In a win for privacy advocates and taxpayers alike, the city councils of Dayton, Ohio, and Urbana, Illinois, have rejected their cities’ use of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs)—thanks to a new report “Automated License Plate Readers: A Study in Failure” by Independent Institute’s Jonathan Hofer!
Hofer used the case of Piedmont, California to criticize municipal use of automated license-plate readers. These cameras violate the liberties of the innocent and fail to catch the criminals—and they are seriously expensive.
Hofer states, “There simply isn’t enough evidence to claim that ALPRs are effective at giving law enforcement investigative leads, nor does it seem to be the case that the cameras help in recovering stolen vehicles.”
The research paper has since been featured in a Future of Privacy Forum workshop, KPBS (a San Diego PBS and NPR member) and others.
We’ve been interested for years in the issues of intelligence-gathering and privacy. If you share our concerns in this regard, you might also want to check out our book-length history of them: American Surveillance by Anthony Gregory.
Sincerely,
Graham H. Walker, Ph.D.
President
Independent Institute
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