trackthepolice

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These tools changed the game, but privacy advocates and law enforcement disagree on whether that's been a good thing

Here's a direct link the video from the Al Jazeera broadcast featuring Track the Police for those who may have missed the broadcast on Monday.

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How do you request the ALPR data from the Police Dept.?

It depends on your local data practice/FOIA laws. Not all States or cities release the data to the public. Generally you would file a request with the police department for the data or whoever owns the ALPR cams in your area.

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Automatic license plate readers have changed the game for police, but privacy advocates warn your data is being misused

The police are tracking you, so what happens if you track them?

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The Cold Stare of Justice: How Automatic License Plate Readers Chill Activity

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Weekly Roundup of ALPR Stories - March 29

Piedmont, CA:  With plans to install over $1 million dollars in ALPR readers for all entrances and exits to the city, NYC is not the only city with plans  to scan every car that enters or exits it. 

Nationwide: Privacy advocates continue to be concerned about data retention policies after a CBS News report highlights the increased use of ALPR scanners by law enforcement.

[trackthepolice]

Weekly Roundup of ALPR Stories - March 22

Minnesota: There was big news this week in license plate reader data as the State classified the data as private in an opinion issued by the Commissioner.  Both the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press covered the change to what data is now private and what is public.

However, this isn't the end of the story. The Minnesota legislator is still at work on the license plate controversy. In particular, an amendment passed a key House committee that would eliminate or  the storage of "non-hit" license plates and limit the retention time of the data.

Regardless, it is unlikely that the public will be able to request ALPR data  in the near future to continue updated Tracking of Police license plate movements. This blog may take a slightly different approach to Tracking the Police in upcoming months. Stay Tuned!

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The State of Minnesota now declared that the ALPR data will remain private. Thus, we can't request specific data on police vehicles unless the legislator changes the law. At least, they must disclose the location of license plate readers.

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Track the Police Friday Roundup - March 15th

Arkansas: A video clip on the use of license plate readers in Arkansas and a story about how the local legislature is proposing limiting the storage of reader data.

Maryland: Rockville, MD is also dealing with the data retention controversy. A Town Hall meeting is set for March 20, 2013 for anyone who wants to provide input on the use of license plate scanners in that town.

New York:  A relatively in-depth article on the use of ALPRs and controversy surrounding the devices in the Rochester area. The story mentions how millions of dollars of Homeland Security money are funding the purchases of these devices across the country.

New York City:  The Huffington Post published a story this week on the NYPD's plan to scan all vehicles entering and exiting Manhattan. Not only would this massive project attempt to scan all vehicles but the current data retention policy for NYC is 5 years!!  Good old NYC always has to be #1 in police state creepiness :-/

Utah - State legislators unanimously passed a bill limiting the storage of license plate data to 9 months! For those who have been following the issue of data retention in license plate readers, this is still a considerable amount of time to retain data on all license plates scanned by a reader.

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This slide from a 2011 Minneapolis Police Department presentation reveals a bit more about ALPR scanners than what we had previously known.  This unredacted version shows the location of one of the stationary cameras on the Broadway Bridge between North and NE Minneapolis. The MPD refuses to disclose the location of the stationary cameras yet this document clearly reveals the location of two more of the cameras.

In other words, Broadway Avenue Bridge and Plymouth Ave Bridge are the two known locations of the stationary cameras.

Another interesting aspect of this document is that you can see in the bottom corner that the ALPR readers have a total of 27,865 "hits" or vehicles that are active on some list or another.  That's a very long hot list of "wanted" vehicles! 

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Weekly Roundup of ALPR Stories March 8th #TrackthePolice

Little Rock, AR: USA Today featured a story on how Little Rock, Arkansas is using license plate scanners. This story notes how there appears to be no data retention policy for license plate information in Little Rock, but that "..the department has now has a growing archive of license plate photos..".

Piedmont, CA: One Californian town is considering installing license plate scanners at all exits and entrances to the city.  No word on how long they plan to keep the data if this program goes forward or if it would be available to the public.

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Weekly Roundup of ALPR Stories March 1st #TrackthePolice

Georgia: Sometimes even local government's purchase ALPR cameras. Sadly, the City Council of Holly Springs, Georgia approved the purchase of four ALPR cameras.  The police state is everywhere :-/

New Jersey: Homeland Security is also funding ALPR readers for Emerson, NJ according to this recent article.  In many of the articles, shared on this blog, DHS is a common funding source for these expensive readers.

Texas: Dallas will be installing the license plate reader technology this Spring in its police squad cars. According to this article, there is debate over how long the data may be kept and if it should be kept on non-hit vehicles. Interestingly, the article mentions how the "fusion center" may have access to this data in Dallas.

Utah: The debate over the data retention policy on license plate readers is also a hot item in Utah. In this case, the bill requires the data be deleted after 6 months, which for many, still seems like too long a time to keep the data.

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A great article summarizing the upcoming hearings and background on the license plate reader issue that will be debated this week at the MN Legislature.

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Weekly Roundup of #ALPR Stories - Feb. 22nd #TrackthePolice

Chico, CA: Chico police will now be using ALPR cameras soon according to this local news report. This story also mentions how the State of California has authorized the use of LPR license plate scanners since May of 2012 and that there is a current bill in the legislature looking at data access and retention of ALPR data in California.

Minneapolis: A great blog post in Open Secrets analyzing the City of Minneapolis' application to keep ALPR data secret and wants to retain data on innocent vehicles.  

Texas: Corpus Christi has plans to use license plate readers to track people who "congregate in certain areas".  This article hints at possible ways that police may misuse license plate readers by whose data they are trying to capture. 

[trackthepolice]

Weekly Roundup of ALPR Stories - Feb. 15th

Minneapolis: Bill introduced to curb use and storage of license plate data. According to this article in SW Minneapolis Patch, a bill was introduced to by Senator Dibble in the MN State Legislature that would curb the length and storage of license plate reader data. The Star Tribune also provides more details on this proposed bill. 

Vermont: Another article about  limiting the retention time of license plate scanner data in Vermont. As noted in another news roundup, Vermont police agencies may retain the data for up to 4 years!

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Track the Police News Roundup

This week’s roundup of selected news stories about ALPR and license plate readers. This week’s post actually covers stories over the past two weeks as this blog was on a hiatus for two weeks.

Arizona:  License Plate Readers check cars going into Mexico - A story about how federal agencies use license plate scanners to track people in AZ crossing the border.

Minnesota: Lawmakers to weigh-in on ALPR data.

New Jersey: New license plate scanners for the Hillsdale Police funded by a grant with from the DHS. 

Louisiana: Article about the use of ALPR readers in Baton Rouge

Pennsylvania: Another article about how license plates will be installed in Philadelphia suburbs with homeland security grants. 

Wisconsin: Even Menomonee Falls will be getting ALPR scanners now.

[trackthepolice]

Track the Police Friday Roundup of ALPR Stories

Track the Police Friday Roundup! A new weekly feature!

The roundup will link to selected stories about license plate readers that may be of interest to readers of this blog. Know of any interesting ALPR news stories? Submit a link to trackthepolice @ gmail.com to be included in a future Friday Roundup. 

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Somerville (MA): Who Scans the Scanners?  This news article provides an overview of the use of ALPR scanners in Somerville, MA and includes a link to a FOI request made for data on ALPR scanners by MuckRock. Of interest, Somerville appears to have a 14 day retention policy on all ALPR data they gather including non-hits.  

Vermont: If you thought a 90 day data retention policy is scary, Vermont retains license plate reader data for 4 years! Yes, 4 years! Not surprisingly, this article in the Valley News discusses how lawmarkers want to limit the length of data retention from ALPR scanners in that state.  Another article here also covers the debate in Vermont over ALPR data retention issues. 

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ALPR Data on Generic Law Enforcement License Plates

                                           First in the Series: K-9

Overview:

Track the Police obtained the 2.1 million license plate reader database from the City of Minneapolis as part of a request for all records on the license plate POLICE.  The city determined that it would be much easier to provide us with the entire database because of the large number of reads on this common license plate.  While this database still only contains data from August 30-November 29, 2012, it provides us an opportunity to analyze general patterns on law enforcement vehicles with generic license plates such as POLICE, K-9, SHERIFF.  Over the month, Track the Police will post each of the data analysis for these generic law enforcement license plates.  Obviously, more than one vehicle shares these license plates, but why not analyze how many times the cops are scanning themselves?

One further clarification, “readacted reads” refers to any license plate entry where the City of Minneapolis removed the GPS coordinates from the database before providing it to the public.  The commonly cited reason for removing these coordinates was to avoid disclosing the location of the stationary ALPR cameras.  Also, with any large amount of data, there are misreads in the database showed coordinates such as “0” for the location. These will be counted but obviously, not mapped.

Finally, another common error is the ALPR scanners scanned the license number/letters wrong.  There are many examples of obvious errors such as P0LICE.  Each of these variations will be included in the generic license plate analyses when it is an obvious misread.

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The first generic law enforcement license plate in this series on the Track the Police blog is the license plate “K-9”.  

K-9 license plates are seen on K-9 Police vehicles in Minnesota.  As the example photo shows below, the vehicle is a marked squad car that has the capability to carry around the K-9 dogs.  Most of the marked squad cars have the license plate “POLICE” but this smaller subset of vehicles will be a good starting point for the generic laws enforcement license plate series.

Where did these vehicles travel over the 90 days from August-November of 2012?  As with individual law enforcement vehicles, there will also be a link to a Google Map and a Scribd raw data document link if there is anything to plot or a lot of raw data to report so the reader may use the raw data for their own analysis.

Here is the overall basic statistics:

Law Enforcement License Plate:  K-9

Variations:  K9DETEC

Number of Reads in 90 Days:  3

Number of Unredacted Reads: 0

Number of Redacted Reads: 3

Number of Misreads (0 Coordinates): 0

Total Reads Mapped: None - all reads redacted 

Raw Data:

K9DETEC                                            10/9/2012 6:56 

K9DETEC                                            11/6/2012 10:04              

K9DETEC                                            11/6/2012 11:26

Analysis: K-9 didn't appear in the database as "K-9" or "K9" or any likely variation  There was one license plate number "K9DETEC" that had a total of three redacted reads over 90 days.  As there were no unredacted reads for this vehicle, there was nothing to plot on google maps and no need to create a Scribd document because the raw data could be easily added to this blog post.  

Thus, the first of the generic law enforcement data analysis shows how little data may be collected on some vehicles.  As the license plate usually would say "K-9", the ALPR scanners may not read it properly or it could have been deleted from the database before we received it.