California Criminal Defense Lawyers

License Plate Scanning System Used in Lomita, CA (photo credit)

The latest license plate scanners in California belong to the Lomita CA Sheriff’s department. There is a nice picture of the unit (right) in the article that hints at the impressive capabilities of these systems.

The license plate scanner is able to identify and track 1000 vehicles an hour by using three camera systems mounted on the police vehicle. It can scan and identify vehicle license plates while parked stationary by the side of the road, or moving rapidly down the highway.

When a vehicle with a known license plate and associated legal issue is spotted by the system, the officer in the vehicle is instantly alerted with an audible beeping tone.

Currently, these license plate scanning systems in California and nationwide are most commonly used to locate stolen cars. Vehicles that have been registered in the database as stolen are matched on the spot, in real time. A sheriff’s or police cruisers equipped with these license tag scanner systems just has to be within camera range. The driver of a stolen vehicle is quickly caught and arrested, and the vehicle is impounded, and ultimately returned to it’s owner. Stolen car recover percentages are expected to significantly increase due to these systems

These scanners can be used to identify vehicles or drivers with a variety of legal issues, from active “Amber Alerts”, to the locations of registered sex offenders, and whether they are keeping a legal distance from schools and playgrounds as required by law and the terms of their probation and release.

Other common uses for these scanners in California include identifying outstanding criminal warrants for failure to appear in court, or people whose drivers licenses are under suspension. The system can easily be adapted by cities and towns to flag cars with too many parking or traffic tickets.

The most disturbing element of this technology may be it’s capacity for massive data gathering. By matching license plate data and storing the GPS location, date and time, these systems are capturing and storing data on millions of law abiding citizens. As different police and sheriff’s department across California and nationwide are sharing these data, the government is essentially tracking your movements. Where your car has been spotted at any time in the past can be accessed.

The government will use this for data mining experiments to determine patterns of traffic and behavior. Some uses will be to flag houses that have significant visitor patterns that could suggest drug sales going on at that location.

Ultimately, this data can be combined and used in extremely intrusive ways. Constitutional law and civil liberties have yet to catch up to and defend citizens from this near constant spying surveillance. The use of this technology will require careful scrutiny.

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Another California law enforcement agency is being added to the growing list of those employing passive license plate scanning and tracking technology. The Oceanside police department is the newest participant, along with the recently added departments of Escondido and Carlsbad.

This article does a very good job highlighting some of the many potential civil liberties issues and government abuses that are possible with this technology.

These license plate scanners photograph and scan all license plates within range of the police vehicle. The license tags are translated into text and matched with an on-board database of license plates identified to have any outstanding government-identified issues.

The primary mission of these systems is said to be locating stolen cars. But with a push of a button the systems are easily configured to identify driver’s who many have criminal warrants, hit and run driver’s, back tax payments, suspended driver’s licenses, or lapsed auto insurance

Even more troubling is the vast tracking capability and historical data that is captured and stored by these systems. Each plate captures is saved and matched by it’s location at the time via an onboard GPS.

So it is entirely possible for police officers to review your past history, and find out where your plate has been scanned at anytime in the past.

With more and more police and law enforcement agents using these systems, now is the time to be concerned about safeguarding our Constitutional liberties and protetions.

These units will only become cheaper, and will likely be standard equipment on all police vehicles in the very near future. And database tracking and sharing will only become more robust. Your driving history and patterns are essentially an open record. And unlike with EZ Pass toll systems, you are not allowed to opt out of this government surveillance.

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