Decatur Police’s License Plate Reader Leads to “Follow” and Arrest
Decatur Metro | September 25, 2013Decaturish has the story this morning on “What was the story behind that orderly procession of police cars following a vehicle that was moving briskly down one of our local roadways?” Here’s the beginning of the story…
Around 10:45 Monday morning, a Decatur Police officer was patrolling the 500 block of Church Street when the officer received an alert from the vehicle’s automatic license plate reader. (Editor’s note: Did you know they have those now? I didn’t.) The license plate reader told the officer that he had just passed a stolen vehicle headed south from his current location, a 2013 Dodge Charger with Indiana plates.
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Interesting technology that I had no idea was in common use. One side of me has privacy concerns. Another side of me wonders if mounting them on all major thoroughfares in COD would reduce the number of thieves and robbers visiting us. Probably not when it comes to iPhones which can be easily transported away via foot and MARTA. But perhaps thefts/robberies requiring a vehicle, e.g. to steal bigger electronic equipment like computers, TVs, media systems, would decrease. My impression is that armed robbers don’t tend to drive registered vehicles that they’ve purchased lawfully.
Personally, I hate these. Avondale has had them for a while now. Their primary use: to position the scanner-equipped cruiser in the middle of E. College or North Avodale, where it scans every passing license plate. So for every criminal “needle” it manages to find, it scans thousdands of law-abiding pieces of “hay.” In the mean time, the policeman watching the results (for hour after hour) isn’t policing the actual neighbrohood.
The privacy concerns are also serious. I would love to know what data these scanners actually capture and store. (Though the government would likely lie about that if asked, a la the NSA.) The government is already storing our call logs and lord knows what else, do they also need to know hoe many times I drive down certain roads and at what times?
Since your license plate is publicly displayed, what expectation of privacy do you have? Unless they are recording the whereabouts of my car and using that information against me, I don’t see how these scanners are doing anything but protecting me as I have no plans to start stealing cars.
Yeah, well, Walter White didn’t have plans to start cooking meth for a long time either. Personally, I’d like to keep my options open.
[Just in case the NSA or State Bar is monitoring this thread, that right there was a JOKE]
the NSA doesn’t read what’s between brackets. you’re screwed.
LOL!
I don’t have an expectation of privacy as to my license plate number. I do have a reasonable expectation that the government will not keep a running tab on my travel, in the same way that I would object if a police cruiser followed me everywhere and noted where I went. These scanners could permit the government to (eventually) do that. Right now, they probably are not in sufficiently common use to accomplish it, but I suspect that will change before too long. I’m not into trading liberty for the promise of greater security (which it is doubtful that these scanners deliver anyway).
Actually, license plate scanners are almost as common as, well, license plates. See my post below.
I’m not sure if the license plate readers are as egregious a violation of privacy as other things that have long been done by police. (For example, the infrared roof surveillance the narcos have used to find marijuana grow houses.) I don’t really have much expectation of privacy when driving on a public road, but I do when sitting in my own home. After all, a police officer could run my tag number at anytime, but he can’t come knocking at my door asking to see the title to my house without a warrant. As long as these scanners are only used for plates reported as stolen or for plates linked to outstanding warrants, I don’t have an issue with them. Beyond that I would (say if they they were targeting plates registered in certain counties, for example).
Brianc best describes my feelings here when he says “I don’t really have much expectation of privacy when driving on a public road, but I do when sitting in my own home.”
Police officers run plates all the time, and have for many years, with and without this technology. Is it a bit disturbing that it’s so automated and open for potential abuse? Yeah, but I don’t see any solution that satisfies both privacy concerns and crime prevention. Unfortunately, this is an oft-repeated theme in so many facets of our public and private lives.
“I don’t see how these scanners are doing anything but protecting me as I have no plans to start stealing cars.”
_____________________________
Hey, I didn’t know you worked for the NSA!
State patrol has a lot of those gadgets, as well as many other metro area police forces. They look like little cameras mounted on the trunk and hood.
They ARE little cameras mounted on the hood and trunk.
That sounds dumb now when I reread my earlier comment. I guess I meant along with all the other accouterments attached to police cars…
Also, do they actually take and record pictures or do they just recognize those tag numbers that have been downloaded from the database of stolen/missing cars?
The ACLU in July released a report on the use and abuse of license plate scanners, based on public records requests from police departments in 38 states, including Georgia. The report and the results of the records requests are posted at the link below. Even where there are regs on how long such information can be kept and used, they often aren’t being followed.
https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/you-are-being-tracked-how-license-plate-readers-are-being-used-record
I’m glad that Decatur PD finally has these scanners. In a dangerous or potentially dangerous (to the police and the public) situation, this will increase both safety and the likelihood of stopping the bad guys.
Given the great preponderance of burglaries and other crimes that involve stolen vehicles, I think this is a common sense piece of technology. It’s the same reason cops are in the habit of manually running tags while sitting at stoplights. You never know what you will turn up, and you may catch a crime in progress. This just makes that existing practice more efficient and consistent.
Conversely, I suspect using it as a means to track regular movements is highly impractical (if that’s the goal, there are plenty of GPS-based technologies that would make it infinitely easier, if not necessarily legal) and strikes me as a bit of a straw man.
Sorry, but you are wrong. They are used for reasons other than to catch criminals. I will provide a link below (posts with links get moderated), but the headline of the article is entitled:
License plate readers used to record attendees at political rallies
That’s definitely an abuse, Walrus, but a cop could do the same without the scanner.
Sad, but not surprising. I was just making the argument that using them to track regular movements is impractical. But name a technology and one can easily name a way that it can be abused. Doesn’t necessarily invalidate that technology. Just calls for tighter legal controls on how it is applied.
Why do you think it is impractical? Scanner scans your plate, uploads location and stores it, and it’s done. If on a 10 mile trip you pass 3 scanner-equipped police cars, they’d have a pretty good idea of where you went and when. I agree that as things now stand, it does not seem as though there are enough scanners out there to effectively track movements, but these technologies tend to get better and cheaper with time.
I disagree that tighter legal controls will help. It’s very difficult, at best, to police the police.
Could there be a requirement that the scanners don’t record numbers, but only alert to numbers that are reported as stolen or connected to outstanding warrants? And then have independent audits that verify scanners are being used only for that? It doesn’t seem that difficult to implement such a control. I’m all for police methods being independently investigated on a regular basis anyway.
Brian, not as I understand it, b/c the scanners actually photopgraph the plates and then run the numbers through a database. There could be a requirement that the photos not be stored for any length of time, and I suppose it’s possible that such a requirement could be audited. I still wouldn’t trust it. (Enron was audited, too.)
It’s not as if we have to dig far into history to find the government lying about the scope of its data gathering and vastly overstating the strength of the supposed “legal protections” built into the process.
Perhaps some PDs do all that, but having been very involved with these scanners, I will say that all many of them do is scan the plate, compare against a (usually obsolete) database *in the car* and then discard it if there was no hit. Doing all the rest requires manpower that many departments don’t have. But I guess people can be paranoid about if they want.
Oh Walrus, surely that is just an isolated incident, never to be repeated. Lord knows that institutions ultimately controlled by politicians are rarely, if ever, used for political purposes.
One thing find I interesting is that there generally seems to be much less backlash over these sorts of methods when used by the local police than when used by Feds.
i would guess that’s because people feel they have more control over their local police/gov’t than they feel like they have over federal powers.
And yet, because there’s even less scrutiny at the local level, it’s often where this sort of thing is most likely to get misused. This is a powerful tool that can have big benefits but which carries equally large risks.
+1. It’s an efficient way to catch wanted individuals. I’m all for it.
Oops there goes another civil liberty!
like a lot of other technologies and data collection practices, there are many “good” uses of license plate scanners, as well as potential for “bad” uses and abuse. i guess one’s opinion of them depends to some extent on the trust one puts in the people that have access to the data.
Perhaps some enterprising reporter type could simply ask the Decatur PD what their policy is regarding the readers? I suspect the plate searches are tied into a state/federal database, in which case there may ultimately be no local control over record storage, etc…
From the 2010 Decatur Police Department Annual Review…
“The Uniform Patrol Division obtained a new piece of equipment during 2010. The equipment is an Automatic License Plate Reader(ALPR). The ALPR is an image‐processing technology used to identify vehicles by their license plates. The equipment software receives stolen license plate data every 24 hours. The data is downloaded into the equipment’s processor on a daily basis. Since the equipment has been in use, there have been 11 stolen vehicles and 2 stolen tags that were located and recovered.”
and…
“In 2010, five officers were trained in the use of the Automated License Plate Reader. The new
equipment was acquired for one vehicle. The equipment reads tags on parked and mobile cars as the patrol car passes the others. The tag searches for stolen license plates and stolen cars. The equipment is updated on a daily basis with new data.”
Not Decatur specific, but: https://www.aclu.org/alpr
“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. 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. 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.”
I do know that some Walmarts have very good security cameras that can capture images off their property. And some police forces request those images during investigations. I guess other businesses could do the same, but I personally know of one Walmart store that has done this in connection with a theft at a store.
One area of concern is the length of time the scanned license plate data is kept. For example. Minnesota State Patrol deletes data after 48 hours if not connected to an investigation, whereas 2 towns in Texas and 1 in New York keep the records indefinitely. Good tools for police to spot stolen vehicles, but the use needs citizen oversight. Check out the ACLU report “You Are Being Tracked”.
Yeah, I put up a link to it but it appears to have gotten moderated.
Same here.
I love it when the ACLU and Republicans agree on issues. It supports my theory that politics is circular with moderate Democrats and Republicans being pretty close to one another and, on the other side of circle, Libertarians and Anarchists being kind of close.
GET OVER IT! Does it help the police do their job? Yes.
Do they care that today I will go to work, go to the grocery, and then go home? Nope.
Do I care even if they did know this information? Nope.
It’s settled then. Thank you.
i wouldn’t say it’s settled. we have bulldogs and walruses for, ants undecided. let’s get a better representation of the animal kingdom before we call it settled.
This Walrus is certainly not “for.” I was being sarcastic.
i know, just being silly.
will you care if one day the gov’t knowledge of your whereabouts gets you into trouble?
let’s say for example you happen to drive by the scene of a crime at about the same time the guilty party might have. scanner got your license plate. police looks at the week or two before the crime and it looks like maybe you might have been casing the joint, as you went by there quite a bit in the previous couple of weeks, at different times of the day. now you’re a person of interest. maybe a couple other things they know about you makes them want to ask you questions. they come by where you work and take you in for an interrogation. you miss your daughter’s recital. they interview your friends, coworkers, and family. after a few days of hassles, they leave you alone.
do you care then?
Do you realize how many actions you just listed off?
Maybe all this paranoia should be the subject of a new reality show on the Discovery channel.
i was just throwing out a theoretical example. the only action on your theoretical part was driving by a place. if you don’t like that example, i’m sure i, or someone else, could come up with many others.
now if you don’t think this could ever happen, or anything else negative as a result of these cameras being deployed in more and more places, go right ahead. i’m just saying that there is room for a) abuse, and b) unintended negative consequences. it’s not all rainbows and criminals caught. if you want to consider my being unsure about the risks, rewards and cost vs. benefit of a newly introduced technology paranoia, that’s your prerogative.
Thanks for telling me I’m free to come to my own conclusions.
But let me ask this: What if the scanner helped the police track down a kidnapper or someone else who committed a crime against someone you love?
Do you care then if this technology is used?
Or what if they weren’t using this technology and weren’t able to apprehend the perpetrator?
I just choose to look at the positives rather than the negatives.
i’m not saying there can’t be positive outcomes. and i’m not looking only at the negatives. i’m just not willing to ignore the negative just because a couple stolen cars have been recovered. i also realize i don’t know all that much about these, which is why i enjoy discussions on the subject. if these are so great, why stop at putting them on police cars? why don’t we pony up however much money it costs and put them on every road at the city limit? if we don’t have enough money we can just cut funding to someone else. that way we’ll know exactly who comes in to our town, and when. imagine the crimes we could solve then. and let’s add facial recognition too, that way we can get pedestrians and cyclists too.
you know what else would help track down someone who kidnapped a loved one? a cop following every person 24/7. do you know how many crimes go unsolved because we don’t have a cop following every person 24/7? i hyperbolize to make a point. that point being that things have costs, both monetary and otherwise. those costs should not be ignored just because there is a positive side to the technology.
it’s not a question of looking at the positives or looking at the negatives, it’s weighing those two against each other and coming at an informed consensus about what we want achieved and what we are willing to give up to do so.
Papers, please!
I’m happy to get on the anti-surveillance bandwagon but it is worth noting, all NSA jokes aside, that there is no need for license scanners if you wish to track essentially anyone.
Virtually all of us carry a very convenient personal tracker – cell phone. As we get handed off from one cell tower to the next, AT&T and other providers have a unique track of our location. Moreover, recent reports suggest that not only is this information provided to NSA, but that other law enforcement entities regularly request access to the information. The ‘request’ can be an administrative subpoena that is generated from the law enforcement entity and does not require judicial oversight. Privacy!
So, get riled over that, and don’t worry about DPD compiling a list of beer growler runs.
Exactly. That’s the point I was trying to make above. If the police, NSA, S.H.I.E.L.D. — WHOEVER — were trying to track my location/driving patterns, this is one of the most laborious, least effective ways to do it, especially if computer guy’s explanations of the limitations of the tech are accurate. I’m all for controls on the everyday assault on privacy, but even the examples provided of how this particular technology can be misused feel pretty quaint and would obviously be torn apart in a court of law.
Theoretically someone could use a smartphone to sit on a playground and watch pornography, or use a telescope to spy on a neighbor, or use a radio controlled helicopter to drop bags of dog crap on unsuspecting civilians. The point is, it’s not the availability of the technology that is the problem. It’s how we choose to use it.
This may be the one time you hear me kinda sorta agreeing with the gun lobby — the exception being that the argument breaks down when you try to extend it to technology designed primarily for killing things.
Thank you for my new business idea:
The Gyrocopter Poop Airlift.
Have unwanted waste in your yard, urban garden, driveway, uh…roof(?) that you’d like to get rid of? Then call the handy helicopter to keep your hands clean! For $5, our mini aircraft will swoop in and take away unwanted animal yard art and put it in your neighbor’s yard*.
Or maybe Poopforce One or The Brown Angels sounds better? I’m open for franchise opportunities!
*For an extra $10, we will fly the waste outside the 30030 area code (or to the AJC local news offices).
CoproCopter
I’ll expect the check shortly.
Ok. Keep your eyes peeled for the check droppin’ copter.
Swoop & Scoop — Hovers unobtrusively, monitoring foot traffic past your house. Whenever somebody lets their dog poop in your yard and walks away, the S&S darts out of hiding and collects the abandoned material, then follows the offender down the street and drops it on their head (the person’s, not the dog’s).
That’s why I’m getting a growler holster for my bike. Try tracking my IPA purchases now, Big Brother!
/hits pothole
//breaks growlers
///ticketed for littering
i heard there was legislation proposed in ga to make bike registration and license plates mandatory. can’t find the fb post on it though.
I think this event calls for the community to be vigilant. If you see a blond white woman who looks suspicious, you should immediately call law enforcement. I know profiling is wrong, but we can’t be too careful these days.
If I see a blond white woman who looks suspicious, my first instinct is to ask her out.
Of course, my wife may have issues with that…
If I see a blond white woman who looks suspicious then I know I’m in Decatur . . .
If I see a blond white woman who looks rich then I know I’m in Buckhead. . .
If I see a blond white woman who looks lost then I know I’m in Downtown Atlanta . . .
If I see a blond white woman who looks. . .
…awesome then I know I’m home.
well played, sir.
The govt is probably way behind corporate trackers! The fact that many companies track you and your friends via Facebook, other social media, credit/debit card use is far more troubling to me. For example, beer companies can (and do) send ads about “specials” in the bar you are about to pass….and contact your friends, too! Just because you “liked” a fb page or “voted” in a “best of” contest. We give away so much personal info everyday that we don’t think about because we are conditioned to mistrust only one thing: govt.
It is troubling to me as well, but not comparable. Only the govt. can use force to away my freedom (whether it is putting me in jail, forcing me to behave a certain way or to conduct a specific act, or taking my income). A corporation may just make me buy toothpaste I hadn’t considered before…
It is comparable when the government forces the private corporations to hand over their collected data. Whether we like it or not there is almost no privacy in today’s society. Licence plate scanners are not on my radar of concern.
Ultimately, you are still talking about government force though. But yes, I do not like ANY entity tracking, saving or selling my personal information.
Great…30+ comments on plate scanners?!? FYI, google knows more about you than dpd. I would like to say thanks to dpd for their service.
Great…30+ comments on plate scanners? FYI, google knows more about you than dpd. I would like to say thanks to dpd for their service.
+100,000
I see. We should only focus on the most prevalent intrusion on our privacy. I didn’t realize we had to focus on them one at a time.
Has anyone seen the movie Closed Circuit yet? I think this idea of ultimate surveillance is at its core.