A U.S. license plate reader company is purportedly making it possible for private investigators, insurance companies, law enforcement, and more to identify Americans based on their political views and even find out where they live, according to a new report from Wired.
The report. Published this week, the report focuses on DRN Data, a license plate recognition company. The Wired investigation found that the company, which advertises that it offers “unmatched vehicle location insights” on its website, has reportedly been gathering a lot more than just license plate and vehicle data.
According to Wired, the company’s database purportedly includes photos of license plates with political bumper stickers, such as “Trump” or “Fuck Biden.” Other alleged photos collected by DRN Data, which are accessible to its customers in a searchable database, don’t feature cars or license plates at all. Instead, they’re pictures of political yard signs at private homes or photos of people wearing T-shirts with text. All the photos in the company’s database purportedly included precise location data, Wired reported.
Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the outlet that DRN Data’s information is example of the level at which “surveillance is happening on a mass scale in the quiet streets of America.” For example, according to the report, a search for “Trump” in DRN Data’s systems purportedly returned 150 photos of people’s homes and bumper stickers in Delaware.
“That surveillance is not limited just to license plates, but also to a lot of other potentially very revealing information about people,” Stanley said.
License plate readers, explained. Also known as automatic license plate readers, these devices aren’t new. Initially developed in the 1970s, the technology has evolved gradually over the years. Law enforcement can use license plate readers to identify stolen cars, issue traffic and parking fines, or track down vehicles associated with criminals.
License plate readers, which can be mounted on stationary poles, overpasses, and police cruisers, use cameras and software to scan the license plates of the cars that pass by them. They record the date and time the plate was scanned, the GPS coordinates, and take a picture of the car. Then, they run the data through special software, which compares the information to a “hot list” that can include stolen cars or cars involved in AMBER alerts, among others.
According to the Brennan Center, use of license plate readers by U.S. law enforcement is widespread and growing. A 2018 survey from the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that in 2016 and 2017, 173 law enforcement agencies across the country scanned 2.5 billion license plates. When it comes to specific cities, the Los Angeles Police Department has 320 million license plate scans in its database.
Are license plate readers legal? In general, yes, though, it depends on the case. There are also differences between federal law and state laws. As explained by the Brennan Center, while the Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures, the Supreme Court hasn’t required police officers to obtain a warrant to take pictures of license plates and run them through their databases.
“[The Supreme Court’s] reasoning has been twofold. First, due to 'the pervasive regulation of vehicles capable of traveling on the public highways,' there is no expectation of privacy in the content of license plates,” the Brennan Center notes. “Second, longstanding precedent holds that drivers on public roads cannot expect their movements to be kept private from the police since they could be observed by any member of the public.”
DRN Data responds. The legal aspect is what DRN Data focused on in its response to Wired. In a statement, DRN Data said it complied with “all applicable laws and regulations.”
“License plate recognition (LPR) technology supports public safety and community services, from helping to find abducted children and stolen vehicles to automating toll collection and lowering insurance premiums by mitigating insurance fraud,” Jeremiah Wheeler, DRN Data’s president, told Wired.
Although Wheeler’s statement mentions public safety, it should be noted that DRN Data isn’t a law enforcement agency, but a private company. In fact, its system is based on images and data captured by “affiliates,” who install cameras on their cars, such as repossession trucks, and take photos of license plates out in the wild during their day-to-day drives.
To date, DRN Data has collected 15 billion “vehicle sightings” in its database, according to the company’s marketing materials.
The potential for abuse. Experts who spoke to Wired pointed out that while law enforcement and companies stress that license plate readers are used to find people who break the law, it’s important not to forget that they also capture information on regular people and can store it for a long time. Law enforcement could also potentially use the information to track people in delicate situations, such as those who cross state lines to get an abortion.
“The way that the country is set up was to protect citizens from government overreach, but there’s not a lot put in place to protect us from private actors who are engaged in business meant to make money,” Nicole McConlogue, an associate law professor at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, said in an interview with Wired.
Image | Erik Jaeger (modified) | anokarina
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