ALPR - The all seeing eye of Big Brother

On November 8th, the US Supreme Court is set to hear a case which will determine whether or not police need a warrant to install a GPS tracking device on a vehicle.  The case will certainly be getting a lot more attention in the next few months due to its ability to change how the government views the 4th amendment.

But behind the scenes, technology is making GPS tracking of vehicles obsolete.  Automated License Plate Recognition (or ALPR or ANPR - Automated Number Plate Recognition).  It is sweeping the law enforcement world by storm.   In the United States, many police departments have outfitted patrol cars with ALPR systems, mostly funded by anti-terrorism grants.  So what does it do?  Well as the name implies, it automatically captures, records and checks license plates against a database and it can do so in huge numbers and with no intervention by police.  When the ALPR system finds a plate that is associated with a stolen vehicle or an outstanding warrant, the system alerts the officer and provides information on the vehicle and warrant.

On the surface, this seems like a great technology.  Police cars can rove the streets/parking lots and with little effort uncover any criminals who were stupid enough to drive around.  But like most technology, it will have unintended consequences.  The biggest one is that as ALPR becomes more popular, it will become easier and easier to track any particular individual's movement.   As the plate information is publicly visible on public streets, it's virtually immune from any 4th amendment challenge.  More cities are also installing ALPR systems at intersections in addition to patrol cars.  So the net effect will be that police will have the ability to determine not only where you and your car are at any given time, it will also (through the use of historical databases) allow them to see what any particular person's driving patterns are.    Effectively, this will make GPS tracking of vehicles unnecessary, at least in medium to large cities.

And as all of the technology that makes ALPR work is already in the public domain, it won't be long before the private sector makes use of it as well.  It's not hard to imagine that personal ALPR systems might be available in the future, allowing users to monitor patters of drivers though group-sourced traffic applications like Waze.

Imagine if a private company were able to capture license plate information along with travel patterns (where you live, work, drive). As of now, the government controls DMV information and most states make it very hard to get.  These private companies could offer this to you as well and as it's publicly visible information, it would be difficult to stop.  It would be a stalker's dream.