For most of 2020, small cameras in undisclosed locations in the city of Greenville were trained to read the back of any passing vehicle, with the express purpose of scanning license plates to track criminal activity.
It was a pilot program. It is about to be bigger and permanent.
The advent of so-called automated license plate readers (ALPRs) has become more economical and prevalent over the years, creating a national database that allows jurisdictions to identify license plates and take action.
The city has found the use of 11 automated readers since January so successful – almost 200 cases leading to seizures and asset recovery – that it is currently seeking bids to install 14 more.
While the city praises technology, privacy advocates fear that governments in South Carolina are invading citizens’ rights with almost no regulation. At the next session of the state legislature, Democratic state deputy Todd Rutherford of Columbia will present legislation for the fourth consecutive year to govern the use of ALPRs.
“This is not a slippery slope,” Rutherford told the Post and Courier. “This is the hill, and we are sliding down.”
For the Greenville Police Department, the chief analyst responsible for the program says the city recognizes privacy concerns, but offers assurances that surveillance will go some way.
“We worked hard to deal with this notion of surveillance and ‘Big Brother’ watching you,” said Dr. Lee Hunt, department manager of strategic planning and analysis, to the Post and Courier.
The use of data elsewhere has made headlines. In Fairfax, Virginia, the American Civil Liberties Union persuaded a judge to stop using ALPRs, arguing that storing the information was against the law. In October, the Virginia Supreme Court overturned the decision and reinstated use.
Last year, the ACLU reported that law enforcement was handing over license plate data to federal immigration authorities outside the protocol.
Details on the use of the cameras – which are mounted on police cars as well as fixed structures – are shrouded in secrecy.
The South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division collects data from several dozen state agencies that use the technology. When asked about details of how the agency uses the data, SLED spokesman Tommy Crosby told the Post and Courier that federal criminal privacy laws prevent the release of any information from the criminal justice system, which includes ALPRs .
The location of ALPR technology in Greenville is not public due to concerns about its effectiveness being compromised and the potential for it to be intentionally damaged, said Hunt. The 11 cameras that are part of the pilot program in Greenville are usually concentrated in the city center and in some places outside the district, he said.
How they work
In January, Greenville used $ 22,000 in federal civilian assets forfeiture funds to contract with Atlanta-based security company Flock Safety to install and activate 11 wireless solar-powered ALPR cameras.
The cameras automatically record practically all the plates that pass and are able to read thousands of plates per minute and convert the images into alphanumeric data. The information is stored on a server operated by Flock.
The database is shared between participating law enforcement agencies, which send the “hot list” plate numbers to the general network that involves the National Crime Information Center and the Criminal Justice Information Services. If a plaque is registered as hot, the law enforcement agency is notified.
The cameras are placed in the most effective locations, which include factors such as amount of traffic and speed, said Hunt.
For example, a camera would probably not be installed to guard Interstate 385, because although thousands of signs could be read, the police would not be able to react quickly enough to find a car leaving the area at high speed, he said.
The cameras are designed to capture the rear end of a vehicle and do not employ facial recognition technology, he said. The system, he said, has been successful in capturing information in four categories: stolen vehicles, stolen license plates, wanted people and missing persons.
The city is unable to determine how many signs have been read since the program began. But between January and mid-November, the department received 587 plaque alerts through the system, resulting in 193 “retrieved categories”, which represent the results of one-third of the alerts.
Most involved about 50 occurrences of stolen vehicles, stolen license plates and drugs. The others involved warrants, firearms and stolen goods.
The expansion of the program will cost about $ 50,000, as the winning vendor installs and maintains the cameras and maintains the information stored on a third-party server.
The police insist that the practice is not an invasion of privacy. The department does not maintain its own database and the supplier does not sell the information to third parties and deletes the data after 30 days.
In any case, said Hunt, the cameras replace the police process by manually entering license plate numbers, removing any potential bias or profile.
“Each vehicle has the same chance of having an image captured as it passes,” he said. “This for me removes prejudice and provides an equal level of opportunity for all vehicles.”
But the program takes into account the need to place some cameras in areas where crime occurs, a practice that critics say can reach a minority segment of the population. The bottom line, according to representatives like Rep. Rutherford and the ACLU, is that there are currently no binding legal regulations on how agencies use the system.
Privacy concerns
The Post and Courier inquiry prompted the SLED spokesman Crosby to refer to the agency’s policy on the use of cameras.
The policy is not legally binding on the approximately 50 agencies using ALPR technology, which also includes Clemson and Furman Universities, Pickens County Sheriff’s Office, the State Highway Patrol, SLED, the Department of Public Security of the United States. South Carolina and the Spartanburg police.
The Greenville city system is not associated with SLED, said Crosby. The SLED policy establishes guidelines that guide agencies not to share information beyond the stated “law enforcement purposes”. The guidelines allow data to be stored for three years. There are no legal repercussions if the policy is violated.
However, in the absence of any regulation, technology has branched out beyond law enforcement and into neighborhoods. At least one homeowners’ association in Greenville has started using ALPRs, said Hunt.
The city’s call for proposals specifically requires that any new ALPR devices be compatible with the neighborhood’s technology. The use is similar to a program that the city employs called “Safe Watch”, in which owners can volunteer to be part of a system that identifies them as willing to share video recordings originating from their personal security systems, such as Ring and Google Nest. The program is an extension of police officers who knock on a resident’s door to ask if images are available of an event that happened in the area, said Hunt.
Private use of ALPR could be used in a similar way, he said.
Although the technology records only the rear of a vehicle, it captures more than just a license plate. In one case, Hunt said, an arrest was made in a series of thefts in the area when a camera captured a specific sticker on a truck, helping detectives to identify the distinct characteristics.
Using technology in this way worries Rutherford.
Rutherford said he knows of at least one case where ALPRs were used to track his partner’s whereabouts, falsely reporting the partner’s disappearance. Theoretically, a neighborhood camera could track a resident’s comings and goings.
“This must be one of the countless concerns that Greenville will stop its march towards communism,” said the Columbia representative. “It gets to be a total erosion of our rights because of its convenience. This is a piece of land that we don’t need to walk.”
The presence of mere guidelines is not enough, he said.
“Their promises mean nothing,” said Rutherford. “They’ve already eroded your privacy. What happens if they violate this policy? Nothing.”
The representative said that the bill he will present at the next session – which would require data to be deleted after 90 days and would constitute a contravention of breach of regulations – has at least some bipartisan support.
Republican state deputy Garry Smith of Simpsonville said he supports efforts to regulate the use of ALPRs.
“There is a lack of responsibility right now,” Smith told The Post and Courier. “We need to define some reasonable limitations for that.”
The new regulations should include applicable restrictions on the appropriate use of the technology and how long the data can be stored, said Smith. License plate scans can affect people who have done nothing wrong and can be used by police for other purposes, he said.
“I’ve worked with law enforcement for most of my career,” said Smith, “and for the most part they are a great group of people who take their jobs seriously. I also met some individuals in law enforcement who take advantage of their positions and use them for their nefarious purposes. The potential is certainly out there. ”
The next session of the General Assembly may not see the legislation progress much, said Smith, with lawmakers focused on issues such as budget, redistricting and the ongoing battle over a potential sale of the Santee Cooper utility.
“You certainly have a limited window,” he said.
