Plans to expand scope of license-plate readers alarm privacy advocates

Source: Center for Investigative Reporting

Denise Green had just dropped off her sister at the 24th Street Mission BART station after picking her up from the hospital. Green, who was driving a 1992 red Lexus, noticed a San Francisco police car with its lights on pull up behind her as she passed through the intersection of Mission Street and Highland Avenue. Green pulled over to let the patrol car pass. She was stunned when officers yelled, “Put your hands up!”

Sgt. Ja Han Kim ordered her to step out of the car, and as Green complied, she turned and saw several officers with their guns trained on her. ... They handcuffed her and searched her Lexus. Green overheard officers standing near her license plate shouting numbers to each other.

“It's not a seven?” one said. “No, three five zero,” another officer replied. Green, a Muni driver and 50-year-old San Francisco resident, had been pulled over and detained because her car was mistakenly identified as a stolen vehicle by an automatic license-plate reader the city had installed on its police cars. The officers did not confirm her license plate with their dispatcher.

... Five years later, as Green’s lawsuit over the incident goes to a civil trial this year, the use of license-plate readers has emerged as one of the biggest concerns among privacy advocates. Car-tracking technology is becoming ubiquitous in cities around the United States, and the types of data collected and analyzed with the help of license-plate readers is expanding into other realms of personal information.

Read more: http://cironline.org/reports/plans-expand-scope-license-plate-readers-alarm-privacy-advocates-6451