Police license plate readers

Provides that data collected is confidential and may be used only for law enforcement purposes. Data collected may not be stored more than 21 days. Provides that data gathered by an automatic license plate reader system are not subject to disclosure under the Public Information Act. Relates to data practices; classifies data and provides procedures related to automated license plate readers; provides the data that may be collected by such readers; relates to requirements for the sharing of such data among law enforcement agencies; requires the maintenance of a public log recording the uses of such data; requires related records maintenance and the auditing of such records; requires written procedures governing access to the data; requires certain notification when setting up readers.

Requires any governmental entity that uses an automatic license plate reader ALPR system to adopt a policy governing use of the system. Governmental entities also must adopt a privacy policy to ensure that captured plate data is not shared in violation of this act or any other law.

Provides that captured plate data is not considered a public record. Restricts the use of automated license plate readers to local, county and state law enforcement officers, who shall only use the devices subject to specified conditions and limitations and for specified purposes. Provides that records of number plates read shall not be recorded or transmitted anywhere and shall be purged from the system within 3 minutes of their capture, unless the number resulted in an arrest, a citation or protective custody or identified a vehicle that was the subject of a missing or wanted person broadcast.

Requires state or local law enforcement agencies to adopt a written policy governing the use of an ALPR system that addresses databases used to compare data obtained by the system, data retention and sharing of data with other law enforcement agencies, system operator training, supervision of system use, and data security and access.

Requires audits and reports of system use and effectiveness. Limits retention of ALPR data to no more than 90 days, except in specified circumstances. Provides that data obtained by the system is confidential and not a public record. Provides that participating law enforcement agencies may use automatic license plate reader systems to access and collect data for the investigation, detection, analysis or enforcement of the state's compulsory insurance law. States that data collected under the program may not be used by any individual or agency for purposes other than enforcement of the compulsory insurance law, prohibits sale of the data under the program, and provides that data is exempt from the Oklahoma Open Records Act, except when retained as evidence of a violation of the compulsory insurance law.

These provisions do not prohibit the use of any other automated license plate reader system by an individual or private legal entity for lawful purposes. T enn. Provides that any captured automatic license plate data collected by a government entity may not be stored for more than 90 days unless they are part of an ongoing investigation, and in that case provides for data to be destroyed after the conclusion of the investigation.

Utah Code Ann. Provides that a governmental entity may not use an automatic license plate reader system except for specified uses, such as by law enforcement agencies for the purpose of protecting public safety or conducting criminal investigations and by other government entities for limited other purposes.

Provides that captured plate data are a protected record under the Government Records Access and Management Act, if the captured plate data are maintained by a governmental entity. Provides that captured plate data may only be shared for specified purposes, may only be preserved for a certain time and may only be disclosed pursuant to specific circumstances such as a disclosure order or a warrant.

Government entities may not use privately held captured plate data without a warrant or court order, unless the private provider retains captured plate data for 30 days or fewer. Allows an institution of higher education to use automatic license plate readers under certain circumstances.

Request Info. The features provided by advanced license plate recognition provide law enforcement with a range of tactical and investigatory advantages. Start by assessing your needs and available infrastructure, then look for a vehicle recognition solution that can grow to meet new goals and challenges as they emerge. In addition to investigating crimes, vehicle data can be used to address traffic hotspots, pinpoint problem areas and even predict and prevent crashes.

Rekor Systems can put vehicle intelligence in your patrol cars, on your roads, and now at your fingertips via smartphone. Make Police1 your homepage. Police License Plate Readers. Some hotlists include low-level misdemeanors and traffic offenses. Some agencies use these hotlists to generate revenue by stopping citation scofflaws.

ALPRs collect license plate numbers and location data along with the exact date and time the license plate was encountered. Some systems are able to capture make and model of the vehicle. They can collect thousands of plates per minute. One vendor brags that its dataset includes more than 6. When combined, ALPR data can reveal the direction and speed a person traveled through triangulation.

With algorithms applied to the data, the systems can reveal regular travel patterns and predict where a driver may be in the future. The data also reveal all visitors to a particular location. However, law enforcement officers can use other databases to connect individual names with their license plate numbers. A privacy impact assessment report indicates that the photographs may even include bumper stickers, which could reveal information on the political or social views of the driver.

ALPR data is gathered indiscriminately, collecting information on millions of ordinary people. Without ALPR technology, law enforcement officers must collect license plates by hand. This creates practical limitations on the amount of data that can be collected and means officers must make choices about which vehicles they are going to track.

ALPR technology removes those limitations and allows officers to track everyone, allowing for faster and broader collection of license plates with far reduced staffing requirements. Licenses plates are often added to hot lists because the vehicle is stolen or associated with an outstanding warrant. Officers may also add a plate number to the list if the vehicle has been seen at the scene of a crime, the owner is a suspect in a crime, or the vehicle is believed to be associated with a gang.

Hot lists often include low-level offenses, too. Since ALPRs typically collect information on everyone—not just hot-listed vehicles—officers can use a plate, a partial plate, or a physical address to search and analyze historical data. For example, an officer may enter the location of a convenience store to identify vehicles seen nearby at the time of a robbery. The officer can then look up those plate numbers to find other locations that plate has been captured. Training materials, policies and laws in some jurisdictions instruct officers that a hot-list alert on its own may not be enough to warrant a stop.

Officers are instructed to visually confirm that a plate number is a match. Failure to manually confirm, combined with machine error, has caused wrongful stops. Law enforcement claims that ALPR data has been used to, for example, recover stolen cars or find abducted children.

However, police have also used ALPR data for mass enforcement of less serious offenses, such as searching for uninsured drivers or tracking down individuals with overdue court fees. The ACLU estimates that less than 0.

Many law enforcement agencies store ALPR data for years, and share it with other law enforcement agencies and federal agencies. The length of time that ALPR data is retained varies from agency to agency, from as short as mere days to as long as several years, although some entities—including private companies—may retain the data indefinitely.

The companies then share the commercially-collected data not just with law enforcement but also with auto recovery aka "repo" companies, banks, credit reporting agencies, and insurance companies. Data collected by private entities does not have retention limits and is not subject to sunshine laws, or any of the other safeguards that are sometimes found in the government sector.