ACLU: Digital Dragnet Ensnares Millions of Innocent Drivers [View all]

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Source: NBC News

ACLU: Digital dragnet ensnares millions of innocent drivers

Bob Sullivan, Columnist, NBC News
13 minutes ago

Drive down many highways, boulevards or small side streets in America, and your movements are being noted by electronic cameras. Eyes in the sky controlled by local police departments snap photos of every passing license plate and store the data, sometimes forever. Even the smallest of agencies now deploys these high-tech voyeuristic machines, creating massive databases where more than 99 percent of the entries represent innocent people.

All, warned the American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday, for a one-in-a-million chance that the cameras might aid in the apprehension of a serious criminal.


"Plate readers are the most pervasive system of location tracking that people haven't heard of," said Catherine Crump, a privacy lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union. She wrote the ACLU report released Wednesday questioning the way such cameras are being used. "Even though virtually all of us have had our cars logged into these databases, few know this technology exists."

Plate-reading cameras differ from speed cameras, red light cameras, or even parking enforcement cameras, which are designed to catch violators and criminals. Plate readers simply capture every car that goes by in a digital dragnet, then check the plate number against “hit lists” of cars associated with criminal activity.

The ACLU does not object to the use of so-called LPR (License Plate Reader) technologies, Crump said. Checking license plates can be an effective way to spot a stolen car or a fugitive. She objects to the long-term retention of that data, and what she argues is an out-of-whack balancing act between civil liberties and investigative tools.

Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/aclu-digital-dragnet-ensnares-millions-innocent-drivers-6C10654018