Jeb Bladine: New systems identify and track moving vehicles

Thirty-year-old technology designed to help police identify license plates has evolved into controversy over allegations that vast, warrantless databases of vehicle movements amount to continuous surveillance of private citizens.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are long-time users of automated license plate recognition (ALPR) systems. Today, their ability to interface with local law enforcement and private business systems has provoked more controversy, spawning new local and state regulations in Oregon and around the country.

Look for an upcoming local news story as reporter Scott Unger examines ALPR activity in McMinnville and Yamhill County.

We’ve seen estimates by informed sources of 1,000 ALPR cameras – stationary and mobile – in Oregon, and perhaps 200,000 or more nationwide. Whatever the numbers, those cameras link into massive databases that can identify license plates, vehicle make/model and various vehicle characteristics.

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Jeb Bladine is president and publisher of the News-Register.

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This year, the Oregon Legislature adopted SB 1516, creating statewide rules for use and sharing of ALPR data. The bill limits use of data to purposes authorized by the law, limits data retention time, and requires monthly audit reports of ALPR operations. Oregon citizens now can sue vendors of ALPR systems for unauthorized use or sharing of collected license/vehicle information.

ICE does not normally have unrestricted or continuous access to Oregon’s public database. Various public restrictions, however, are not so clearly enforceable with private company ALPR security systems such as reportedly exist for the Lowe’s parking areas in south McMinnville.

Multiple Oregon cities have restricted or even shut down their ALPR operations. Others are engaged in serious discussions with citizens who believe ALPR and the massive cloud-based data pool are a continuing infringement of citizen privacy rights.

Proponents of ALPR, noting that vehicle license plates are displayed publicly, question why law enforcement shouldn’t have rights to track suspicious vehicle movements. For example, a stolen car’s plate number is entered into the system, and police recover the vehicle after it’s spotted by an ALPR camera.

ICE involvement triggers a different debate: Investigators identify a vehicle associated with the subject of an immigration investigation, search ALPR records and find where the vehicle has recently appeared. Now it’s a location-finding system for use in any kind of law enforcement investigation.

Atlanta-based Flock, the dominant manufacturer of ALPR systems, has “software-as-a-service” contracts: Flock completes hardware/software installations and sells access to those systems. One public response produced a nationwide spotting network to identify ALPR cameras and warn of potential abuses, found at www.DeFrock.org.

The website has a volunteer mapping system that may mistake major intersection camera installations as ALPR when, actually, they are simply vehicle-movement systems for triggering traffic light changes.

I, for one, will be interested in what our reporter learns and reports about local ALPR systems and whatever local citizen response might emerge.

One bottom line is that all of us, long accustomed to being tracked from webpage to webpage on the Internet, are now being monitored from location to location in our moving vehicles. And it’s no surprise to see growing public concerns about this new technological frontier.

Jeb Bladine can be reached at jbladine@newsregister.com or 503-687-1223.