Name: Data Driven 2: California Dragnet—New Data Set Shows Scale of Vehicle Surveillance in the Golden State
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Data Driven 2: California Dragnet—New Data Set Shows Scale of Vehicle Surveillance in the Golden State

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Email updates on news, actions,and events in your area.DEEPLINKS BLOGShare ItEFF sought comment from&nbsp;Tiburon Police Chief Ryan Monaghan, who defended the program via email. "Since the deployment of the ALPRs, our crime data from the five years prior to having the ALPRs as well as the five years after and beyond have shown marked reductions in stolen vehicles and thefts from vehicles and an increase in the recovery of stolen vehicles," he wrote.&nbsp;&nbsp;Law enforcement agencies create "hot lists" of license plates, essentially lists of vehicles they are actively looking for, for example, because they're stolen, are suspected of being connected to a crime, or belong to an individual under state supervision, such as a sex offender. When an ALPR scans a license plate that matches a hot list, the system issues an alert to the law enforcement agency that the vehicle was sighted.&nbsp;Agency/Records Link2018-2019 License Plate ScansHit Ratio (Percentage on a Hot List)439,272,1490.05%161,862,2850.02%142,170,1290.08%132,904,2620.04%83,164,4490.05%67,520,5320.03%66,255,8350.06%65,632,3130.11%&nbsp;()45,253,7350.04%44,719,5860.09%39,430,6290.04%37,859,1240.04%27,293,6100.03%25,895,1580.04%25,440,3630.07%In his written response to our finding that Tiburon Police store data for a year, even though 99.9% of the data was not tied to an alert, Chief Monaghan wrote: "Our retention cycle for the scan data is in line with industry-wide standards for ALPRs and does not contain any personal identifying information. Like other agencies that deploy ALPRs, we retain the information to use for investigative purposes only as many crimes are reported after the fact and license plate data captured by the ALPRs can be used as an investigative tool after the fact."&nbsp;Monaghan&nbsp;presents a few misconceptions worth dispelling. First, while many agencies do store data for one year or more, there is no industry standard for ALPR.&nbsp; For example, , a vendor that provides ALPR to many&nbsp;California agencies, deletes data after 30 days. The California Highway Patrol is only allowed to hang onto data for 60 days.&nbsp;According to the , Maine has a 21 day retention period&nbsp; and Arkansas has a 150 day retention period.&nbsp;&nbsp;In the law requires deletion after&nbsp;three minutes&nbsp;if the data is not connected to a crime.Finally there is a certain irony when law enforcement&nbsp;claims that ALPR data is not personally identifying information, when one of the primary purposes of the data is to&nbsp;assist in identifying suspects. In fact, explicitly name ALPR as a form of personal information when it is combined with a person's name. It is very easy for law enforcement to&nbsp;connect&nbsp;ALPR data to other data sets, such as a vehicle registration database, to determine the identity of the owner of the vehicle. In addition, ALPR systems also store photographs, which&nbsp;can potentially&nbsp;capture images of drivers' faces.&nbsp;Indeed, Tiburon's own ALPR policy says that raw ALPR data cannot be released publicly because it may contain confidential information. This&nbsp;is consistent with a that found that the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department could not release unredacted ALPR data in response to a CPRA request because "the act of revealing the data would itself jeopardize the privacy of everyone associated with a scanned plate. Given that real parties each conduct more than one million scans per week, this threat to privacy is significant." The Supreme Court&nbsp;agreed with a lower court ruling that "ALPR data showing where a person was at a certain time could potentially reveal where that person lives, works, or frequently visits. ALPR data could also be used to identify people whom the police frequently encounter, such as witnesses or suspects under investigation."Via email, Tiburon Chief Monaghan responded:&nbsp;"In terms of the number of scans compared to VMT, our ALPRS are strategically placed on two main arterial roadways leading in and out of Tiburon, Belvedere, and incorporated sections of Tiburon. As Tiburon is located on a peninsula, there are limited roadways in and out. The roadways where the ALPRs are deployed are not only used by those who live in the area, but also by commuters who use the ferries that operate out of Tiburon, those who work in Tiburon and Belvedere, parents taking their kids to schools in the area, and those visiting."A few caveats about this analysis:&nbsp;Finally, VMT is not an exact measurement but rather an estimate that is based on measuring roadway traffic on major arteries and projecting across the total number of miles of road in the city.&nbsp;DetectionsHit Ratio (Percentage on a Hot List)24,797,7640.06%Share ItSAN FRANCISCO–Millions of Americans’ everyday movements can be traced by police with the click of a mouse and possibly without a warrant, thanks to to state and local law enforcement, has found. The investigation, conducted...An EFF investigation of public records acquired from dozens of state and local law enforcement agencies has uncovered a widely-used mass surveillance technology. Americans are accustomed to hearing about how the National Security Agency (NSA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and even the domestically-focused Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have...SAN FRANCISCO–San Francisco police violated the city’s surveillance technology law by tapping into a private surveillance camera network to spy on demonstrators protesting the 2020 police murder of George Floyd, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California (ACLU) told a state appeals court...How transparent are police about surveillance technology? It depends on where you look. When it comes to acceptable levels of secrecy around police tools, states have drawn their lines in very different places, resulting in some communities where it is much harder for the public to know what invasive tools...Amazon’s Ring devices are not just personal security cameras. They are also police cameras—whether you want them to be or not. The company now admits there are “emergency” instances when police can get warrantless access to Ring personal devices without the owner’s permission.A large coalition of community and civil rights organizations have sent a urging the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to oppose or significantly amend a San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) proposal that would drastically increase their surveillance powers— threatening the privacy and safety of San Franciscans. The SFPD’s...Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, a of Amazon’s surveillance doorbell camera, Ring, has released a of concern and inquiry concerning the device’s audio capabilities. This is partially in response to a conducted by Consumer Reports that found that once the device’s motion sensor...By unanimous vote, San Francisco's public records appeals body ruled last night that the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) violated state and local laws when it failed to respond adequately to EFF's requests for documents about face recognition and the department's relationship with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC),...SAN FRANCISCO—Community activists in Northern California today announced a in their lawsuit against the County of Marin and Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle, whose office illegally made the license plate and location information of local drivers, captured by a network of surveillance cameras, available to hundreds of federal...California residents finally have a law designed to dismantle some of the secrecy around domestic acquisitions of warzone surveillance equipment.The weapons of the United States military—drones, mobile command centers, sound cannons, and more—have been handed off to local law enforcement for years. The transfers have equipped police departments with the...Share It

Email updates on news, actions,and events in your area.DEEPLINKS BLOGShare ItEFF sought comment from&nbsp;Tiburon Police Chief Ryan Monaghan, who defended the program via email. "Since the deployment of the ALPRs, our crime data from the five years prior to having the ALPRs as well as the five years after and beyond have shown marked reductions in stolen vehicles and thefts from vehicles and an increase in the recovery of stolen vehicles," he wrote.&nbsp;&nbsp;Law enforcement agencies create "hot lists" of license plates, essentially lists of vehicles they are actively looking for, for...

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Data Driven 2: California Dragnet—New Data Set Shows Scale of Vehicle Surveillance in the Golden State

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