Lawsuit: License Plate Readers Found in CT Violate 4th Amendment
A company whose license plate readers have been installed in several Connecticut municipalities is the subject of a newly filed federal lawsuit alleging they violate the Fourth Amendment.
The Institute for Justice (IJ), a nonprofit, public interest law firm, recently filed a lawsuit against the city of Norfolk, Virginia on behalf of residents Lee Schmidt and Crystal Arrington who find it “downright creepy” that 172 license plate readers installed across the city as part of a contract with Flock Safety “follow them as they go about their days, noting where they are and when, and storing their movements in a government database for any officer to see.”
The lawsuit alleges that Flock Safety’s system violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against warrantless searches.
License plate readers installed by Flock Safety were also the subject of controversy in Colchester, Connecticut, and have also been installed in other towns in the state.
Flock Safety’s website advertising its products, which it sells as a means to eliminate crime in a community, brags about its ability to surveil communities “24/7.” It’s exactly this that Schmidt and Arrington object to.
“Unlike a police officer posted at an intersection, the cameras never blink, they never sleep, and they see and remember everything. Every passing car is captured, and its license plate and other features are analyzed using proprietary machine learning programs, like Flock’s ‘Vehicle Fingerprint.'” the lawsuit notes.
This, according to the lawsuit, creates a trackable database, where data is retained for thirty days, that allows anyone who can access the database to not only see where a car was on a given day but also to track and map any given driver’s movement, regardless of whether they’ve been accused of a crime or are the subject of a police investigation.
The lawsuit also notes that Norfolk’s police chief has bragged about how complete the camera’s coverage is, reportedly stating “it would be difficult to drive anywhere of any distance without running into a camera somewhere.” The city also has plans to add an additional 65 cameras, according to the lawsuit.
While Norfolk police’s policy reportedly limits access to use of the database for law enforcement policy, the lawsuit alleges there is no meaningful way to enforce this. Accessing the database requires watching an orientation video and creating login credentials.
And, more significantly, accessing the database does not require a warrant.
“No officer ever has to establish probable cause, swear to the facts in a warrant application, and await the approval of a neutral judge. The cameras take photographs and store the information of every driver that passes them–suspect or not. The photographs and information are then available to any officer in the City to use as they see fit, for the next 30 days. And if City officials download the photos and information during that 30-day window, there are no meaningful restraints on how long they can hold them or how they may be used.” the lawsuit states.
Another of the lawsuit’s concerns is that Flock Safety also maintains a centralized database, allowing anyone with access to track a license plate beyond a single community.
“even after a driver leaves the City, officers can potentially keep following them in the more than 5,000 communities where Flock currently has cameras. Likewise, any person with access to Flock’s centralized database can access the City’s information, potentially without the City even knowing about it.” the lawsuit notes.
This, according to the lawsuit, is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. It calls Flock Safety’s ability to track a person’s movement over 30 days a search and argues that because the city allows officers to access this information without a warrant and at any time for any reason, the searches are unreasonable.
Flock Safety Makes Inroads in Connecticut
A number of Connecticut towns are among the 5,000 across the country where Flock Safety license plate readers have been installed. Atlas of Surveillance, a website maintained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that uses open-source research to document technologies police are using, identifies 21 police departments in the state that have installed or budgeted funds for the use of license plate readers. Not all have contracts with Flock Safety.
Through contracts with police departments, Flock Safety has license plate readers in Cheshire, Darien, New Canaan, and Southington. A number of towns, but not all, where Flock Safety cameras are installed have publicly available information on information that has been collected through a “transparency portal” maintained by the company.
In Cheshire, which has 12 cameras, 276,583 vehicles have been identified in the past 3o days, as of October 22. Of those hundreds of thousands of records, just 495, or 0.17 percent of captured vehicles, were flagged through the National Crime Information Center and the Amber alert systems, the two “hotlists” the license plate readers are programmed to identify. According to Cheshire’s policy with Flock Safety, “hotlist hits” must be identified by humans before action is taken. There have been 282 searches of Cheshire’s data in the past 30 days, as of October 22.
This article was first published on InsideInvestigator.org
