The local police departments have a new tool in their arsenal for combating crime countywide. It’s called the “license recognition system” or the “license plate reader (LPR).” It is a tool that captures your license plate number and, given the level of technology your county has paid for, will immediately run it against a database and check for any involvement in crime, suspended license, lack of insurance, etc. Some counties are even storing the captured data for up to 5 years.
I’m not entirely in favor of this tool. I’m all for getting criminals and unsafe drivers off the street, but I prefer it be done in a manner allowable by the Constitution of this great nation. Some people say that it is just a given that, if a cop pulls up behind you, he immediately runs your plates to see if you have insurance, or any outstanding warrants, or the like. They say an officer does not need probable cause to run your license plate…and yet, no one realizes the inherent potential for abuse and corruption in that. To me, this feels like an over-step of authority. Immediately running someone’s plates is the same as saying “I suspect you are a criminal and, in my mind, you are guilty until my system here proves you to be innocent.”
The argument for this tool is that license plates are freely visible to everyone, so there is no expectation of privacy. While it is true that your license plate is visible to every driver, that should not be reason enough for the cops to treat every single driver as a suspect. Your home address is visible from the outside of your house. That doesn’t give me the right to do a search and see if you are paying your mortgage on time. Or to find out where you go every day.
See, this database that the cops may or may not be building is modified every time the LPR captures a license plate. Ostensibly, that information is entered into the database along with the date and time of the image, the location of the image, and the direction of travel of said car in said image. Capture the same car enough times and you can pretty quickly build a history of where that car goes to and when.
The other argument, that I so often hear from people who support things like the NSA spying scandal, is that if you have nothing to hide, then this shouldn’t bother you. But that doesn’t matter. So long as the police are running your license plate every time you drive by, they are, in essence, treating you like a criminal. Should every drive on the road be considered a suspect until the LPR confirms they are not?
Using this tool to locate uninsured drivers or drivers with warrants is understandable. The bigger concern, in my mind, is the database they are building. What is the purpose of keeping this information for 5 years, other than to track every driver in the system? You might not be a criminal, but we’re going to treat you like one. And, to read the comments on the local news paper websites, too many people are just gleefully signing on to this kind of program. Trading liberty and freedom for a modicum of safety and security has never led to anything other than tyranny.
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