There is often a tension between law enforcement’s use of novel technologies to gather information that might help hold lawbreakers accountable and the civil liberties of Americans — especially but not only those who have done nothing wrong but who routinely find themselves swept up in overly broad data collection and retention efforts.
According to the auditor, a majority of California police agencies utilize automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras, mounted on both stationary objects as well as police vehicles.
Software then extracts the license plates caught up in the images captured by the ALPR cameras, saves the information along with data on dates and locations and automatically is matched against lists of vehicles law enforcement is interested in.
As civil liberties advocates have long cautioned, such data, if poorly managed, could allow those with such information to track the location and movements of people who did nothing other than cross paths with ALPR cameras.
To evaluate how the technology is being handled by law enforcement agencies in practice, the auditor reviewed four local agencies: the Fresno Police Department, Los Angeles Police Department, Marin County Sheriff’s Office and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.
Since such matters rarely come under sufficient scrutiny, it’s unsurprising that the auditor observed “that the handling and retention of ALPR images and associated data did not always follow practices that adequately consider an individual’s privacy.”
According to the auditor, for example, the LAPD has collected and stored over 320 million images over the years, with 99.9 percent of those images being images made of vehicles that weren’t on a “hot list.”
However, despite collecting so many images, the auditor notes that the LAPD doesn’t even have a written policy governing the retention period of the data, though “the lieutenant who administers the ALPR program stated that its protocol is to retain the images for at least five years.”
Overall, the auditor observed that the agencies reviewed “have few safeguards” and that “instead of ensuring that only authorized users access ALPR data for appropriate purposes, the agencies have left their systems to abuse by neglecting to institute sufficient oversight.”
Obviously, it is untenable for any state or local law enforcement agency to collect so much data while neglecting to balance the trust and power granted to law enforcement with the privacy interests of the people of California.
Fortunately, the auditor has come up with some simple tweaks. This includes actions that can be taken by the Legislature and local agencies alike.
At the state level, the auditor recommends the state Department of Justice take the simple step of drafting and making publicly available a policy template local agencies can use to model their own ALPR policies on. The state could also specify maximum data retention periods and the frequency with which ALPR systems should be audited.
And of course, local agencies don’t have to wait on the state to do better. They can develop or reevaluate their own ALPR policies, reevaluate their own data retention policies and ensure data is handled responsibly.
A combination of those fixes, and more, merit further debate and discussion among civil liberties advocates and law enforcement alike, and ultimately action taken at the state and local level.
©2020 The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
