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Since 2016, Sacramento County officials have been accessing license plate reader data to track welfare recipients suspected of fraud, the Sacramento Bee reported over the weekend.
Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance Director Ann Edwards confirmed to the paper that welfare fraud investigators working under the DHA have used the data for two years on a "case-by-case" basis. Edwards said the DHA pays about $5,000 annually for access to the database.
Abbreviated LPR, license plate readers are essentially cameras that upload photographs to a searchable database of images of license plates. Each image captured by these cameras is annotated with information on the registered owner, the make and model of the car, and time-stamped GPS data on where it was last spotted. Those with access, usually police, can search the database using a full or partial license plate number, a date or time, year and model of a car, and so on.
Source: Gizmodo
From the SacBee article,
County welfare fraud investigators with the Department of Human Assistance use ALPR [automated license plate recognition] data to find suspects and collect evidence to prove cases of fraud, said DHA Director Ann Edwards. Investigators determine whether to use the data on a "case-by-case" basis "depending on the investigative needs of the case," she said.
"It's really used to help us locate folks that are being investigated for welfare fraud," she said. "Sometimes they're not at their stated address."
Through agreements, law enforcement agencies across California and the U.S. upload the images they obtain to a database owned by Livermore-based corporation Vigilant Solutions, which says the data help police solve crimes, track down kidnappers and recover stolen vehicles. Users can search the database by license plate, partial license plate, date or time, year or model of car, or by address where a crime occurred, which can show police which vehicles were in the area, the company's website says.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday August 17 2018, @03:44PM (1 child)
That may be so. BUT, "any judge" may still not agree with the argument that the GOVERNMENT is allowed to track you this way.
In fact, SCOTUS has ruled explicitly that the government can't put trackers on your vehicle without a warrant. First there was United States v. Jones [wikipedia.org] (2012), which unanimously held that police must obtain a warrant to install a GPS tracker on your car. Some lower courts subsequently attempted to limit that decision, but SCOTUS again slapped that down unanimously [scotusblog.com] in Grady. v. North Carolina (2015).
The idea that the police could follow and observe your car in public places as an analogy was explicitly considered by several justices in U.S. v. Jones and rejected as a legal argument to get around the requirement for a warrant. Four of the justices in a concurring opinion (authored by Alito) said that long-term surveillance using a permanent tracker that could reveal personal details of your travel required a warrant, even absent the "intrusion" required to install said tracker on your property (the detail the other five justices focused on). Sotomayor, also in concurring opinion, expressed similar concerns even for short-term government monitoring.
So, no, "any judge" examining this wouldn't necessarily buy into the argument that just because police could observe the movements of your car on public streets that ANY type of similar tracking/surveillance is legal without a warrant. In fact, a significant number of SCOTUS justices in 2012 explicitly REJECTED that argument.
With the increased prevalence of license-plate scanning, a license plate by itself has become a de facto government tracker on your vehicle. To my knowledge, SCOTUS has not taken up that subject directly yet.
And note that in 2012, U.S. v. Jones was considered a shocking ruling that was rather unexpected to be unanimous from SCOTUS. They really disliked the idea of police tracking your car everywhere, even if police could theoretically do that kind of surveillance previously. I'm not saying SCOTUS would rule similarly on this issue, but I don't think widespread tracking of license plate data has come before them. Recall that just this summer SCOTUS slapped down government tracking of cell phones without a warrant. And the reasoning in that ruling (Carpenter v. U.S. [supremecourt.gov]) seems to go even further than Jones, emphasizing an explicit right of individuals not to be continuously tracked by the government in their everyday movements in life, absent some sort of warrant or investigative reason. While Carpenter was explicitly identified as a "narrow" ruling (and was 5-4), the reasoning might be applicable in some circumstances to a license-plate tracking case if the extent of tracking it offers could be shown to be comparable.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday August 17 2018, @10:49PM
I'm not disagreeing with what you wrote. It's entirely possible that this would be regarded as not legal without a warrant.
But the parallel I'd try for is the difference between phone metadata and content. Metadata is searchable because it passes through public networks without expectation of privacy. Content is not. One of the underpinnings in US v. Jones was Katz v. US where eavesdropping on a public payphone required a warrant.... yet pen registers do not. (A specific target requires a warrant. Collecting all records in a system from public facts and sifting them later does not.)
In this case your car's travel occurs in plain view in public. The records being consulted aren't necessarily focused upon your car - the record gathering part isn't concerned with your identity specifically. Instead it's consultation of records that were automatically generated by your travel being consulted after the fact. And so sayeth Wikipedia Jones did not consider whether taking GPS data *absent* a physical intrusion required a warrant. So while you've definitely got leanings on the court, this (plate scanning) is a separate and fresh issue in the eyes of the law is my guess.
But that's just my guess. IANAL.
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