What Are License-Plate Readers Good For?
Following its mandate to counter acts of terror and respond to related threats, the Bay Area Urban Areas Securities Initiative (UASI), a regional organization funded by a Department of Homeland Securitygrant program, has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into automatic license-plate readers (ALPR) for local police acrossNorthern California over the past few years.
But newly released numbers from the Bay Area’s UASI suggest that the vast majority of drivers’ location data, tracked and retained through ALPR programs, have not been linked to any terrorist activity or violent criminal activity.
ALPRs combine high-speed cameras with analytic image software, collecting the plate numbers of cars passing by specialized recording points. Those plate numbers are then typically compared against “hot lists” of people who law-enforcement agencies have interest in.
Last month, the Bay Area’s UASI released ALPR data from the Central Marin Police Authority showing that only .02% of the nearly 4 million license plates tracked over October of 2015 through April of this year resulted in matches to any police “hot list” databases. The data indicate that zero “known or suspected terrorists” have been tracked using ALPRs, and that only a handful of other matches related to other hot-list criteria.