Portland Police Tracking You

The Portland PD has a new tracking toy that has become wildly popular across the country, Automated License Plate cameras that can read (and recognize) all license plates of cars that happen to pass by the camera.  See a video of it here.  They can be mounted on patrol cars (Portland has 16 car mounted ones) or at intersections, and they automatically make a record of all license plates whizzing by.

The PD says they can recover stolen cars in an instant if one passes by the Police Cruiser, which is a good thing, but what happens if you are going about your business and your plate gets captured?  They keep it on record for 4 years, that's what.  This is a lot like the NSA keeping all phone records, and just as personal.  Here is a link to their policy on these creepy things.  The ACLU doesn't like them much either.

Automatic license plate readers have the potential to create permanent records of virtually everywhere any of us has driven, radically transforming the consequences of leaving home to pursue private life, and opening up many opportunities for abuse. The tracking of people’s location constitutes a significant invasion of privacy, which can reveal many things about their lives, such as what friends, doctors, protests, political events, or churches a person may visit.
In our society, it is a core principle that the government does not invade people’s privacy and collect information about citizens’ innocent activities just in case they do something wrong. Clear regulations must be put in place to keep the government from tracking our movements on a massive scale.

As the technology spreads, the ACLU calls for the adoption of legislation and law enforcement agency policies adhering to the following principles:

License plate readers may be used by law enforcement agencies only to investigate hits and in other circumstances in which law enforcement agents reasonably believe that the plate data are relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.

The government must not store data about innocent people for any lengthy period. Unless plate data has been flagged, retention periods should be measured in days or weeks, not months and certainly not years.

People should be able to find out if plate data of vehicles registered to them are contained in a law enforcement agency’s database.

Law enforcement agencies should not share license plate reader data with third parties that do not follow proper retention and access principles. They should also be transparent regarding with whom they share license plate reader data.

Any entity that uses license plate readers should be required to report its usage publicly on at least an annual basis.