License-plate scanners are a
hot technology in the law-enforcement community. With few
protections for privacy, jurisdictions across the coutry have
attached cameras to cars and fixed positions to automatically scan
and record passing vehicle plates. It’s actually impossible to
enter or leave
some communities without being recorded. Many of these
jurisdictions have been networking their systems, or subscribing to
private services that create de facto regional and national
tracking systems. Now the feds want to make it official: They’re
looking for a private company to build a national license plate
database. Ostensibly targeted at “criminal aliens and absconders,”
it’s obviously going to scoop everybody up on the road to achieving
its objective.
The
official solicitation from the Department of Homeland Security
describes the desired system in these terms:
This solicitation is issued to establish an Indefinite Delivery
Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) contract for acquisition of or access
to commercial off-the-s helf (COTS) electronic information
resources for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or more
specifically, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The intent
of this Statement of Work (SOW) is to describe the operational
requirements to obtain access to a National License Plate
Recognition (NLPR) database service. The database should track
vehicle license plate numbers that pass through cameras or are
voluntarily entered into the system from a variety of sources
(access control systems, asset recovery specialists, etc.) and
uploaded to share with law enforcement. NLPR information will be
used by DHS/ICE to assist in the location and arrest of absconders
and criminal aliens. Officers should be able to query the NLPR
database with license plate numbers based on investigative leads to
determine where and when the vehicle has traveled. This information
will assist in locating criminal aliens and absconders, and will
enhance officer safety by enabling arrests to occur away from a
subject’s residence. The use of NLPR will reduce the man-hours
required to conduct surveillance.
Such privately managed databases alredy exist, including the
National
Vehicle Location Service managed by Vigilant Solutions. Of
course, an influx of federal money is likely to give new life,
purpose, and resources to any company that has, so far, built its
system based on a hodgepodge of local police department
contracts.
The prospective National License Plate Recognition database
service will be run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which
suggests a border-control purpose that might win some public favor.
But the solicitation specifies that the “service shall compile NLPR
records from a variety of sources nationwide, including access
control systems, asset recovery specialists, and law enforcement
agencies” and “shall compile NLPR records from metropolitan areas
within the US.” That’s not so border-specific at all.
In fact, federal license plate scanners are already in place
throughout the Southwest,
courtesy of the Drug Enforcement Administration. But those
aren’t currently plugged into the various networks of cameras run
by regional groups, sheriffs’ offices, and local police
departments. A
2010 George Mason University study estimated that 37 percent of
large law enforcement agencies already used license plate scanners,
and that the popularity of the technology was such that 50
percent of large agencies, and almost 10 percent of small
departments would have them in place by the time the report
published. That number is certain to have grown since then.
Many of those local agencies do share data with each other, or
with private databases like that run by Vigilant Solutions—but on a
spotty, if increasing basis. Already, Vigilant boasts that “This
pool of LPR data totals over 1.8 billion detections and grows at a
rate of almost 70 million per month.”
The federal database would create a truly national surveillance
network capable of tracking vehicle movements across state lines
and from coast to coast. Just how portable and readily usable the
federal license plate database might be is suggested by the
solicitation’s specification for an Android/iPhone app for
capturing plates and searching the database.
Privacy protections for scanned license plate data have been all
over the place, based more on department procedures than on
deliberately chosen policies. Some agencies keep recorded plates
for a period of months, or even indefinitely, while others destroy
them almost immediately if they don’t match alerts for targeted
plates. The federal solicitation contains no mention of limits on
data storage, and the word “privacy” never appears.
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