Honolulu police are testing a high-speed camera that captures thousands of license plates — and searches a database for information about vehicles and who might be behind the wheel.
The Honolulu Police Department installed the vehicle-mounted devices — called automated license plate readers — on three vehicles about two weeks ago, a department spokeswoman said. The devices are being used to identify stolen vehicles, she said.
HPD is working on a policy for the technology.
While it’s new to Honolulu, law enforcement agencies around the country have been using it for years, arousing some concerns about privacy violations and prompting one Hawaii lawmaker to introduce a bill restricting the data to use by police only for a limited period of time.
In western New York the camera system helped local deputies solve a missing-child case in minutes in October.
Sheriff Thomas Dougherty of the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department said in a telephone interview the incident began when his department was notified of a missing girl from Buffalo.
A department sergeant entered a license plate related to the case into the plate reader system. Within minutes an alert appeared on the laptop of a deputy on a state highway. The alert notified the deputy that her vehicle’s camera had just spotted the license plate on the other side of the highway.
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ACLU WEIGHS IN ON PRIVACY CONCERNS
To protect Americans’ privacy, the American Civil Liberties Union recommends the following policies for law enforcement agencies using license plate readers:
» Do not store information about innocent people collected by license plate readers for more than a few days or weeks, not months or years.
» Limit access to the license plate database to agents trained in the department’s policies governing the database.
» Allow people to find out if data about a vehicle registered to them is in the agency’s license plate database and allow those people access to that data.
» Update hot lists — the list of plates flagged for a violation — at the beginning of each shift.
» Report on the department’s use of license plate readers.
» Prohibit agents from using the database to create reasonable suspicion of a crime.
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Dougherty said the deputy turned around, stopped the vehicle and eventually returned the girl to Buffalo police.
"There’s no way the deputy would have seen the plate coming, traveling at 55 mph and (from) another vehicle traveling at 55 mph," he said. "That’s 110 miles an hour combined, trying to read a plate. It’s pretty much impossible to see that."
When a plate on a hot list — a list of flagged vehicles — is captured, the deputy can see the plate and what the vehicle’s wanted for on a laptop. Before making a stop, the deputy confirms the information.
Dougherty said six vehicles each have two roof cameras — one facing left and the other facing right to capture plates on both sides.
The cost varies according to the model, but the department outfitted its vehicles for $22,000 each, including the hardware, software and maintenance for one year.
Dougherty said that in one shift the cameras on one vehicle can capture thousands of plate images, which are uploaded and stored on a computer server. The cameras record for an entire shift.
"If you ran 10 cars by it in 10 seconds, it would capture all 10 plates," he said. "There is no delay. It’s pretty impressive."
That ability worries some concerned about privacy.
Last month state Rep. Takashi Ohno (D, Nuuanu-Liliha-Alewa Heights) introduced House Bill 2154, which would restrict access to the license plate data to law enforcement only and require the data to be purged after one year.
Ohno worries that by using the data, anyone could track a person’s movements without that person’s knowledge.
"It’s a great idea. However, when it comes to private information, I think that I would side with the public," Ohno said. "I think we should set some ground rules before going forward with something new like this."
The American Civil Liberties Union issued a critical report in July about serious privacy issues from agencies using the technology to collect vast amounts of data on innocent people. The data can then be abused.
For example, officers could scan the license plates of people who show up at a protest and investigate them, the report said.
So far, Ohno’s bill hasn’t progressed at the Legislature.
Dougherty, of the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department, said purging the data in one year could lead to criminal evidence being deleted before detectives realize the data are evidence. He disputed arguments that the technology infringes on privacy because the plates are on a public road and the cameras take photos of plates, not occupants.
He said the department installed the cameras a couple of years ago, and now deputies don’t have to write down plates and manually run them through a system.
"The readers are running everything for you," he said. "We’re getting people off the highway that are suspended … unregistered or uninsured. It’s a win-win all around. I don’t know one downside to an LPR."
For now the cameras will be on only Oahu’s roadways. State sheriff deputies and the state’s three other county police departments say they have not begun using it.
