Is your town using ALPR technology?
EFF and MuckRock News have filed hundreds of public records requests with law enforcement agencies around the country to reveal how automated license plate readers (ALPR) are used to track the travel patterns of drivers, regardless of whether they are suspected of being involved in a crime. We’ve obtained records from over 200 agencies, accounting for more than 2.5-billion license plate scans in 2016 and 2017. Of those, 99.5% of the scans were not under suspicion at the time they were collected, and, on average, agencies were sharing data with a minimum of 160 other agencies, with many agencies sharing data in excess of 800 separate entities.
You can help us expand our investigation by submitting your local police department. We’ll ask for their data sharing reports and the policies that guide the use of the technology.
View related articles and follow along with all of the requests via the project page.