law enforcement techniques don’t come from the Gestapo/KGB playbook?
@ Capt. Munsey:
Don’t forget CSI and Law and Order: SVU.
Have two experiences with ALPR’s.
Good friends of our’s from out of town borrowed our vehicle for the weekend.
While they were downtown at a local Irish pub the local PD drove by and the reader tripped on our vehicle. When our friends returned to the car to come home 2 patrol cars pulled up and blocked the exit. The officers told them they had to call me at home to verify and then made them wait for an additional 20+ minutes to leave. To make sure I wasn’t hiding in the bushes I guess. The pub was located within the one of the county “exclusion zones”.
The second occurrence was by a good friend. He was based in Jacksonville but in Ft. Pierce for business. The second night they were there there was a loud banging on their hotel room door with the announcement “Ft. Pierce Police Department. Open the door immediately or we will enter the room by force”. My buddy told them that he was opening the door as soon as his girlfriend got dressed. He opened the door immediately though when he heard the officers prep to barge in.
Both my buddy and his girlfriend had to sit on the floor for about 40 minutes while the PD verified his travel permit and then made him verify that his customer was based in Ft. Pierce.
His attorney later requested all the paperwork from the incident from the PD. In that file it clearly said that his presence was clearly indicated by their ALPR system earlier the day before.
When it was flagged a second time in the same day the PD then tracked him down.