SMILE, AMERICA.
Come to
Charlotte for the Democratic National Convention in September, 2012, and you’ll
likely be caught on many surveillance cameras, Department of Transportation
cameras, and License Plate Readers mushrooming all over the City.
Total spending on all surveillance cameras, monitors,
processors, data storage, IT personnel, maintenance, police and other personnel
to operate the equipment, legal costs, and other costs are unknown at this
time. CMPD reports a “new $1.73 million
video observation center” in addition to a new multi-agency Command Center
similarly outfitted with surveillance and communication equipment.
 |
| Car-mounted reader like CMPD uses |
Most recently though, Charlotte’s City Council approved $209,268 of Asset Forfeiture spending for
License Plate Readers on March 26, 2012.
Then on Monday, May 14, 2012, Council approved
another $606,871 to be spent against a Federal USAI (Urban Area Security Initiative Grant) Grant to purchase automated license plate readers and related
equipment from an existing unit price contract with NDI Recognition
Systems as well. That contract was approved by City Council on June
9, 2008 and
was
for an initial three-year term with two additional one-year terms. That
money will be spent on:
·
Five automated license plate processors
·
37 cameras and cables
·
Related
equipment
·
Installation
·
Maintenance
·
Site
licensing
The new equipment
enables CMPD to expand its use of automated license plate readers throughout
the city.
The city’s explanation for the AF purchase includes:
Staff Resource: Harold Medlock, Police
CMPD began using automated license plate
readers in 2008 to capture license plate information and vehicle descriptions.
The data is used for comparison against stolen or wanted vehicle alerts listed
with the National Crime Information
Center. The data has proven to be a
useful investigative and predictive tool
for police.
Police want to appropriate $209,268 in assets
forfeiture funds to purchase four mobile automated license plate readers and
two portable “rapid deployment” automated license plate reader systems. These
devices are an extension of the automated license plate reader system now being
used in four CMPD patrol vehicles. The new technology provides more flexibility
in deployment of the license plate readers.
Wording of
“and predictive tool” indicates police will use stored data. If they only stored data of known criminal
activity, there wouldn’t be cause for concern.
However, the Automated License Plate Readers, called ALPR’s or just
LPR’s, read and take in enormous amounts of data about the travels and associations
of innocent citizens.
There was not one minute of public
debate, information, or question in advance of these “consent” items to
purchase and install surveillance equipment all over the city with absolutely
no controls on their use.
There has
been no mention in any network news or paper to be found about the installation
of these stationary and mounted cameras all over Charlotte, collecting and
storing millions of records of travel data of Charlotte’s citizens and
visitors.
COSTS
The other interesting note in the city’s explanation for purchase is “The data ‘has proven’ to be a useful investigative and predictive tool for
police.” What
use has there been to justify spending this money, nearly a million dollars,
plus all the money dating back to 2008 on LPR’s?
May the citizens of
Charlotte see this proof that is offered and discuss if it’s the best use of
police funds? Maybe the money could have
accomplished the same license benefits and also hired more officers, provided
wider training, better safety equipment for officers, raises, or some other
good use. It’s a lot of money.
WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH OUR DATA?
If you read
this previous citynewswatch post, you saw that the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for mobile LPR operation is dated 4/29/11 and
was only available by searching through a research institution’s web site. This SOP for car-mounted LPR’s is not located
on Charmeck.org in the same area as all other (known) SOP’s.
There is no known SOP to cover stationary, mounted
LPR camera units at all. Since we are
about to purchase at least 5 additional processors along with 37 cameras, you
can bet CMPD is planning on collecting lots more citizen records, but they
haven’t even proposed what they want
to do with them. No one has asked for
any public input, debate or permission—except that City Council has already
approved the purchase offline.
There should be debate about whether to store ANY
data, and if so, for how long. Any
information not related to a criminal investigation should not be stored and
should not be shared. The car-mounted
LPR SOP contains instructions that all records collected will be stored for at
least 18 months, which is much too long.
Mounting the units in
particular areas brings about yet a new dimension to privacy concerns because
the police/government would then be choosing to target certain populations for
monitoring and data collection. If you
happen to drive past one of these targeted area cameras frequently, your information
will be accumulated faster than that of others.
CITYNEWSWATCH EXPOSED LPR PLANS, CMPD WENT ON PR
CAMPAIGN
After citynewswatch exposed plans to purchase and install more cameras just before
the very quiet City Council funding actions noted above, CMPD seemed to be on a
PR campaign to tell us how much we need the LPR’s and how great they are. They fed certain limited information to a local television station claiming the cameras were brand new and were being
used because of a tremendous spike noticed the prior month in license plate
thefts, especially in the North Tryon Division.
However, no crime statistics were given for the report. CMPD crime stats found elsewhere are not
consistent with that statement. It would be ludicrous to think they noticed a
spike, put out and evaluated competitive bids, then installed and trained on
new equipment within a month of “noticing a huge spike in license plate thefts”
anyway.
And there is certainly information contradicting the “newness” of the
cameras:
The PR campaign
continues as CMPD Spokesman Robert Tufano sent out an invitation May 7,
2012. It read in part:
On Tuesday, May 8, 2012, members with
the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s Auto Theft Unit will unveil the
latest vehicle and tag reader donated to the CMPD by Nationwide Insurance.
Nationwide Insurance has been a partner in our crime fighting efforts and this
is the seventh vehicle Nationwide has donated to the CMPD over the last four
years.
The donated vehicle and equipment
will be critical tools that will assist our detectives in reducing the number
of auto thefts in our community. Please join us on Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. in
front of the Police Training Academy located at 1770 Shopton Road.
For additional information please
contact Sgt. Rich Tonsberg at 704.336.2292.
CMPD really wants us to focus on
car thefts and license plate thefts.
PRIVATE COMPANIES SUPPLIED RECORDS BY
LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS
In many
jurisdictions, police collect our data and then upload it to a private company
database where it is stored indefinitely, as well as used and shared without
proper or agreed-upon restriction.
This turns
the government into an actor in the transaction with the private company
obtaining our data and invading our privacy.
This is where Fourth Amendment concerns become most acute. As you may have read in the last post on this
topic, even when there was no agreement for this data upload to occur from
police to private company, it has happened such as in Washington, D.C.
Many argue
“license plates are property of the government and roads are public.” Well, that’s true but not the correct
point. Creating a dossier of your
activity—tracking your comings and goings—is not the business the government
should be permitted to do for innocent citizens with no probable cause to
believe you are involved in criminal activity.
It’s not the mere observation, it’s the accumulation of data by state
actors—compounded often by giving that information to a private company—that’s
a problem.
The
circumstances that would allow surveillance of this type or specific searches
and seizures of people suspected of committing crimes require Law Enforcement
Officers to SWEAR AN OATH of PROBABLE CAUSE in order to obtain a WARRANT for
that activity.
Innocent
people (and we are all presumed innocent) walking or driving around our home
city or visiting another have the right to do that in privacy which includes
relative anonymity.
EXAMPLES OF RECORDS CREATED
Vigilant Video is a private company
who is compiling a massive private, national database called National
Vehicle Location Service (NVLS), mostly filled with records supplied by Law
Enforcement Agencies around the country—sometimes without permission—and
storing them in their own, unregulated databases permanently. Here’s how it works
direct from a Vigilant Video
presentation to Law Enforcement found in full here.
According to Vigilant Video,
40% of US Vehicle License Plates
are Scanned Yearly.
Published reports state there are well
in excess
of half a billion records in Vigilant’s database.
Page 2
includes emblems from interested parties such as the Richmond Police
Department, Rodney Monroe’s old Stomping Ground, the Dept. of Homeland
Security, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and a number of
finance companies:
Page 7
shows how extensive the information contained on an LPR RECORD is: The scan takes in the license plate, records
the driver’s location, date & time of scan.
This record collection happens whether or not the driver is a wanted
criminal or suspected of criminal activity.
Most of the records created are of innocent drivers.
Page 6
explains that data comes from UPLOADS from Law Enforcement
Page 9
shows how stationary mounted readers and readers in police cars gather data
which is collected in a massive warehousing at a private company, Vigilant
Video.
OFFICERS, LPR’s,
and the CONSTITUTION
Most officers are
being given the same line as the public is now fed: these are just efficient
electronic checks for illegal behavior, such as stolen cars and plates.
Most officers, if
asked to follow innocent citizens and record their movements for a year and a
half with no probable cause to believe they are involved in criminal activity,
would refuse that unconstitutional order.
They would also ask “why?”
Just because it’s
electronic eyes instead of human eyes, with data fed to an electronic data
storage mechanism instead of an officer’s notebook, that doesn’t mean the
Constitution should fly out the window.
Are officers who
are being asked to feed data into the system unaware that’s what is
happening? Are they solely focused on
the instantaneous check, ignoring the year and a half of data collection &
storage? By purchasing and using the LPR’s
in the way designed by CMPD Policy, that is exactly what is going on.
