Weekly Roundup of ALPR Stories - March 29
Piedmont, CA: With plans to install over $1 million dollars in ALPR readers for all entrances and exits to the city, NYC is not the only city with plans to scan every car that enters or exits it.
Nationwide: Privacy advocates continue to be concerned about data retention policies after a CBS News report highlights the increased use of ALPR scanners by law enforcement.
Weekly Roundup of ALPR Stories - March 22
Minnesota: There was big news this week in license plate reader data as the State classified the data as private in an opinion issued by the Commissioner. Both the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press covered the change to what data is now private and what is public.
However, this isn’t the end of the story. The Minnesota legislator is still at work on the license plate controversy. In particular, an amendment passed a key House committee that would eliminate or the storage of “non-hit” license plates and limit the retention time of the data.
Regardless, it is unlikely that the public will be able to request ALPR data in the near future to continue updated Tracking of Police license plate movements. This blog may take a slightly different approach to Tracking the Police in upcoming months. Stay Tuned!
The State of Minnesota now declared that the ALPR data will remain private. Thus, we can’t request specific data on police vehicles unless the legislator changes the law. At least, they must disclose the location of license plate readers.
Track the Police Friday Roundup - March 15th
Arkansas: A video clip on the use of license plate readers in Arkansas and a story about how the local legislature is proposing limiting the storage of reader data.
Maryland: Rockville, MD is also dealing with the data retention controversy. A Town Hall meeting is set for March 20, 2013 for anyone who wants to provide input on the use of license plate scanners in that town.
New York: A relatively in-depth article on the use of ALPRs and controversy surrounding the devices in the Rochester area. The story mentions how millions of dollars of Homeland Security money are funding the purchases of these devices across the country.
New York City: The Huffington Post published a story this week on the NYPD’s plan to scan all vehicles entering and exiting Manhattan. Not only would this massive project attempt to scan all vehicles but the current data retention policy for NYC is 5 years!! Good old NYC always has to be #1 in police state creepiness :-/
Utah - State legislators unanimously passed a bill limiting the storage of license plate data to 9 months! For those who have been following the issue of data retention in license plate readers, this is still a considerable amount of time to retain data on all license plates scanned by a reader.
This slide from a 2011 Minneapolis Police Department presentation reveals a bit more about ALPR scanners than what we had previously known. This unredacted version shows the location of one of the stationary cameras on the Broadway Bridge between North and NE Minneapolis. The MPD refuses to disclose the location of the stationary cameras yet this document clearly reveals the location of two more of the cameras.
In other words, Broadway Avenue Bridge and Plymouth Ave Bridge are the two known locations of the stationary cameras.
Another interesting aspect of this document is that you can see in the bottom corner that the ALPR readers have a total of 27,865 “hits” or vehicles that are active on some list or another. That’s a very long hot list of “wanted” vehicles!
Weekly Roundup of ALPR Stories March 8th #TrackthePolice
Little Rock, AR: USA Today featured a story on how Little Rock, Arkansas is using license plate scanners. This story notes how there appears to be no data retention policy for license plate information in Little Rock, but that “..the department has now has a growing archive of license plate photos..”.
Piedmont, CA: One Californian town is considering installing license plate scanners at all exits and entrances to the city. No word on how long they plan to keep the data if this program goes forward or if it would be available to the public.
Weekly Roundup of ALPR Stories March 1st #TrackthePolice
Georgia: Sometimes even local government’s purchase ALPR cameras. Sadly, the City Council of Holly Springs, Georgia approved the purchase of four ALPR cameras. The police state is everywhere :-/
New Jersey: Homeland Security is also funding ALPR readers for Emerson, NJ according to this recent article. In many of the articles, shared on this blog, DHS is a common funding source for these expensive readers.
Texas: Dallas will be installing the license plate reader technology this Spring in its police squad cars. According to this article, there is debate over how long the data may be kept and if it should be kept on non-hit vehicles. Interestingly, the article mentions how the “fusion center” may have access to this data in Dallas.
Utah: The debate over the data retention policy on license plate readers is also a hot item in Utah. In this case, the bill requires the data be deleted after 6 months, which for many, still seems like too long a time to keep the data.
A great article summarizing the upcoming hearings and background on the license plate reader issue that will be debated this week at the MN Legislature.
Weekly Roundup of #ALPR Stories - Feb. 22nd #TrackthePolice
Chico, CA: Chico police will now be using ALPR cameras soon according to this local news report. This story also mentions how the State of California has authorized the use of LPR license plate scanners since May of 2012 and that there is a current bill in the legislature looking at data access and retention of ALPR data in California.
Minneapolis: A great blog post in Open Secrets analyzing the City of Minneapolis’ application to keep ALPR data secret and wants to retain data on innocent vehicles.
Texas: Corpus Christi has plans to use license plate readers to track people who “congregate in certain areas”. This article hints at possible ways that police may misuse license plate readers by whose data they are trying to capture.
