The Seattle City Council’s public safety committee is considering a $280,000 a year proposal to add automated license plate readers to all Seattle Police vehicles.
In 2021, the council approved a pilot program to use automated license plate readers on 11 SPD vehicles to assist with locating stolen vehicles, finding missing persons, and aiding in investigation of crimes.
The new proposal would roll the capability out to the entire SPD fleet.
SPD uses the system to check a vehicle against a “HotList” of license plate numbers from the Washington Crime Information Center, the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, and SPD’s investigations “to identify stolen vehicles, and vehicles wanted in conjunction with felonies or associated with wanted persons or Amber and Silver Alerts (abducted children and missing people),” according to a council memo on the proposal.
SPD says the expansion will help it address a 33% surge in vehicle theft from 2022 to 2023’s 9,189 reported incidents.
SPD says it is not asking for the data retention policy around the program to change. Currently, the department says all data including “images, computer interpreted license plate numbers, date, time, and GPS location” are retained for 90 days and then deleted — “unless it has been flagged as serving an investigative purpose.”
If the committee approves the plan, the proposal will move to the full council for a final vote.
Wanted to add that there are serious privacy and civil liberties issues with SPD’s proposed expansion. Most affected will be people from out of state who seek reproductive care in Seattle, immigrants and people seeking gender-affirming care. The collected data will be vulnerable to subpoena by prosecutors in other states who seek to arrest the very people our city’s sanctuary laws seek to protect. You can find out more here : bit.ly/data-harm
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“Recent studies examining the accuracy of ALPRs show that they often misread license plates, leading to disastrous real-world consequences, including violent arrests of innocent people. ALPR errors arise not only from shortcomings internal to their technology but from the hot lists they depend on to provide matches.”
“In some instances, officers have misused confidential databases “to get information on romantic partners, business associates, neighbors, journalists and others for reasons that have nothing to do with daily police work.” Professional abuse includes targeting religious minorities and communities of color. Reproductive rights advocates are now raising alarms about the ways police and others could use ALPRs for the targeting of abortion clinics in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.”
This all sounds about right for SPD 🙄
https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/news/2023/automated-license-plate-readers-widely-used-subject-abuse
In case anyone wasn’t already aware, there’s a number of ALPR systems hung on traffic signal crossarms throughout the City already.
Personally, I’m all for ’em. Driving is a privilege, not a right. Use ’em to send people with expired plates tickets in the mail.