Police agencies have been given a new technological tool to detect stolen cars – license plate scanners. The scanners are cameras that are mounted on police cars that can read hundreds of license plates per minute of parked and moving motor vehicles. The plate numbers are fed instantaneously into vehicle data bases. If the plate comes up as stolen or is registered to someone with an outstanding arrest warrant, the officer(s) in the police car will receive that information at once.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department seeking disclosure of the scanner information maintained by those agencies. The ACLU claims it has no objection to scanning for stolen cars. In order to keep the police from creating electronic databanks on innocent citizens, the ACLU wants LAPD and LASO to erase the information it received just as soon as it is determined that the registered owner of the scanned plate is not wanted for any criminal activity.
I know that most cops and conservatives see the ACLU as the American Criminal Liberties Union, and often it appears to be exactly that. However, that organization does serve an important purpose – guarding our civil liberties against those who would infringe on them. In the case of information retained from the license plate scanners, the ACLU may have a valid point.
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