Automated License Plate Readers: The Difficult Balance of Solving Crime and Protecting Individual Privacy

Lauren Fash

In 1998, a District of Columbia police lieutenant pleaded guilty “to extorting money from customers of a gay bar.” The officer wrote down the license plate numbers of the customers and intimidated them into paying him money by threatening “to expose their lifestyle.” Recent developments in technology have automated the process of license plate checking, which has only exacerbated the potential for these types of privacy abuses. Automated license plate readers (“ALPRs”) are useful tools for police officers, as they have automated the process of police officers manually scanning license plates and comparing them to police databases. License plate reader data provides numerous benefits but also has a high potential for abuse. ALPRs are composed of a hardware aspect and a software aspect. The hardware aspect of the device “uses high-speed video cameras” to photograph every passing vehicle, while the software aspect reads and stores the “plate number, . . . date, time and location” of the vehicle.