license plates – Techdirt (original) (raw)

San Francisco Bets Big On Surveillance, Blankets City With 400 Automatic License Plate Readers

from the New-London,-California dept

There’s nothing more urbane than omnipresent surveillance, apparently. London is considered one of the classiest places on earth, what with its wealth of history, iconic landmarks, and… thousands and thousands of surveillance cameras. It’s also home to knife crime, pervasive racism, and soccer hooligans, with plenty of residents exhibiting all three of these traits simultaneously.

San Francisco apparently feels it should be the London of the West. Or at least the West Coast, seeing as New York City has been vying with London for the title of “Most Surveillance Cameras Per Capita” for years now.

The latest addition to San Francisco’s surveillance armada is hundreds of automatic license plate readers provided by yet another controversial surveillance tech company.

San Francisco police will soon have access to a network of 400 license plate cameras scattered throughout the city.

On Thursday, Mayor London Breed signed the legislation allowing SFPD to begin installing the Flock Safety camera system, seen here in a company video posted to social media.

Chief Bill Scott said the cameras will help track down criminals.

“70% of crimes nationally are committed using vehicles or have vehicles involved in those crimes,” said Scott. “So, that should tell you how important this type of technology is. Because, it’s not limited to organized retail theft. It’s violent crime, it’s other types of crimes.”

Sure, there’s some truth to this statement. A bus or an Uber is not a reliable getaway car. But does that justify setting up 400 cameras in San Francisco capable of creating a pretty comprehensive map of residents’ movements?

Then there’s the vendor. Flock has been a bit problematic ever since its inception. Its first customers were gated communities and homeowners’ associations who felt they needed to be able to keep an eye on every car traveling in and out of “their” neighborhoods.

Since then, Flock has aggressively courted law enforcement agencies, hoping to become another consumer brand with a lot of cops on board, much like Amazon’s Ring doorbell cameras. The thing about shifting focus from high-end neighborhoods to striking massive deals with cop shops is that nothing much changes when it comes to who’s being targeted.

HOAs and gated communities love to keep unwanted people out. Law enforcement agencies deploy ALPRs to target cities’ least desirable residents. You can add tech to the cop, but you can’t take the inherent bias out of the business of policing.

Take Tulsa’s police force, which recently bought a flock of cameras after a one-year trial. Comparing the map of camera placement with a map of the racial makeup of the city shows cameras are placed exclusively in majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods with none in the wealthy and white midtown neighborhoods. This creates a cycle in which more surveillance in Black and Brown neighborhoods leads to more reports of crime and therefore continuous justification of camera usage.

That’s the same law enforcement agency that’s apparently letting Flock Safety write its press releases for it. Flock’s PR wing is more than happy to produce statements for law enforcement and provides it public sector customers with “Public Information Officer Toolkits” that contain boilerplate for press releases that ensure Flock is credited for its important contribution to public safety. Local news agencies often publish these statements with few alterations, turning their publications into extensions of Flock’s marketing wing.

San Francisco’s police chief claims this rollout won’t create a “surveillance state.” (His exact words, btw.) But those erecting surveillance states rarely consider what they’re doing to be the creation of surveillance state. And even if they do see the surveillance state aspects, the last thing they’ll do is acknowledge this publicly.

Meanwhile, there’s hardly any evidence a massive network of ALPR cameras will do much more than allow law enforcement agencies to maintain a massive database of people’s movements.

Oakland police have had automated license plate readers on 36 patrol cars since 2008 and acknowledged that they got no investigative leads from the license plate readers in 2022, according to the most recent annual report. In that same time period, 34 stolen cars were recovered but no arrests were made.

[…]

BART launched a pilot program of license plate readers – 7 mobile and 2 fixed – at the MacArthur BART parking garage in May. The goal was to catch people breaking into cars and stealing catalytic converters. To date, no arrests have been made. However, BART noted in its annual report that 288 parking citations have been handed out during the pilot phase.

[…]

In response to a public records request, Tiburon said it had no records to disclose regarding arrests or costs relating to its automated license plate readers. However, Tiburon did provide numbers of cars recovered since 2010, when the town installed the cameras: 57 cars were recovered in 13 years – roughly four cars were recovered annually.

Is that sort of success really worth shelling out 2,500−3,000acamera,plusthousandsofdollarsin“maintenance”fees?It’snotlikeit’scheap.Piedmont,California—anaffluentcitywithonly11,000residents—ispaying2,500-3,000 a camera, plus thousands of dollars in “maintenance” fees? It’s not like it’s cheap. Piedmont, California — an affluent city with only 11,000 residents — is paying 2,500−3,000acamera,plusthousandsofdollarsin“maintenance”fees?It’snotlikeit’scheap.Piedmont,California—anaffluentcitywithonly11,000residents—ispaying100,000 in maintenance fees annually to service 39 cameras. The network being set up in San Francisco is ten times that size, which means it likely will be paying at least $1 million a year to Flock just to keep its ALPR network active.

This ALPR network isn’t going to solve San Francisco’s crime problem. While it may score the occasional win, about the only thing residents are guaranteed is that their plate/location records will be stored for extended periods of time and accessed improperly by officers because that’s just what they do when they have access to people’s personal data. And when it fails to do the job the city is paying it to do, it will just move on to the next advancement in surveillance tech, having learned nothing from this experience.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, alpr, license plate readers, license plates, london breed, san francisco, sfpd, surveillance

South Dakota Agrees To Stop Censoring Vanity Plates Following ACLU Lawsuit

from the 1st-A-on-4-wheels! dept

Governments know the difference between right and wrong. It’s just that they often don’t seem to care.

This is a small-ish wrong, but it’s a wrong nonetheless. Like far too many other state bodies charged with policing vanity plate messages, the South Dakota Motor Vehicle Division has a problem giving its tacit blessing to other people’s speech.

Since the selected message (central to this lawsuit is the MVD’s rejection of “REZWEED”) is printed on a government-issued plate, states that want to deter as many vanity plates as possible pretend everyone seeing the plate would assume the government is uttering the phrase “REZWEED.”

But, of course, no one actually thinks that, not even the state officials and the lawyers who represent them. Everyone understands any message on a vanity license plate is one delivered by the purchaser of the plate, not the government they purchased it from.

And that’s how these state agencies ended up being sued. The state Department of Revenue (which apparently has the final call) rejected the “REZWEED” plate requested by resident Lyndon Hart. It did this despite approving other plates that might be considered just as questionable if someone were to presume (stupidly) that a vanity plate’s content implies government support of the brief message the plate contains.

When the government lays down rules but then enforces them inconsistently, it starts creating constitutional problems. The state’s inability to abide by its own statutes was exposed by the ACLU, which represented Lyndon Hart in this lawsuit. Here’s how the state was handling things before it got sued:

It’s OK to be a “HELLCAT,” but not a “HELLBOY.” Don’t tell anybody to “HLDMYBR,” but it’s fine to go on a “BEERRUN.” And don’t say “IH8U,” but “YUH8ME” is acceptable.

Why was “REZWEED” objectionable? Maybe because the state government isn’t all that happy that state residents were able to obtain partial legality of marijuana purchase/use. Governor Kristi Noem asked a bunch of law enforcement agencies to sue on the state’s behalf to get a legal weed referendum approved by popular vote struck down. But she and her state buddies were unable to prevent the legalization of medical marijuana. And the first beneficiaries of medical licenses were the state’s reservations. Hence: REZWEED.

The ACLU said the state’s enforcement of its vanity plate statute was arbitrary and inconsistent. And it was right — something the state has admitted without actually having to admit to having spent years operating an unconstitutional license plate business.

South Dakota will no longer deny personalized license plate requests on the basis that they may “carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency” after the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the state.

[…]

“The standard is deemed severed from the statute and has no force and effect in the issuance of personalized plates or in the recall of any previously issued personalized plate,” the settlement agreement document said.

So, there’s nothing in the consent decree [PDF] forcing the state to admit it unconstitutionally denied plates to residents. But at least the state won’t be able to keep violating the First Amendment moving forward.

The statute is amended will be amended to remove blanket judgments about “good taste and decency.” (The state website still shows the old law, as of prior to this agreement.)

On top of that, the Department of Revenue website must post a notice on its website informing plate owners and purchasers that the new policy will no longer utilize a “good taste and decency standard.” And anyone whose plate was denied in the past can reapply to obtain previously rejected plates.

As for the plaintiff, REZWEED is theirs to keep. And so are these other options, which suggest a fleet of vehicles now capable of advertising/celebrating the availability of medical marijuana via reservation licenses and dispensaries.

The personalized plates “REZWEED”, “REZSMOK”, or “REZBUD” issued to Plaintiff will not be recalled in the future so long as personalized plates are allowed by the legislature and Plaintiff is in continued compliance with all personalized license plate requirements consistent with this Consent Decree.

Let the good times roll. Medical weed is here to stay, it would appear. Fortunately, its arrival has forced the state government to give back the part of the First Amendment it took from citizens when it decided it had the final say on “good taste and decency.”

Filed Under: 1st amendment, license plates, rezweed, south dakota, south dakota mvd, vanity plates

Dear Marin County Board of Supervisors: Reject The Sheriff’s Proposal To Install License Plate Cameras In The County

from the bay-area-big-brother dept

With almost zero public notice, the Board of Supervisors of Marin County, California (just to the north of San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge) is on the verge of approving tomorrow a demand by the county sheriff’s department to install license plate cameras throughout the county. As a county resident, I object. My comment submitted to the board is below.

Dear Marin County Supervisors:

In the last 30 days I have entered the Gateway Shopping Center in Marin City on at least 11/6, 11/21, and 11/24 to get groceries, dine, and purchase other household goods.

None of this information is your business, and it is certainly not the business of the Marin County Sheriff’s Department. But if you authorize their proposal to allow automatic license plate reader cameras to be installed throughout Marin County this location information is exactly the sort they will be able to know about each and every person driving in Marin County, be they residents or their guests.

I have also gone to Strawberry on at least 10/31, 11/7, 11/8, 11/10, 11/15, 11/16, and 11/21, to go grocery shopping, dine, and seek medical care.

As a resident in unincorporated Marin, these places are in my neighborhood and where I need to go to shop, dine, and do the business life requires. It is also the activity businesses in Marin depend on people doing. But if you let the Marin County Sheriff Department hang these cameras, it will be impossible to go to any of these places without them knowing.

I have also regularly driven on Highway 1 to enter Mill Valley. I do not have complete records of these travels, but if you let the Sheriff’s Department hang the cameras where they propose, they will.

And it is not just residents of unincorporated Marin who will have the details of their personal life documented by the police; it will be every single person with any reason to be here in the county, including every lawful one. The proposal preys on fear, such as with the included “crime heat map.” But it is a “heat map” that happens to directly correlate to where people live and conduct business in the county and thus happens to reflect where most activity occurs, including lawful activity, which would all be caught by this camera dragnet too.

The sheriff further proposes to hang cameras on Sir Francis Drake, a major artery through Marin County, providing access to much of central Marin, including countless medical establishments in Greenbrae itself. Do you wish to also know about when I’ve visited doctors there? Soon the sheriff will be able to tell you.

None of this information is something the police are entitled to know. The privacy the United States Constitution affords to be secure in our papers and effects restricts this sort of incursion into the public’s private lives without probable cause that a crime has already been committed so that people can be free to go about their lives, unchilled by the prospect of agents of the state knowing their business without any justification. The sheriff’s department alleges in its paperwork that county counsel has reviewed the proposal, but nothing submitted reflects any coherent practical or legal argument that it is constitutionally appropriate or possible for you to allow the sheriff’s department to invade every resident’s privacy as they so propose. In fact, all of the paperwork submitted is entirely self-serving and supplied by the very government agency that seeks to have this additional power over civilian lives. Nothing more neutral or independent has been provided to the board by any other state or county agency, nor any other civil society organization, who could provide you with the information you need to recognize the immense cost of the proposal in forms other than purely financial.

Granted, I may have little to fear from the cameras the sheriff wants to install in the Oak Manor neighborhood, as I’m rarely there. But the people living in the neighborhood surely go out and about, so soon you will have information about their comings and goings.

However, the sheriff also proposes to have these cameras on the streets approaching the Marin County Civic Center, surrounding the heart of local county government with a moat of surveillance, which means that the sheriff will be able to track every single person who approaches the building for any reason, including to attend public hearings (such as this one), to petition their local government for any reason a resident might need to seek assistance from their local government, or to register to vote. Personally I think it has been more than 30 days since my last visit to this famous Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building (which also contains a public library), but when I make my next visit, the sheriff will know.

The sheriff proposal says it is to help it police against property crime. And no one likes crime. But crime is not the only harm the public can experience. The cameras themselves pose their own, and it is incumbent on this board to recognize how damaging the oversight police are demanding to have over our lives itself is. The reason people worry about equity impact is that there is a very real harm done to the public when they cannot live lives free from police scrutiny. But that effect reaches everyone in the public, not just those the police have a known habit of unduly targeting. With these ubiquitous cameras, every single person in Marin County will have the details of their lives available for the police to scrutinize. No pallor can protect anyone from the harm that can follow to have their lives recorded in police-controlled ledgers because it is that recording itself that is a harm now everyone must incur.

It will be incurred by everyone traveling to central and western Marin on Lucas Valley Road. I last was there more than 30 days ago, on October 22, but the next time I try to attend a concert in Nicasio (or go biking, or go buy cheese) you will have record of it.

And for no good reason. The deterrence effect of these cameras the police tout is overstated. License plate cameras do not magically prevent crime. Crime still happens. Sometimes serious crimes. But instead of looking at how ineffective cameras are, the lesson we’ve learned from the local towns that have already inflicted cameras on us is that their inherent inability to prevent crime tends to just lead to calls for more cameras, because the police’s appetite to know the details of people’s lives is insatiable. They won’t stop here, asking for just these cameras. When crime inevitably happens they will want more: more cameras, in more places, and maybe even other tools that will help them know more about the private details of the lives of the people in this county. After all, if one invests in the fallacy that these cameras will help anything, then there is no limiting principle to think that more such tools won’t similarly be warranted, until there is no place anywhere in Marin where people can go about their lives without being watched by the government.

At least I won’t personally have to worry much about the cameras proposed for the Atherton area near Highway 37, because now that I’ve relocated to southern Marin I’m seldom there. But I used to be there often, and if you’d had the cameras hung then, you’d know.

Because there’s no assurance by any of the hand-waving phrases contained within the proposal to convince you that there are no real concerns raised. For instance, it uses words like, “encryption,” which is indeed important, but also not itself a magic solution for every problem, and which is also useless as a defense for the interests of the public when the police still have the key to all the data. The proposal also includes language saying that the sheriff will own the data, as if that provides any sort of assurance for the public when it is their data that the police want to own. Don’t be fooled by the platitudes; instead recognize them as the smoke and mirrors being deployed to distract from the serious issues license plate cameras raise (and the profit motive of the vendor, who has no reason to care as long as they are paid).

We all will feel the effects, even for cameras hung in places where we visit less frequently. We are still a community, and people come to us as much as we go to them. For instance, I still have friends in the Novato area, and I’m sure you’d be interested to know that I visited one in the Indian Valley area where you plan to have cameras on 11/11, as well as 10/28.

This board should stand up for the rights of its constituents and vote to reject the sheriff’s proposal to install cameras anywhere in the county. But at minimum it should delay any action until there can be greater public input with ample notice. This proposal has been treated like a ministerial budgetary item few in the county would care about evaluating. Indeed the fiscal impact may be relatively minor, although if the sheriff’s department really believes it has money to burn on cameras perhaps that money could be reclaimed for the general budget and better spent on, say, a guidance counselor or other public resources that might actually deter criminality.

But its overall impact is enormous, affecting the lives of every single person in the county. Thus requires everyone to be able to carefully scrutinize what this board plans to do to them if it were to approve the proposal. Yet we can’t; this proposal is getting slipped past us without any meaningful effort to call attention to it commensurate with its impact. The “staff report” item in the agenda, which was written not by county staff but by the sheriff’s department, is itself is dated as of tomorrow, which calls into question whether approval could even be compliance with SB 34 requiring the agency to provide adequate notice to the public before installing these cameras, since the report itself does not even legally exist until the day it appears on the agenda and after the deadline for written comments at 3:30pm on November 27.

The county is certainly capable of providing more conspicuous notice, like as it does every time it wants the public to vote on one of its propositions. And for something this serious, similar advertising efforts are warranted. After all, if this board is inclined to allow the police so much oversight of our lives, then it should do everything possible to ensure that the public is able to provide meaningful oversight of its choices so that we can hold those who make them accountable.

I urge you to vote no on the proposal.

Filed Under: alpr, license plate cameras, license plates, marin, marin county, surveillance

Ninth Circuit Says City’s Rejection Of Man’s ‘FCKBLM’ License Plate Is Totally Constitutional

from the tfw-you-can't-acronym-properly dept

The law surrounding vanity license plates is unsettled, to vastly understate the reality. There’s no consensus across states, much less federal jurisdictions. Every government seems to have its own idea about what’s offensive and what isn’t, as well as its own take on whether a personalized plate is government speech or merely the expression of the person who acquired the plate.

As a result, vanity plates are a gamble. Everything good is probably already taken. And everything else has to run a very subjective gauntlet past reviewers who may see something offensive in the most innocuous combination of numbers and letters.

Consquently, we’ve seen legal battles over “O1NK” (requested by a cop no less), “COPSLIE” (not requested by a cop), “69PWNDU” (no comment), “LOVETOFU” (requested by a tofu lover), and “1NFOS3C” (somehow rejected as a “term of lust or depravity”).

This case — handled in a short, unpublished opinion [PDF] by the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court — finds on the side of the Hawaiian government, which initially released, then rejected, Edward Odquina’s “FCKBLM” license plate. (h/t Courthouse News Service)

The Ninth Circuit says this has nothing to do with what the FCK is directed at, in this case BLM, the recognizable acronym for the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s the FCK itself, which is readily recognizable as shorthand for “fuck,” which the government is free to censor when it comes to personalized plates.

Odquina contends that using profanity or vulgar language is a viewpoint that may not be constitutionally abridged. The district court properly concluded that Odquina’s challenge went to the content of his message, rather than its viewpoint, and that such content-based restrictions are constitutionally permissible.

That’s pretty much it for Odquina. As long as the state DMV consistently rejects FCK — no matter what follows these three letters — it’s making content-based restrictions, which are far more constitutionally acceptable than viewpoint-based restrictions, which would suggest the government is in the business of only approving plates that align with reviewers’ personal views.

While the resolution of this episode is concise, if a bit unsatisfying, there’s more to the story than the end of it. The real fun is the beginning of it. Reading the Courthouse News report on this decision, I happened across this tantalizing bit of info:

Although the city flagged the plate as a “publicly objectionable” message, Odquina explained to City Hall staff that the letters were an acronym for his business. The city eventually approved the plate and gave it to Odquina.

Well, now I had to find out what Odquina’s business name was. Obviously, this was a case of reverse engineering, where Odquina had decided what sentiment he wanted to express via a personalized plate and worked backwards from there. I was not disappointed. In fact, I was extremely amused. It’s far better than I thought it would be.

Tracking down Odquina’s original complaint [PDF], I began looking for the narrative describing this interaction with the DMV over the disputed plate. Lots of the complaint is given over to explaining how much Odquina doesn’t care for the Black Lives Matter movement and how that personal animus led him to request a plate that would allow other drivers to draw the intended inference.

But here’s the good stuff. The stuff I was looking for:

Odquina started and incorporated the business “Film Consulting KravMAGA Bloomberg, LLC” on August 13, 2021 in Hawaii and intended to use the acronym “FCKBLM” to advertise that business.

First off, Odquina started this business seven months after he applied for the plate. He did more than a month after he told a county employee the requested plate was just an acronym for his business — a business he hadn’t even started yet. So, there’s more than one form of reverse engineering going on here.

But Odquina can’t even acronym right. He was apparently so enthralled with his own cleverness, he forgot he was supposed to be building an acronym. I’m sure he felt KravMAGA was [chef’s kiss], but that portmanteau FCKs up his belated attempt to salvage the “legitimacy” of his personalized plate. That’s not “FCKBLM.” That’s “FCKMBL,” my man. And that is somehow even stupider than trumpeting your antipathy towards Black Lives Matter by utilizing a letter combination pretty much universally rejected by DMVs everywhere (including this one).

If you’re into that sort of thing, his filing also contains his “business” website. The pages take forever to load, but at least the welcome page contains something that can be abbreviated to “FCKBLM” correctly.

Someone at some point may come up with a better challenge to Hawaii’s personalized plate rules. This result is just the expected endpoint of someone litigating because they’re angry, not because they have a case. And, as local news continues to report, Odquina has decided these legal losses don’t require him to abide with local laws, so he’s spent the last couple of years driving around in a (ridiculous) unregistered vehicle just to own the libs.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 9th circuit, edward odquina, fckblm, hawaii, license plates, offensive language

Nevada Government Begs For A Lawsuit After Rejecting Resident’s ‘GOBK2CA’ License Plate

from the W8WUT dept

There aren’t many sites with “tech” in their names that provide this much discussion on the First Amendment implications of vanity plate laws. Maybe it’s just us.

Or maybe it’s just (mostly) me.

Whatever the case, I find it fascinating that so many state governments have so many restrictions on what people can express via their personalized plates, when it’s patently clear those messages are personal, rather than a form of government speech simply because the letter/number combinations are displayed on a government-issued plate.

The government is welcome to restrict its own speech. No one — not even the Constitution — cares how much the government limits its own expression. But when it reaches across this divide to govern how people can express themselves with their personal plates on their personal property, things get more complicated.

The government can’t really regulate bumper stickers or window decals. It can try, but it’s often going to be in the wrong if it decides it can regulate personal expression just because it occurs in a public space.

Most people aren’t willing to make a literal federal case out of their rejected plates. But those who do are often able to demonstrate governments are impermissibly regulating protected speech under the mistaken assumption that the delivery system utilized for these messages (state-issued license plates) allows them to bypass the Constitution.

Nevada’s Department of Motor Vehicles seems to be priming itself for a federal fight. It has revoked a driver’s personalized plate because it might possibly offend certain people. The plate doesn’t target any protected groups. Instead, it simply suggests certain state residents should stay in their own state, rather than wander further inland.

A Nevada motorist’s license plate is the subject of a recall by the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.

A plate that reads “GOBK2CA,” or “Go back to California,” was recalled in May by the agency after it received a complaint, according to DMV spokesman Eli Rohl.

Nevada’s DMV has posted guidelines that show what is/isn’t acceptable for personalized plates. This is its list of forbidden content:

The Department will consider recalling any personalized license plate that:

This is all very overbroad, especially the last bullet point on the DMV’s list. The state is not required to prove the rejected plate is defamatory. It only has to believe it is. And this belief covers pretty much everyone everywhere with no connection at all to actual libel law.

Most people don’t actually understand defamation, preferring it to believe anything they don’t personally care for crosses the line into libel. Unfortunately, government officials, who should at least be somewhat informed about the laws and legal tenets they’re espousing/enforcing, don’t seem to have the slightest idea what defamation actually is.

Here’s the DMV’s spokeman’s defense of the DMV’s actions:

“In this case, the defamed group is Californians. Mr. Steelmon’s plate is not unique in this; we regularly turn down plates that share the same messages,” Rohl wrote in an email. “If we’ve been rejecting applications for other ‘back to California’ plates, then it’s not an equal application of the law to receive a complaint about this plate and neglect to take action on it.”

But Californians haven’t been defamed. And even if they have (they haven’t), they’re welcome (they’re not) to engage in a class action defamation lawsuit (this sort of thing doesn’t actually exist because defamation must target individuals to be actionable) against the DMV and/or the plate recipient. If there’s no legal cause of action (there isn’t) for this alleged defamation, there’s no legal basis for this DMV rule. Sure, the DMV can try to prevent drivers from defaming individuals via license plates, but it doesn’t have any legal basic for this rejection which is wholly based on defamation that simply does not exist.

Even if the DMV was in the right here (it clearly isn’t), its plate rejection track record clearly indicates its vetting crew has no idea what it’s looking for, much less what common acronyms mean. Equitable enforcement is one thing. Ignorant enforcement is quite another.

I mean, just try to wrap your head around these DMV interpretations:

BBDUBYA – requester said it was a “childhood nickname,” DMV claimed it was “drug related,” citing the presence of the letters “DUB,” which it insisted was slang for “doobie”

3RIAN – requester: “BRIAN”, DMV: “sounds like Arian – Arian Brotherhood”

H8CVD – requester: “hate COVID,” DMV: “Inappropriate: Hate Covid” [_Ed. note: what the fucking fuck_]

QFHR1 – requester: “quick fix home repairs,” DMV: “looks like ‘off her’ – Kill her”

BUYSHIB – requester: “Means buy forms of crypto currency) [reference to Dogecoin, which converted an internet meme into a Bitcoin also-ran], DMV: “Looks like ‘B**ch you be’ backwards” [_Ed.: the goddamn fuck is going on here_]

GOTRUMP – requester: “For couragement” [_direct quote here, but we all know what it means_], DMV: “Sexual – Got Rump, got Butt, got Ass” [_never mind, the DMV doesn’t know what it means_]

P0P0B8 – requester: “Police Bait” [_license plate request for a “Classic Rod” plate designation_], DMV: “Popo is slang for police, b8 is be ate which is slang for oral sex” [_half right but then incredibly, stupidly wrong on the second half_]

So, as we can clearly see, the DMV has no idea what the fuck it’s doing, much less capable of handling all these rules in an fair, nondiscriminatory, non-stupid fashion. Because it’s routinely terrible in its interpretation of plate meanings or intent, it clearly isn’t qualified to determine what is or isn’t “defamatory.” Sure, it could argue it just rejects anything its squad of under-qualified staffers deem inappropriate, but that’s only going to show it routinely engages in censorship, rather than steer clear of potential First Amendment issues.

At this point, there’s no ruling from the Ninth Circuit one way or the other on license plate programs that might prove dispositive should this Nevada resident sue. But the plate requester does at least have a federal court ruling that said California’s restrictions on personalized plates were unconstitutional. And those restrictions were even broader than the ones being misused (and misinterpreted) by Nevada’s DMV.

Going BK2CA might be the best move for Mr. Steelmon. If California can’t do it this way, odds are Nevada can’t either. If the state wants to generate federal precedent against it, it should definitely continue to prevent this driver from taking possession of his clearly lawful license plate.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, dmv, gobk2ca, license plates, nevada

Tennessee Appeals Court Says Vanity License Plates Are Likely Protected Speech

from the SUCKIT dept

There have been lots of legal battles fought over proprietary blends of numbers and letters. States collecting a premium for vanity plates claim this is government speech, since it’s a state-issued plate. Or, if it’s not quite government speech, it’s the government’s tacit approval of this speech, even if the vanity plate really only contains statements made by plate owners.

There’s no unified take on license plates, even if the Supreme Court has (sort of) weighed in on the matter. That decision dealt with “specialty plates,” which involve driver-generated designs, rather than driver-generated phrases placed on government-designed plates. That difference matters. But the ruling in Walker isn’t conclusive enough to prevent nearly every court dealing with this issue to come to different conclusions.

This decision [PDF], brought to us by the lawyer who won this part of the battle, First Amendment lawyer Daniel Horwitz (almost a Techdirt regular at this point), sides with the driver. Tennessee resident Leah Gilliam applied for a vanity plate more than a decade ago. She was granted a vanity plate reading “69PWNDU” on January 31, 2011. Nothing happened for more than 10 years.

Then this happened:

On May 7, 2021, the Department’s then-Chief of Staff, Justin Moorhead, received a text message on his personal cell phone containing a picture of Plaintiff’s license plate. The message stated: “If I could take a moment of personal privilege and acknowledge the tireless work that Justin does for his department[.] I commend you sir[.]” Mr. Moorhead responded: “Hahah thank you for your citizen[’]s report[.]” Thereafter, Mr. Moorhead brought Plaintiff’s license plate to the attention of the Inventory Unit. The Department reviewed the plate, determined it was erroneously issued to Plaintiff, and revoked it.

That decision to follow up on a text message by revoking a plate that had provided the state with a decade’s-worth of vanity plate fees resulted in this lawsuit. The trial court handed down a rejection of the Gilliam’s constitutional claims.

The panel held that the alphanumeric configurations on vanity license plates are government speech because they convey government agreement with the message displayed. Further, license plates are “government mandated, government controlled, and government issued IDs that have traditionally been used as a medium for government speech.” Inasmuch as the message on the plate amounts to government speech, the panel concluded that the “Free Speech Clause . . . does not regulate government speech[,]” and thus “[t]he constitutional rights the Plaintiff claims in her complaint to have been violated are not triggered or implicated[.]”

The state Appeals Court, however, is not so sure. There’s a lot on the record that says the state definitely knows the messages on vanity plates are not government speech. And it knows this because it said as much during its testimony. Further, it’s painfully clear that any other driver reading a vanity plate knows it’s not speech originating from the government.

[T]he State posits that the message is simply one of identification. That is, regardless of the alphanumeric configuration, the “government message” is that the vehicle is lawfully registered with the State. On the other hand, Plaintiff claims that there is no evidence the State has ever used vanity license plates to communicate with the public. To this, the State avers that our analysis should focus on “the medium of expression, not the history of a ‘program’ related to the medium.”

The State’s argument does not hold water. The State wants to focus on the medium, but what is at issue here, specifically, is the alphanumeric configuration as opposed to the background of a specialized plate, the sticker communicating the month registration expires, or the state the plate belongs to. Vanity plates (that is, the use of personalized alphanumeric configurations chosen by the public) did not come into existence until 1998, and since then they communicate what the individual driver, not the government, chooses.

The court hammers this point home after addressing more of the state’s futile, contradictory arguments:

[W]e are unpersuaded by the State’s position that it historically has communicated an “ID” message through the alphanumeric configurations on license plates. If this were true, the message on the vanity plates would be inapposite, and the State would have no incentive to regulate said messages. Stated differently, to the extent the unique alphanumeric configuration serves only to identify a vehicle as lawfully registered, then it is unclear why the State has an interest in the phonetic message.

Don’t be obtuse, says the court:

We are unpersuaded that citizens, upon viewing messages such as BIGRACK, TOPLS69, and WYTRASH, affixed to personal vehicles believe that the State is conveying a message to the public.

So, if it’s not the government’s speech, it’s citizens’ speech. And there are limits to how the government can regulate this, even if the speech is borne by an object issued by the state.

Even if the government can regulate this speech, it can’t do it the way the state is doing it. To avoid constitutional issues, the regulation should, at the very least, be consistent. And it’s anything but that when Tennessee engages in policing vanity plates.

Although the statutory framework allows the Department to approve or deny vanity license plate messages, the record establishes that in reality, the Department’s oversight has been inconsistent. Plaintiff displayed the vanity plate at issue for a decade before the Department revoked it. Had an acquaintance of Mr. Moorhead not photographed the plate and texted the photo to Mr. Moorhead, it is unknown whether the plate would have been revoked at all. Further, the Department has no written policies about how to screen vanity plate applications for “good taste and decency.” Rather, the record shows that the approval process depends largely upon the judgment of the particular Inventory Unit team member reviewing the application that particular day.

The case will head back to the lower court with specific instructions to actually engage with the First Amendment issues raised and the appeals court’s discussion of these issues.

[P]er this Court’s decision, the panel will have to re-evaluate Plaintiff’s claims in an entirely different framework, to-wit, the strictures of the First Amendment and forum analysis.

Does this mean the lower court will find the regulation of vanity plates unconstitutional? That’s not guaranteed. But there’s a far better chance it will find in favor of Horwitz and his client, considering the state’s arguments to the contrary have been punctured brutally and repeatedly by the higher court. And if Tennessee is really worried about possibly being viewed as the source of off-color phonetics, it could just end the vanity plate program and try to get by with a little less revenue.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, daniel horwitz, free speech, license plates, tennessee, vanity plates

States Are Rolling Out Massive ALPR Networks To Take Down Dangerous… Uninsured Drivers

from the traffic-enforcement-is-truly-the-new-homicide-division dept

There’s a new player in the automated license plate reader arena. Rekor Systems is a bit different. While it does sell its own cameras, it also sells software that turns existing cameras into plate readers. It recently contributed a couple of sponsored posts to Police1 touting its ability to fight all sorts of dangerous crime.

Rekor’s system makes it easy for officers to detect and apprehend stolen/wanted vehicles. But ease of use is just the beginning: By apprehending stolen/wanted cars sooner, police departments can actually prevent crime.

About three-quarters of crimes involving the use of a motor vehicle before, during or after the offense are committed using a stolen vehicle.

According to Rekor, this will also contribute to officer safety because “too many times” officers are “assaulted or even killed” during “routine roadside checks.” To be sure, the number of times this has happened is greater than zero. But it’s not the epidemic Rekor implies it is as it pitches its products. Policing in America remains a pretty safe occupation, considering the job revolves around apprehending criminals.

What kind of crime is Rekor preventing? Its other sponsored post suggests it’s not so much preventing crime as just relocating it. Somehow, the “prosperous bedroom community” of Mt. Juliet, Tennessee (pop. 35,000) has convinced itself it needs 39 Rekor cameras to police its streets. According to local cops, criminals were driving into Mt. Juliet to do crimes. And now this network of cameras is leading to dozens of arrests.

“We’ve surpassed 100 successful interceptions,” said [MJPD Captain Tyler] Chandler. “We’ve recovered over 60 stolen cars, 36 stolen plates, four stolen trailers, two missing juveniles and 40 wanted persons.”

Sounds great. But here’s what Rekor is also enabling: widespread surveillance of drivers largely for the purpose of generating revenue.

The Oklahoma District Attorneys Council launched the Uninsured Vehicle Enforcement Program (UVED) in 2018 in an attempt to clamp down on uninsured drivers. Rekor and the council tout the program as a relative improvement for the uninsured. Instead of receiving a criminal court summons and a $250 fine, uninsured motorists captured by Rekor’s cameras, which are mounted on utility poles and mobile trailers, are sent a violation notice to their home, hit with a $174 citation, and must enroll in an insurance policy through Rekor’s insurance portal. “It’s keeping that person out of the court system,” Rekor Executive Vice President Charles Deglimini told OneZero. “The District Attorney’s Council set this program up in Oklahoma to declaw this tremendous amount of friction that’s caused by uninsured motor vehicle accidents.”

It’s not so much keeping someone out of the court system as it is funneling more revenue directly to Rekor. Rather than obtain insurance using whatever method they’d prefer, drivers are forced to route their purchase through Rekor, which presumably harvests as much personal info as possible while providing this “service.”

And it’s not really a diversion from the court system. If the person can’t afford the citation or is unable to acquire insurance through Rekor’s portal, they’re still going to end up facing criminal charges. The state claims prosecutorial discretion will be exercised when people are truly unable to pay, but that’s something that tends to work a whole lot worse in practice than in theory.

For all the money that’s gone into it, the uninsured driver (surveillance) program isn’t really solving the problem it’s supposed to be addressing. Perhaps more distressingly (at least for state officials and Rekor), there hasn’t been much return on investment.

So far, the UVED program hasn’t achieved its ambitious goals. In 2015, the Insurance Information Institute estimated 10.5% of drivers were uninsured in Oklahoma. By 2019, that figure rose to 13.4%. In 2017, Sensys Gatso Group predicted that it would issue 20,000 notices per month. By the end of its two-year contract, according to Couch, about 90,300 notices had been sent in total. In 2020, Gatso announced that the program was not economically feasible because the overall enrollment rate from uninsured drivers was low. To date, Couch said, the program has enrolled “over 25,000 citizens.”

Then there’s the insurance itself. Rates often have nothing to do with how clean your driving record is. Instead, it relies on other factors like zip code, credit score, and occupation. This means that drivers in Oklahoma (and elsewhere in the nation) with low credit scores and no serious moving violations can pay more than drivers with higher credit scores and multiple violations.

Drivers aren’t driving without insurance because they’re anarchists trying to stick it to the system. In almost every case, it’s simply because they can’t afford it. Stacking fines and fees on top of preexisting money problems isn’t going to suddenly turn things around for uninsured drivers. That much can be observed in the low response rate to the citations sent out by the Rekor-powered surveillance network. And the whole things is at odds with Rekor’s sales pitches that emphasize the system’s ability to identify and take down dangerous criminals.

Filed Under: alpr, insurance, license plates, surveillance
Companies: rekor

Federal Court Strikes Down California's Ban On 'Offensive' License Plates

from the California-drivers-will-now-have-to-be-offended-on-their-own-dime dept

License plate rules are weird. Vanity plates are something anyone can obtain for a fee to personalize their vehicle… just as long as they follow a set of shifting rules arbitrarily enforced by their license plate overseers. There’s a lot of talk about only forbidding what’s “objectively” offensive, but digging around in DMV databases — as several litigants have done — show there are a lot of rejections based on DMV employees’ subjective ideas of what is or isn’t offensive.

That’s how we end up with ridiculous rejections like forbidding a former cop from tagging his own car with a self-deprecating “O1NK.” On the other end of the spectrum, a man wanting to state the truth about law enforcement dishonesty saw his “COPSLIE” plate rejected. Ultimately, he prevailed — thanks to a state Supreme Court ruling. But what did he win? Most likely, just a future filled with pretextual traffic stops.

It’s a weird interaction of government and free speech, where citizens’ free speech is tempered by the limitations imposed on government property the government mandates they must place on their vehicles. But the most disingenuous argument is that allowing “offensive” vanity plates — plates that are inherently the expression of citizens who choose to pay extra for a personalized plate — might give stupider constituents the impression the state government approves of the messages displayed on [checks notes] residents’ personal vehicles.

Logic would dictate personalized plates reflect the opinions of the person paying for them. Courtroom logic is still all over the place, thanks mainly to the fact the government prints the plates. Is a normal plate — one obtained after all personalized attempts are rejected — compelled speech? Probably not. But there’s definitely a First Amendment argument to be made that rejecting “offensive” personalized plates is the government deciding only certain forms of car-specific speech are acceptable.

A federal judge has decided California’s rejection of “offensive” vanity plates violates the First Amendment. To do so, the court looked at Supreme Court precedent involving trademark registrations. In a case decided in 2017, the Supreme Court sided with a band calling itself “The Slants,” a name that appropriated derogatory slang aimed at those of Asian descent. The Asian-American band hoped to reclaim a term its members may have been subjected to, but USPTO was of the firm belief anything considered “offensive” should be rejected out of hand. The Supreme Court disagreed, finding this to be “viewpoint discrimination” — a violation of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court invalidated the Lanham Act’s prohibition on “immoral or scandalous” trademark registrations two years later in its Brunetti decision.

Both cases are cited in this decision [PDF], which says the state’s restrictions on speech are arbitrary and unjustifiable under the First Amendment. (h/t Courthouse News Service)

The court first runs down the list of things forbidden by the California DMV, which is everything it considers to be “offensive to good taste and decency.”

1. The configuration has a sexual connotation or is a term of lust or depravity.

2. The configuration is a vulgar term; a term of contempt, prejudice, or hostility; an insulting or degrading term; a racially degrading term; or an ethnically degrading term.

3. The configuration is a swear word or term considered profane, obscene, or repulsive.

4. The configuration has a negative connotation to a specific group.

5. The configuration misrepresents a law enforcement entity.

6. The configuration has been deleted from regular series license plates.

7. The configuration is a foreign or slang word or term, or is a phonetic spelling or mirror image of a word or term falling into the categories described in subdivisions 1. through 6. Above.

It must be noted DMV plate request reviewers familiarize themselves with unfamiliar slang via at least one credible source.

Third, “[i]f the configuration represents an unfamiliar slang term, foreign word, or acronym, or may be otherwise offensive,” the reviewer conducts “additional research.” This research includes the use of online resources such as Urban Dictionary, Google, and Google Translate.

The plaintiffs in this case represent a pretty decent cross-section of Californians. All of them had their plates rejected by the DMV.

Plaintiffs Paul Ogilvie, James Blair, Amrit Kohli, Andrea Campanile, and Paul Crawford are California residents whose requests for personalized license plates were denied by the DMV under Section 206.00(c)(7)(D). Ogilvie is an Army veteran who requested the plate configuration “OGWOOLF,” which reflects his military nickname, “OG,” and “his longtime interest in wolves.” The DMV denied this configuration because it “contained a gang reference.” Blair, a “long-time fan of the rock band ‘Slayer,’” requested the configuration “SLAAYRR.” The DMV rejected his submission on the ground that it “may be considered threatening, aggressive, or hostile.” Kohli is “gay and established Queer Folks Records in an effort to reclaim the word ‘Queer.’” The DMV rejected his request for the configuration “QUEER” because it “may be considered insulting, degrading, or expressing contempt for a specific group or person.” Campanile, who owns two Ducati motorcycles, requested the configuration “DUK N A,” which she intended to mean “Ducati and Andrea.” The DMV rejected the configuration because it “is a swear word, looks or sounds like a swear word, or represents a term or phrase that may be considered profane or obscene.” Crawford owns Shakespeare Pub, whose slogan is, “Real beer, proper food, no bollocks.” The DMV rejected his proposed configuration of “BO11LUX” because the configuration “has a discernable sexual connotation or may be construed to be of a sexual nature.”

Appended to that is this comical footnote, quoting DMV Director Steve Gordon’s sworn statements.

Gordon explains that “Campanile’s ‘DUK N A’ plate is one letter away from ‘FUK N A,’ which is profane.”

The court says the DMV’s guidelines closely track with the USPTO restrictions the Supreme Court previously found unconstitutional.

First, the Court holds that California’s prohibition on personalized license plate configurations “that may carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency” constitutes viewpoint discrimination under Tam and Brunetti. Kohli, who identifies as gay and established “Queer Folk Records” and the music label “Queer Folk” – which is trademarked by the United States Patent and Trademark Office – describes his “effort to reclaim the word ‘Queer’” in a manner that mirrors Tam’s efforts to “drain [‘slants’ of] its denigrating force.” The DMV’s determination that “QUEER” “may be considered insulting, degrading, or expressing contempt for a specific group or person,” and thus “may be considered offensive,” ECF No. 41-15 at 2, reflects both the assessment of a viewpoint – an assessment that may or may not be correct, depending on the context – and the regulation’s effect of “disfavoring ‘ideas that offend.’” Brunetti, 139 S. Ct. at 2301 (summarizing the Tam holding). This is “discriminat[ion] against speech based on the ideas or opinions it conveys.”

The court also says the law isn’t specific enough to minimize intrusions on protected expression. While the code provides a list of things the DMV won’t allow, plate screeners are instructed to go beyond the listed restrictions when vetting plate applications.

The regulation states that the DMV “shall refuse any configuration that may carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency, or which would be misleading, based on criteria which include[], but [are] not limited to” the more specific subparts. Cal. Code Regs. tit. 13, § 206.00(c)(7)(D) (emphasis added). In addition, the DMV denial codes instruct reviewers to deny categories of speech that are not enumerated in the subparts. Configurations that the DMV has decided “may carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency,” include those that contain a “reference to drugs,” a reference “to guns, weaponry, shooting, or an instrument normally used to inflict harm,” or “a number, color, phrase, or code commonly used to represent gang affiliation.” Such categories of speech are not delineated in Section 206.00(c)(7)(D)’s subparts.

The court says the DMV’s standards aren’t actually standards. The word “standard” usually suggests consistent application. But the record shows the DMV is all over the place when it comes to approvals and denials.

For example, the current denial codes explain that “the number 69 is restricted to use on 1969 model vehicles only.” In keeping with this policy, the license plate 1969Z was issued for a 1969 Camaro Z28, and the following plates were denied: 65VET69 (which the applicant explained was meant to represent “veteran from 1966 to 1969”); and 698 (which the applicant explained was to stand for June 1998). However, three other license plate configurations were denied despite the applicants explaining that 69 was the year each vehicle was made. Id. (69LUIE); ECF No. 41-23 at 4 (F9 69); id. at 8 (69MXNVW). And the license plate “SEPT369” was issued to an applicant who explained that it was his/her birthday. Finally, 69 LUV N – arguably the configuration most likely to be interpreted as a sexual reference – was accepted because the applicant described the meaning as “loving my 69 GMC.” The Court therefore finds that even the straightforward ban on the number 69 has been arbitrarily applied.

The same goes for other abbreviations and acronyms. The state approved “DUK N GO” but rejected the plaintiff’s “DUK N A.” If approved OG 69LRK but rejected OGWOOLF. The DMV can’t explain these inconsistencies. And this routine inconsistency is the reason it’s unconstitutional.

The fact that initial reviewers are reversed on appeal “approximately 65 to 75 percent of the time,” id. at 31, supports the Court’s conclusion that the DMV’s “haphazard interpretations” of Section 206.00(c)(7)(D) apparent in the record are not anomalous, Minn. Voters, 138 S. Ct. at 1888. The Court therefore concludes that the DMV has failed “to articulate [a] sensible basis for distinguishing what may come in from what must stay out,” and holds Section 206.00(c)(7)(D) to be unreasonable.

The haphazardly enforced law is now the illegal-to-enforce law.

The Court declares that Section 206.00(c)(7)(D)’s ban of personalized license plate configurations “offensive to good taste and decency” violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The DMV will still be able to block profanities but the rest of its enforcement will have to be viewpoint-neutral. Certain letter combinations can still be banned, but they’ll be banned for everyone, not just those reviewers subjectively believe are aiming to offend.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, california, dmv, free speech, license plates, offensive speech

Automatic License Plate Readers Are The Latest Neighborhood Perk

from the neighborhood-watch-on-electronic-steroids dept

Round-the-clock surveillance is becoming a part of everyday life here in the United States. Unfortunately, unlike CCTV-infested London, the steady influx of cameras in the US is the result of police-private company partnerships and the efforts of friends and neighbors.

Ring, owned by Amazon, has nailed down 95% of the growing doorbell/camera market. Its growth is largely due to its partnerships with law enforcement agencies which acquire the cameras for cheap and hand them out for free to residents. The implication is that the recipient of a free doorbell camera will be willing to help out law enforcement in the future… or at least share footage regularly on Ring’s snitch app so cops don’t have to ask for it.

Ring’s control of the market comes paired with control of law enforcement agencies. Ring writes press releases, provides portals for footage requests, and requires cops to run statements and comments past the company before releasing them to the public.

A doorbell camera is the obvious extension of private surveillance. People have been installing their own security cameras for years. But prior to this, installing security cameras didn’t involve picking up the tech from cop shops. However, the new growth market for homegrown surveillance uses tech that used to be exclusively reserved for government agencies: automatic license plate readers.

ALPRs are the new peering through the blinds suspiciously. Entities with an interest in knowing everything that goes on in their neighborhoods are the early adopters. Who thinks they need to be all up in everybody’s business? Well, it’s entities that have been all up in everybody’s business for years: homeowners associations and those residing in gated communities. The justification is crime prevention, but it’s happening in neighborhoods where crime is the exception, rather than the rule. And it’s being instituted without the explicit permission of those now involuntarily participating in private surveillance projects.

It’s not just for HOAs and gated communities any more. A new report by Sam Dean of the LA Times shows ALPRs are being deployed by any private citizen with the cash on hand and the desire to do so. Again, claims of safety and crime prevention are being made, but the ALPR installation covered here is deployed in one of Los Angeles’ safest suburbs. (h/t Elizabeth Joh)

On a quiet road south of Ventura Boulevard, two cameras on a pole watch over the road, facing opposite directions.

A block away, another brace of cameras sit sentry. Together, they constantly film the two points of entry to a closed loop of public streets in Sherman Oaks.

Nearby, on a dual-screen setup in the basement of his hillside home, Robert Shontell pulls up hundreds of snippets of footage captured by the cameras earlier that day. Each shows a car, time-stamped and tagged with the make, model, paint color and license plate.

In this case, residents pooled funds to buy the cameras. Flock Safety is the pioneer in this domestic surveillance sector and its cameras run about $2,000 per, including use of its plate-cataloging software. The company addresses privacy concerns by stating that only purchasers have access to photos and footage. But that’s essentially meaningless when camera users are free to turn it over to anyone they want to, including law enforcement. Also, there’s not much “privacy” when 30 different households have access to the footage, as is the case here.

Flock’s head of marketing says its cameras are solving “two crimes a day.” I suppose that’s better than none at all, but this aggressive push for regular people to adopt and deploy surveillance tech against friends, neighbors, and anyone else who might wander into these neighborhoods ultimately makes it easier for the government to roll out more pervasive surveillance of its own. It’s pretty hard to argue against the government’s encroachment when you’re in the encroachment business yourself.

Filed Under: alpr, license plates, neighborhood watch, surveillance

from the lojacking-humans dept

License plate readers are everywhere. Their existence is predicated on the assumption that traveling on public roads strips drivers of their privacy. To a certain extent this is true. But automation allows government agencies to reconstruct peoples’ lives and movements by simply typing in a plate number and accessing the billions of image/location data records stored by ALPR manufacturers like Vigilant.

But it’s not just a government thing. The new market for plate readers is residential neighborhoods, with purchases being made by home owners associations and others who feel they have a right to know who’s traveling in and out of “their” neighborhoods.

Prior to this, though, ALPRs were already being utilized extensively by private entities. Insurance companies and repossession firms have been using plate readers for years, using them to track down vehicles after missed payments or those suspected of insurance fraud. Unlike the databases compiled by law enforcement agencies, these private databases can be accessed by nearly anyone for any reason.

That’s exactly what Motherboard did. It found someone willing to offer up their license plate as a lab rat to see how much data was being harvested by a repo company’s plate readers and ran a search.

Armed with just a car’s plate number, the tool—fed by a network of private cameras spread across the country—provides users a list of all the times that car has been spotted. I gave the private investigator, who offered to demonstrate the capability, a plate of someone who consented to be tracked.

It was a match.

The results popped up: dozens of sightings, spanning years. The system could see photos of the car parked outside the owner’s house; the car in another state as its driver went to visit family; and the car parked in other spots in the owner’s city. Each was tagged with the time and GPS coordinates of the car. Some showed the car’s location as recently as a few weeks before. In addition to photos of the vehicle itself, the tool displayed the car’s accurate location on an easy to understand, Google Maps-style interface.

Unlike government databases, there are no rules protecting citizens from misuse or limiting long-term storage of plate photos. All that’s preventing abuse is the limited language of each company’s terms of service — something these companies don’t seem to spend too much time enforcing. Digital Recognition Network’s (DRN) offering is “crowdsourced” from thousands of cameras mounted on hundreds of repo men’s vehicles. It’s a persistent, long-term database of vehicle movements controlled by a single company — one that law enforcement also has access to, as if government agencies needed any more access to plate data.

It’s also surprisingly cheap. 15,000getsdriversafour−camerasetupandaccesstotheDRNdatabase.Searchesgofor15,000 gets drivers a four-camera setup and access to the DRN database. Searches go for 15,000getsdriversafour−camerasetupandaccesstotheDRNdatabase.Searchesgofor20 per and paying $70 for a search provides the searcher with live updates when a searched plate is snagged by a plate reader. Customers love it. So do repossession outfits, whose drivers earn bonuses for racking up plate photos. And DRN loves the data it collects, which it packages for sale through other programs, like one specifically marketed to private investigators.

The potential for abuse is real. The Motherboard report notes that members of a closed Facebook group for private investigators was filled with messages asking others to run plates for them. DRN’s official line on abuse prevention is pretty much a jargon-filled shrug.

Notably, DRN does not immediately ban someone for abusing the service, according to the contract. It reads that if DRN determines or suspects that the user has used the data for personal or non-business purposes, “Licensor [DRN] shall notify Licensee in writing of the alleged breach and give Licensee an opportunity to cure any curable breaches within 30 days of Licensee’s receipt of such notice; thereafter Licensor may take immediate action, including, without limitation, terminating the delivery of, and the license to use, the Licensed Data.”

There may be no “expectation of privacy” in driving on public streets. But I think most Americans would consider their privacy violated by the existence of a product that reconstructs their lives for the low, low price of $20 a search. Given that these companies are also selling access to law enforcement, they may yet find a way to trip over the Fourth Amendment. But until a company like DRN does, it’s just another company doing what so many tech companies do best: harvest and sell data.

Filed Under: alpr, bounty hunters, license plates, location data, privacy