Back to News & Commentary

"Limited Only by the Imagination": The Need for Legal Limits on License Plate Reader Use

Allie Bohm,
Policy Counsel,
NYCLU
Share This Page
July 19, 2013

If you've been , by now you know that if you're driving, your license plate is likely being photographed, your location recorded, and that information retained. That is true regardless of whether you live in a large city or a small town—and it's true whether or not you are suspected of any wrongdoing. In our recently released report, we set out our recommendations for reasonable rules that should be enacted to prevent the technology from being used as a mass surveillance tool. We recommended that clear regulations be put in place to require that police have reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred before examining the data, that such data be deleted within days or weeks at most, unless there are legitimate reasons to retain records, and that people have the right to find out if their cars' location history is in a law enforcement database.

So are such rules already in place anywhere?

The good news is that in pockets across the country, either by law, attorney general guidelines, or law enforcement agency policy, communities are showing that our recommendations are entirely workable. The bad news is that there are far too few laws and policies in place and not all of them are as privacy-protective as we'd like. Of the 293 state and local law enforcement agencies that responded to our public records requests, only a fraction have internal policies governing their license plate reader use, and prior to our records requests, only two states had laws on the books governing license plate readers, and only one state had an attorney general policy. In 2013, an additional three states passed legislation, and one more state attorney general released a policy. Here are the highlights:

  • The laws that predate 2013 are oldies, but goodies. all but bans license plate readers with narrow exceptions for EZ-Pass and for use by government agencies at public buildings and (for some reason) three named bridges in Portsmouth. prohibits all private use of license plate readers (except as part of an EZ-Pass system) and requires law enforcement to delete captured plate data that is not part of a criminal or intelligence investigation within 21 days.
  • new law limits private use of license plate readers and prohibits sharing of captured plate data unless the data is evidence of an offense.
  • 's law limits both private and public use of license plate readers, as well as sharing of captured plate data. It also prohibits the sale of license plate data and, uniquely, allows criminal defendants, as well as the government, the opportunity to issue preservation requests to keep captured plate data longer than the law's required data retention period; this way, both data that may be relevant to a criminal investigation and data that may be exculpatory can be saved.
  • Both Arkansas and , by law, require regular reporting on license plate reader use in their states as a method to prevent abuse and in order to evaluate their new laws in practice and determine whether future legislation is necessary. This requirement should not be too burdensome in those two states or in other states across the country: Most law enforcement agencies that do have license plate reader policies already require some sort of internal reporting on their use, and some agencies are already subject to state oversight, like Sugar Land, TX, which is audited by the Texas Department of Public Safety, and Deerpark, NY, which reports to the New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services.
  • In February 2013, attorney general issued a remarkable guidance on license plate reader use, declaring that license plate readers cannot be used for passive data collection – that is collecting and pooling the license plate information of every car that passes them by – and can only be used "actively" – that is in pursuit of particularly identified license plates "evaluated and determined to be relevant to criminal activity."
  • The Ohio State Highway Patrol's policy does the next best thing. Although it allows passive data collection, in line with our recommendations, it requires that "[a]ll ‘non-hit' APR [automatic plate reader] captures shall be deleted immediately. APR captures shall not be collected, stored, or shared with the intent of datamining."
  • Similarly, Attorney General Guidelines, which have been in place since December 2010, prohibit officers from being shown personal identifying information about a driver unless they first establish specific and articulable facts justifying further investigation.

All of these states and agencies are able to follow laws and policies that respect individuals' privacy and simultaneously protect public safety, proving our recommended safeguards workable.

But, of course, there are the lowlights:

  • New Jersey's attorney general guidelines clearly contemplate datamining and pattern analysis of the captured plate data "to detect suspicious activities that are consistent with the modus operandi of criminals." Vermont—and probably other states—are also datamining plate records.
  • New Jersey also mandates that data – including non-hit data or location information on motorists not suspected of any wrongdoing – be retained for five years and classified as "criminal investigatory records."
  • A number of law enforcement agencies, by policy, share their captured plate data far and wide, without regard for the recipient entities' data retention periods. For example, although Rockville, Md.'s policy is to purge data from its local hard drive after 30 days, it shares all of its data with the Maryland Coordination and Analysis (aka "fusion") Center, which stores all license plate data for one year, no matter what the retention policies are of the police department that collected it. New Jersey and Vermont also pool data statewide; in fact, Vermont's new law explicitly contemplates statewide data-sharing. And, Boston, Mass. provides its data to anyone with access to the database, which 4,500 law enforcement agencies nationwide appear to use.

Whether good, bad, or ugly, law enforcement policies and attorney general guidelines do not obviate the need for legislation, because they are not binding on subsequent administrations and can be repealed or changed at any time. Of course, until states legislate, such policies are good stopgap measures.

Automatic license plate readers can and do serve valid and useful law enforcement functions—and they can do so without creating massive databases of our location information. It is imperative that policymakers enact laws to ensure that we can take advantage of this technology without sacrificing our privacy. Otherwise, as a Scarsdale, NY law enforcement policy reminds us, "the use of the [license plate readers] is only limited by the officer's imagination."

Learn More About the Issues on This Page

Related Content

  • Press Release
    Dec 2024
    ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban

    Free Speech

    National Security

    ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban

    WASHINGTON — Today, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of a law that would effectively ban people in America from using TikTok as soon as January 19, 2025. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s challenge to the law. TikTok has asked the Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to prevent the app from being banned while the court considers whether to take the case, saying that unless the justices intervene, the law will “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.” “The Constitution imposes an extraordinarily high bar on this kind of mass censorship,”said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “The Supreme Court should take up this important case and protect the rights of millions of Americans to freely express themselves and engage with others around the world.” The brief argues that the D.C. Circuit failed to fully address the law’s profound implications for the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. While the lower court’s decision correctly recognized that the statute triggers First Amendment scrutiny, it barely addressed users’ First Amendment interests in speaking, sharing, and receiving information on the platform. The court also perplexingly attempted to cast the government’s ban on TikTok as a vindication of users’ First Amendment rights, which it is not. The rights groups also explain that the law was intended to suppress certain content and viewpoints that many legislators believe could be amplified on TikTok, including the risk of foreign “propaganda.” But under the First Amendment, the government must meet a very high bar to restrict speech based on concerns about its “motivating ideology” or “perspective,” and the government has not come close to meeting that bar here. “The government should not be able to restrict speech, especially to the extent here, based on guessing about the mere possibility of uncertain future harm,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF. “The Supreme Court should put the TikTok ban on hold while it considers the DC Circuit’s erroneous ruling.” Finally, the brief underscores that the government can’t impose this type of sweeping ban unless it’s necessary to prevent extremely serious and imminent harm to national security. But the government has not provided evidence of impending harm, or evidence that banning TikTok is the only available way to address its concerns. As the brief explains, the D.C. Circuit improperly treated the government’s invocation of “national security” as a trump card and failed to hold the government to its burden. “Restricting citizens’ access to foreign media is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, and we should be very wary of letting the practice take root here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “It would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy if the Supreme Court let this ban go into effect even temporarily.” You can find the brief online here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A587/335380/20241217144322392_24A587%20TikTok%20v%20Garland%20Amicus%20Brief%20pdfa.pdf
    ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
  • Press Release
    Dec 2024
    ACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia

    National Security

    Religious Liberty

    ACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia

    WASHINGTON – The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, American Civil Liberties Union and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project: “While this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We’re profoundly frustrated that the administration didn’t take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.”
    ACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia
  • Virginia
    Dec 2024
    Trabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted Man

    National Security

    Trabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted Man

    Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government’s case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured.   Mr. Trabelsi’s detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions.
    Status: Ongoing
    Trabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted Man
  • Press Release
    Dec 2024
    Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful

    National Security

    Immigrants' Rights

    Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful

    ALEXANDRIA, Va. — This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi’s case, his claims challenging the government’s detention of him would fail. “Reviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we’re heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. “The government’s arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi’s detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.” In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court’s ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. “Mr. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,” said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “He cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.” Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, the ACLU of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.
    Affiliate: Virginia
    Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful