YOU ARE BEING WATCHED.

And there isn't a thing you can do about it.

posted almost 12 years ago

This week, WBAL ran a cover story about Automatic License Plate Readers. I was intrigued and decided to do some more digging. Here is what I found.

First off. Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are essentially cameras mounted on police vehicles or in airports that read the license tags of every vehicle that passes. Maryland was the first state to embrace ALPRs and has them installed at BWI airport and other places with in the city. Others are mounted on nondescript police vehicles all over the state.

Every vehicle that passes an ALPR gets the picture of the vehicle's tags taken and sent to a database to a center run by the state. In MD, the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center does that job.

Less than one week after the horrific tragedy on September 11th 2001, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft directed every U.S. Attorney's Office to start an Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council (ATAC). Shortly thereafter, the Maryland Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council formed one of the first Fusion Centers in the United States to combine information sharing and analysis. That center became known as the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center (MCAC).

Today, the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center coordinates the efforts of federal, state and local agencies to gather, analyze, and share intelligence information with law enforcement, public health, and emergency responder personnel (http://www.mcac.maryland.gov/about_mcac/)

According to the MCAC, the ALPRs are used to provide MD law enforcement with

1. Vehicle's make and model

2. Vehicle's driver and passengers

3. Distinguishing features (Bumper stickers, etc)

4. State of Registration.

Here is the kicker

The ALPRs were initially intended to retain the data for no longer than a Maximum of 30 days at which the data would then be purged from the databases. (After all, If you take my picture of me picking up my girlfriend at BWI, why should you keep the picture longer than the time it took me to pick her up and exit the airport).

But currently, the MCAC keeps the data for a period of 1 year.

After the one year period, the data will be purged unless it has become, or it is reasonable to believe that it will become, evidence, including evidence that tends to inculpate or exculpate a suspect, in a specific criminal or other law enforcement investigation or action (http://www.mcac.maryland.gov/resources/LPR/LPR-SOP.html)

So what are the issues?

MCAC is a pseudo government agency. or a (Fusion Center). This means that aside from law enforcement, it can provide the data to anyone who request it as long as they can establish a "Need-To-Know".

The Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center has, as one of its core missions, the sharing of information, thereby assisting law enforcement agencies in the fulfillment of their duties. The MCAC’s Operation Center, which is the statewide central repository for license plate reader data, serves specific public safety goals. Specifically, LPR data may be used for, but is not limited to, the following purposes:

Crime analysis;
To alert law enforcement officials that a license plate number is on a list of targeted license plate numbers (Hot List) or is related to a criminal investigation and is found in the LPR database;
To alert law enforcement officials that a license plate number on a hot list has been recorded by a fixed versus mobile camera, possibly requiring notification to law enforcement agencies in proximity or travel route of the identified vehicle;
To identify the movement of vehicles operated by individuals currently under an open criminal investigation; (http://www.mcac.maryland.gov/resources/LPR/LPR-SOP.html)

The ALPRs are manufactured by private companies and sometimes maintained by those companies. This raises the question of how secure or vulnerable is the data? A private ALPR company in California was found to have stashed over 550 Million license plate records in 2012 on both innocent and criminal drivers. This has created an unprecedented legal nightmare because the legal system has been incapable of catching up with the ever growing technology. In a recent supreme court hearing, the chief justice John Roberts asked the government lawyers whether every citizen was capable of being tracked without a warrant, including himself. The inevitable answer was an emphatic YES.

Furthermore, the cost of the ALPRs, was estimated at an average of 22,000 dollars per unit in 2010, which has dropped to 12,000 dollars per unit due to increased demand. This can only imply an increased use of the technology in the very near future.

The DEA is planning on installing a network of ALPRs across the entire highway network in the US.

Only New Hampshire and Maine have any legislation against the use of ALPRs. NH has banned ALPRs and Maine has a 21 day limit to how long it can be kept and its only used to monitor critical infrastructure like bridges.

The state of New Jersey allows the data to be stored for up to 5 years.

Please feel free to respond and express your opinion about the issue and please be civil to other responders.

posted	February 8, 2013
sponsor	Timothy Emanzi
topics	Computing & Technology myUMBC
tags	computing-and-technology enforcement law liberty monitoring myumbc police privacy surveillance unclesam
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YOU ARE BEING WATCHED.

And there isn't a thing you can do about it.

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