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Police cruiser cameras raise civil liberty concerns

Authorities say they will help fight crime; groups wonder how data will be used.

Video: License scanners in police cruisers

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By Tom Beyerlein, Staff Writer Updated 6:00 PM Saturday, August 22, 2009

Are they cutting-edge tools in the war on crime and terrorism? Big Brother in a box? Or maybe a little of both?

Area police are excited about the possibilities offered by the automated license plate reader, a camera with a scanner mounted in a housing on selected police cruisers. The reader takes pictures of motorists’ license plates while police are on patrol, scans the numbers and instantaneously compares them to a database of plates associated with stolen cars and wanted criminal suspects. An alarm goes off inside the cruiser if the computer finds a match.

The readers also record the time and global positioning system coordinates of the photos. If the information is stored, police can retrieve data about where and when a particular vehicle was sighted.

Dayton police Chief Richard Biehl last week announced that his department is getting five readers, two of them financed by a U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office and other area jurisdictions also will be getting the devices. The readers are being used by an increasing number of police agencies, including the Ohio Highway Patrol and the city of Cincinnati.

“The (benefit) is extra eyes on the road,” said Sgt. Michael Lang of the Englewood Police Department, which has been using a $23,000 reader since spring 2008. “It’s like having a second officer on the road, running license plate numbers.”

While he acknowledged Englewood’s system averages only about one hit per month, Lang said it’s a “very proactive way of using technology to do our jobs better, to do more with less to provide protection for our community.”

Sheriff Phil Plummer agrees. “Everybody is cutting back (on staffing),” he said. “This is a way of using technology to capture more fugitives.”

But civil libertarians and privacy rights watchdogs say the readers are a step toward a surveillance society in which everyday activities of law-abiding citizens are catalogued by authorities.

“It’s something we’ve been following,” said Gary Daniels, a spokesman for the Ohio American Civil Liberties Union in Columbus. “We’re quickly getting to the point where Americans are very uncomfortable about infringements on what they see as their right to privacy.”

Police say the readers are useful in finding stolen cars, responding to missing children alerts and picking up people with outstanding arrest warrants. But the Dayton units’ primary purpose is to combat terrorism, said Detective Churchill W. Hale, Dayton police Homeland Security coordinator. He declined to discuss specifics.

Two of Dayton’s $17,000 readers were purchased with a federal grant from Homeland Security’s Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program, or LETPP, while the other three are being bought by local asset forfeiture funds.

The LETPP provides police with funds for intelligence gathering and information sharing, strengthening security at potential terrorist targets, building communications between police agencies, and working with non-law enforcement agencies and the private sector.

Daniels warned about “mission creep,” impacting civil liberties by using surveillance equipment to track lawful activities, such as anti-war demonstrators.

Rather than preventing racial profiling by indiscriminately running all license plates, as police contend, use of the readers “may actually enhance racial profiling” if police focus them on predominately black neighborhoods or around mosques, the ACLU said.

Civil libertarians worry that the cameras could be used by police for “fishing expeditions,” to see who frequents a given area, said Paul Stephens of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse of San Diego.

A key concern of watchdog groups is whether police will retain the license data of the vast majority of vehicles that don’t trigger a hit. Hale said such data is now retained in a secure database for about 24 hours, “but that can grow. Retention (policy) really hasn’t been addressed.”

Stephens said “if in fact data is stored, that is extremely troubling. There should be absolutely no storage of the data” pertaining to innocuous vehicles.

Such data could be subpoenaed in civil litigation, Stephens said. For example, he said, a person suing for divorce could try to obtain license-tracking data to show the past whereabouts of a cheating spouse.

Local authorities brushed off those concerns, saying they only plan to use the cameras for legitimate law enforcement purposes.

Biehl didn’t return a phone call seeking comment, but last week he said the readers “will be a huge time saver for us and will allow us to be better at finding criminals. As budgets get increasingly tighter for law enforcement and we have less personnel, this allows us to better protect the community.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2264 or tbeyerlein@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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I honestly believe that whiners such as those who speak through aclu should understand after you walk out your door daily you are in public eye. the cautious neighbor down the road probably has more garbage on you than your wife or anyone. to complain about profiling is listing your insecuritys. when in public keyword there"PUBLIC" privacy is non exsistent. if you want public privacy sit in a porto john with the door locked.

Ronnie B.
5:58 AM, 8/25/2009

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just go on Google Earth or Bing and look at what you can see for FREE !! I'm sure the gov't has sats in the sky that can read your plate or take ur pic from outer space...so don't worry too much bout those plate readers

eyespy
8:27 PM, 8/24/2009

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Your Right to Privacy in public? It does not exist. The expactation of privacy stops when you leave your home & enter the public domain. You stand on a street corner, ANYONE can take your picture and pretty much do what they want with it. You driving down the road & have your picture taken, oh well. I find it amazing that people think they have a "privacy bubble" around them when they are out in public. If you want true privacy, stay home and close your curtains.

Murdog
12:33 PM, 8/24/2009

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Oh Catskinner.. you're so smart! Call a family member within the DPD and have them run a plate, just because you say to. Hello ??? Thats illegal for an officer or anyone to do that, and they will lose their job. I'm sure you're worth the risk, give me a break!

shannon
9:42 AM, 8/24/2009

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Thank goodness that NH citizens know how to keep their government in chains. We have laws on the books that prevent cameras (surveillance, speed, red light and automated license plate reader) from use by town and state agencies. Live Free or Die is the state motto.

goinveg
8:37 AM, 8/24/2009

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