Use of license plate readers on rise; groups raise privacy concerns

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — There are few disturbances in Sierra de Montserrat, a community of estate-style homes perched on rolling hills in Loomis, Calif. So when two property crimes occurred about a year ago, some residents felt it warranted a response.

One incident was a breakin and the other a case of theft. A man was shown on surveillance footage as he approached a mounted security camera before he stole it. In the video, his face was clear as day, but no one in the community could recognize him — and neither could the police.

“In both cases, the perpetrator was caught on video, but the police can’t do anything with it because it’s just a face and that doesn’t help,” said Hans Geyer, a resident and president of the neighborhood homeowners association. “The police said, ‘It would be great if we had the license plate,’ which of course, nobody had.”

The next time it happened, residents wanted to be ready.

The community is now monitored by four automatic license plate readers, a technology that has grown in use by law enforcement agencies but is still uncommon among third parties such as homeowners associations.

Geyer said the association purchased the cameras from Flock Safety for $2,000 apiece and installed two at each entrance to the community. Powered by solar panels, the cameras rest on 14-foot-high poles that capture images of vehicles passing by, recording the license plate number, time and date of each one.

“The benefit of it is the police do not have to watch hours of video,” Geyer said. “It’s one picture per car coming in and one picture per car leaving the community.”

Some users of the technology have been criticized by advocacy groups concerned about privacy rights. With little effort, experts say, it’s possible to track anyone’s movements using the data. They have warned against the potential for abuse.

California lawmakers asked the state auditor in June to examine how police agencies in Sacramento, Fresno and Los Angeles counties are using license plate readers. An underlying concern was whether the data is being shared broadly in a way that could harm migrants in the country illegally.

But communities like Sierra de Montserrat do not have to contend with the same concerns since the cameras are on private property.

Adam Schwartz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, said third parties operate under fewer restrictions than the government but should question whether giving up some privacy is worth the risk.

Schwartz said one of the key concerns is what happens to the collected data.

“We suggest that before a private organization put up an automatic license plate reader, they ought to think long and hard about the privacy implications,” Schwartz said. “Sure, it’s a lead-generating tool, but at what price?”

What the future of privacy should look like is the question state government is still trying to answer. In 2018, lawmakers passed the California Consumer Privacy Act — the first law of its kind — to limit access and sharing of personal data by businesses.

The regulations will go into effect in 2020. A broader conversation about privacy rights in the state began after a string of documented abuses by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Forevermore Vigilant Solutions is one of the most notorious technology providers known for sharing consumer information with other agencies. The ACLU said earlier this year that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement used Vigilant Solutions’ vast database of license plates and location information to target migrants in California.

“We believe that adding a camera reduces privacy to some [degree], but so does the internet and my phone,” said Garrett Langley, Flock Safety’s chief executive. “There are trade-offs that outweigh the potential negatives.”

A relatively new company, Flock Safety has not attracted nearly as much attention as Vigilant Solutions. The company’s clients in California are usually small communities in the suburbs of bigger cities such as Los Angeles and Oakland.

Langley said other companies have set “bad precedents” on data misuse that he hopes to avoid. For that reason, Langley said, customers own the data, and license plate information is deleted every 30 days.

Customers decide whether they want to send tips to police about stolen vehicles and other crimes, he said.

Brian Hofer, a legal advocate on privacy issues, said he has noticed the company pitch to communities in forums such as Nextdoor, a social network where neighbors go to vent frustrations and share suspicions.

“There’s a lot of racism going on in these neighborhoods,” Hofer said. “I can see the same problems on these apps being transferred onto license plate readers.”

Moreover, Hofer said, the 30-day retention limit doesn’t necessarily stop the company from making copies.

Surveillance technology has become the bread and butter of police work, giving law enforcement agencies greater insight. Advocates say that when using the technology, police should abide by a set of standards that allow communities to decide when and how to operate surveillance systems such as license plate readers or facial recognition software.

Some places, such as the city of Davis, have adopted parts of the ACLU’s “community control over police surveillance” standards to give residents more input.

“Our ordinance is not exactly what the ACLU wanted, but we found a lot of middle ground in a lot of areas and were able to adopt something that’s workable with the Police Department,” said Davis Police Chief Darren Pytel.

But for every city like Davis, there are also cases like Sacramento County, where fraud investigators were using a license plate database to track welfare recipients. The county halted the practice a year ago after it was revealed that the Department of Human Assistance lacked a basic privacy policy required by state law.

For Sierra de Montserrat, the community has not seen any criminal activity since installing the license plate readers.

“Hopefully, we will never need them,” said Geyer, the homeowners association chief. “Just like with your seat belt in a car — you have it, but you may never need it.”