South Portland police say they’re the first in Maine to start using cruiser-based cameras that automatically photograph license plate numbers, new technology that is sparking a debate that pits public safety against privacy rights.

The new automated license plate recognition system will make police and the public safer, police say, by helping find a child who has been abducted, a car that has been stolen, or a criminal who is at large.

However, a state lawmaker and the Maine Civil Liberties Union are concerned that the new technology will lead to an infringement of civil rights.

And just as South Portland’s new system is getting up and running, state Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, has introduced a new bill before the state Legislature that seeks to outlaw automated license plate recognition cameras in the state.

Police contend that the cameras, mounted on a police cruiser, are just a more efficient, automated way of doing what they’ve always done – visually monitor vehicles on public roads.

“We believe use of the (automated license plate recognition system) will allow us to better serve and protect our community, and will help our officers be better – and more quickly – informed of potentially dangerous situations,” said South Portland police Lt. Frank Clark, in a letter he wrote last week to the Legislature’s Transportation Committee, which is expected to hold a hearing on the bill early next month.

However, Damon and the MCLU fear that if the state continues to allow the new technology – which not only photographs vehicles, but records also where they are at a specific location and time – it could be used inappropriately. They worry it could be used to do such things as track people attending a political rally. They’re also concerned that the data could be stolen or sold.

“I’m concerned about the invasion of our privacy,” said Damon. He said he has “grave concerns” about technology that has “the capability of, in a broad way, sweeping through an area and capturing all the licenses plates.”

Shenna Bellows, the MCLU’s executive director, voiced similar concerns.

“We have a fundamental right to be left alone … There’s an assumption that if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ll be free from surveillance,” Bellows said. “This system turns that principle on its head, creating an assumption of surveillance.”

The experience of other states with the technology shows that it is “susceptible to abuse,” Bellows said. Examples of inappropriate use of the technology include stalking of estranged spouses, and the selling of the data to car repossession companies, she said.

“I’m not suggesting that the South Portland police would abuse this information, but the creation of this database creates the potential for abuse,” Bellows said.

The MCLU plans to testify in support of Damon’s bill at the public hearing, which will take place before the Legislature’s Transportation Committee, of which Damon is the Senate chairman.

Defending technology

South Portland police will be at the hearing, too – to defend the new technology.

Police Chief Edward Googins said he plans to testify against the bill on behalf of the state’s law enforcement agencies.

The Maine Chiefs of Police Association has taken a position opposing the bill, said Googins, who is first vice president of the group. “It is not in the best interest of law enforcement in Maine,” he said.

Googins disputed claims that the data collected will be mishandled. “There are absolutely no plans to sell this data,” he said. “There just isn’t any. That’s bizarre.”

And, he said, police are in the process of developing a policy for use of the equipment that will ensure that the cameras and data are “for our official use only.”

In fact, he said, the department is working with the MCLU to craft a policy that includes safeguards of the data and an auditing system to provide oversight on the system’s use.

Googins said he hopes to reach some middle ground as police work with the MCLU. However, he said, “the middle ground is not outlawing this technology.”

Damon said he welcomes input from police. “If this is a great tool for them, I want to hear more about it,” he said.

However, he said, he remains “very concerned about the invasion of our privacy. I’m not aware if safeguards can be put in place, but if they can, I’m willing to listen to that.”

Statewide bill

Damon said he didn’t propose the bill specifically to target South Portland.

He drafted it a few months ago after learning about the existence of automated license plate recognition systems in other states, he said. Damon said he didn’t know then that South Portland was planning to get one through a federal grant.

The approximately $22,000 system that South Portland has was purchased as part of a $113,000 Bureau of Justice Assistance Grant that the police department received. The South Portland City Council on Sept. 9 voted to accept the grant on behalf of the city to be used to buy the automated license recognition system and institute other initiatives, including a system for residents to report crime complaints online and automated hand-held parking ticket issuing devices.

Damon said the bill, if passed, would apply to all Maine municipalities. He said he hasn’t heard of any other communities with the surveillance cameras, but said that no one knows for sure. “We don’t know who has this technology,” he said. “That’s another issue.”

He said he is glad the public hearing is taking place so that everyone can be aware of the new technology and can debate the issues surrounding it.

Clark, of the South Portland police, said an automated license plate recognition system is not something to fear.

On Jan. 15, he sent an open letter to the Transportation Committee saying that banning the technology “would be a huge disservice to the safety of both Maine’s citizens and police officers alike.”

He said in the letter that “I don’t believe I’m going out on a limb to say that this technology can and will save lives.”

Fears and misconceptions

Concerns about the camera system, Clark said, are based on “misconceptions of what this technology does, or perhaps more importantly, does not do.”

He and Officer David Stailing gave a demonstration of the camera system last week to a Current reporter. The cameras arrived earlier this month and officers have been trained to use them. However, their full implementation will not occur until the use policy is in place, perhaps this week or next, Clark said.

The technology is costly so the department has been able to outfit only one police cruiser with the cameras, Googins said.

The three cameras on the cruiser Stailing was driving are not very noticeable. Mounted on a bar on the roof that holds the cruiser’s flashing lights, they are flat, black boxes not unlike the surveillance cameras seen in banks or in department stores.

Clark said one of the cameras is positioned to record oncoming traffic as the cruiser drives down the road, and the others to record the license plates of parked cars along the road and in places off the road, like parking lots.

The cameras, which are connected to a laptop computer in the cruiser, photograph cars and read their license plates. If the license plate is a match on a “hot list” – a national database of license plates of interest to law enforcement that police officers can already access without the new automated system – an alarm goes off on the computer to alert the officer.

Clark said license numbers connected with people who are considered dangerous, wanted, missing or endangered would be on the hot list. Also, he said, it would include license numbers connected with people who have been reported to be suicidal, driving drunk or as suspects in a hit-and-run accident. Also on the list would be plate numbers of vehicles reported stolen vehicles or those connected with domestic violence offenders.

Clark said in his letter to the Transportation Committee that surveillance is defined as the “the act of observing or monitoring individuals or groups.” But the automated license plate recognition system does not do that, he said.

“It does not observe people. It does not monitor people. It does not track people or their associations,” he wrote. The system, he said, “does not provide any personally identifying information on anyone.”

For example, when the car and license of the Current reporter was scanned, all that that popped up on the laptop in the cruiser was the license number of the reporter’s car – not her name, address or age, or any information that would identify her.

If an alarm had sounded when her license number popped up, police would have checked her license against another database that has that information, Clark said. Police already have access to that database even without the new camera technology, he said.

“Quite frankly,” he said in the letter to lawmakers, “personally identifying information is already readily available at the officers’ fingertips on their cruiser laptops.”

Sometimes false matches occur on the new automated recognition system – the plate numbers may be right for example, but they’re for a license plate from another state. Googins said that’s why police must verify any matches that come up.

Same work, new methods

Clark said the automated system is simply a way to visually check out vehicles as police officers have done for years – but it’s a better, more efficient one.

Officers on their own can’t scan as many license plates, he said, because they are busy driving or attending to the police radio, or because they have declining eyesight or faulty night vision.

“I hate to admit it,” Clark said, “but my eyesight it not as good as it was 20 years ago.’

However, Damon said, the fact that the technology captures so much information is an issue. “The broad sweep is what has me concerned,” he said.

The system also records the time, date and location of the scan. The data is retained for 30 days before being erased, Clark said.

He said that’s because if there’s an ongoing investigation of, say, a bank robbery, and police don’t have a suspect until a couple weeks after the event, the stored data may help identify a car parked near the bank that was involved in the crime.

By the same token, Clark said, the system “could be used to clear somebody.” Evidence a person’s car was elsewhere when a crime was committed can exonerate a suspect, he said.

However, Bellows, of the MCLU, said that it is worrisome that even a month-long database is being maintained in this age of electronic piracy.

“The question is not if that data will be breached but when, and what the consequences will be,” she said.

Yet, Clark said, police databases filled with information already exist.

He contends in his letter that “given the times we live in and the amount of information already available to any police officer on the street, we believe the safety benefits of this technology far outweigh the expressed privacy concerns connected by a photo of a vehicle’s license plate when on a public way or within public view.”

Damon, however, has another take on the issue.

“(The bill) isn’t directed at being critical of the police or downplaying the danger of their jobs and the importance of their protection,” he said. “But our privacy and our freedoms are important, and they may trump that.”

The South Portland Police Department early this month acquired three cameras that when placed on the top of a cruiser create an automated license plate recognition system. The cameras photograph license plates as the cruiser moves down the street and runs the numbers through a national database, alerting police if the car is connected to a crime. (Staff photo by Tess Nacelewicz)