VANCOUVER — A new high-tech crime-fighting tool that police believe has revolutionary potential is worrying some civil libertarians and privacy watchdogs.
Automated licence-plate readers are being tried out by police forces in several Canadian jurisdictions.
In Vancouver, police are using them to track down stolen cars and nail driving scofflaws, but the technology’s investigative uses could ultimately include counter-terrorism work and tracking sex offenders.
Critics fret it represents creeping big brotherism, another step towards a surveillance society.
An RCMP pilot program launched in British Columbia in 2006 demonstrated the effectiveness of the computerized units in recovering stolen vehicles and catching suspended drivers.
The technology is now in regular use in the Vancouver area, but its expansion to other parts of the province has been delayed until the federal privacy commissioner’s office completes an assessment. The Mounties have not yet submitted their report to Ottawa, says Insp. Norm Gaumont, head of the force’s B.C. traffic division.
“It costs a lot of money and it takes a heck of a lot of time,” explains Gaumont. He says the force and its lawyer did not begin preparing their report until they could provide a complete outline of the program.
Winnipeg police recently invested in the devices to find stolen vehicles, while cities including Calgary and Toronto have also used the technology to fight car theft.
Automated licence-plate readers – ALPR – use cameras to take snapshots of vehicle plates, which are then checked automatically against a police database. A “hit” on a flagged plate for, say, a stolen car or one belonging to a suspended driver sounds an alert on the police computer. The readers cost up to $30,000.
A Vancouver-area operation involving seven police forces – the Integrated Municipal Provincial Auto Crime Team – has mounted the units in unmarked vehicles where a battery of cameras can read up to 600 licence plates an hour, says team spokesman Sgt. Gord Elias.
Elias says a list of stolen vehicles is downloaded into the undercover cars’ computers daily. The team cruises known hotspots, scanning the plates of oncoming cars. A side-mounted camera can read plates in parking lots.
Along with bait cars, the technology has helped slash auto thefts in the B.C. Lower Mainland, Elias says.
“We don’t see any (privacy) issues because ALPR for our purposes is no different than a police officer sitting in a car with a computer and running the licence number that drives by him,” says Elias. “The only difference here is the computer is running it automatically for you.”
The technology has also been put in marked cruisers in the Vancouver-area’s Integrated Road Safety Unit to troll for vehicles driven by people with outstanding traffic violations.
Elias says data collected by the readers is not shared with other police units and is purged regularly – two years for “hits,” 90 days for other plate numbers.
“It’s not something we can just hang on to for as long as we feel like,” says Elias. “So we’re quite confident there will be no issues with the (privacy impact) assessment.”
That’s apparently not the case in some European countries, where the technology was first developed, according to Gilles Amyotte, service manager with Edmonton-based Mega-Tech, which sells ALPR systems.
While police agencies in several provinces that are trying the readers have put some constraints on their use, Amyotte says data collected by the technology is routinely archived in Europe for later analysis.
With the units operating on stationary close-circuit traffic cameras and GPS-equipped police cars, it’s possible to track a given vehicle’s movements.
Elias notes the technology was used initially during the Irish Republican Army’s bombing campaign in Britain to warn if a vehicle linked to a known IRA member was headed into London.
“Europe is really paving the way in this,” says Michael Vonn, policy director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
Privacy advocates don’t want to inhibit the use of legitimate policing tools, Vonn says, but the licence-plate technology “ups the ante” when it comes to observing citizens in public places, becoming part of a surveillance “matrix.”
“There’s no other constitutional right that runs headlong into policing as does the right to privacy,” says Vonn.
A demonstration video of the Vancouver auto crime team’s use of the system talks about other potential applications, including national security. Elias suggests it could, for instance, be used to keep tabs on sex offenders if they’re under court order not to go near areas like schools or playgrounds.
“ALPR is going to revolutionize the way we police in North America,” the unit’s Sgt. Rick Stewart says at the end of the video, which has been posted on YouTube.
In a 2005 letter to Stewart, B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis said collection, use and disclosure of personal information associated with the technology must comply with federal and B.C privacy legislation and that it be limited to law-enforcement purposes.
He also urged creation of a protocol setting clear guidelines for the handling of the data, limiting those who have access to it, ensuring its security and defining how long it can be retained.
Three years later, no official protocol exists, although Elias says police are safeguarding the information.
“This is Canada,” he says. “You know that we are going to be very strictly guidelined on this and we are going to have to follow whatever rules are put in place under the Privacy Act.
“I know that we are not going to able to use the information for a fishing trip. There’s just no way, and it will be purged when we’re told to purge it, and it will be done automatically.”
Loukidelis says he wants “ironclad assurances” the system will be used only for discrete, specific law-enforcement purposes.
“The question I’d want to ask is: Why keep the non-hits?” he says.
