A lack of regulation means that policies governing how long our location data is kept vary widely.Īutomatic license plate readers have the potential to create permanent records of virtually everywhere any of us has driven, radically transforming the consequences of leaving home to pursue private life, and opening up many opportunities for abuse. Moreover, private companies are also using license plate readers and sharing the information they collect with police with little or no oversight or privacy protections. But such instances account for a tiny fraction of license plate scans, and too many police departments are storing millions of records about innocent drivers. License plate readers can serve a legitimate law enforcement purpose when they alert police to the location of a car associated with a criminal investigation. The documents paint a startling picture of a technology deployed with too few rules that is becoming a tool for mass routine location tracking and surveillance. Click on the map icon on the right to learn how police in your state use license plate readers to track people's movements.
In response, we received 26,000 pages of documents detailing the use of the technology around the country. In July 2012, ACLU affiliates in 38 states and Washington sent public records act requests to almost 600 local and state police departments, as well as other state and federal agencies, to obtain information on how these agencies use license plate readers. This information is often retained for years or even indefinitely, with few or no restrictions to protect privacy rights.Ĭlick here for the latest news on license plate scanners. As a result, enormous databases of innocent motorists’ location information are growing rapidly. The information captured by the readers – including the license plate number, and the date, time, and location of every scan – is being collected and sometimes pooled into regional sharing systems. Automatic license plate readers, mounted on police cars or on objects like road signs and bridges, use small, high-speed cameras to photograph thousands of plates per minute. A little noticed surveillance technology, designed to track the movements of every passing driver, is fast proliferating on America’s streets.