Earlier this week the ACLU of Massachusetts called for a statewide
moratorium on the use of license plate readers. We did so because a MuckRock/Boston
Globe investigation revealed serious abuses by the Boston Police Department
in its use of the controversial surveillance technology. Even the BPD itself
announced that it was putting its license plate reader program on hold, until
it could come up with policies and procedures to address the serious issues the
Globe uncovered.
Reporter Shawn Musgrave’s nearly year-long
investigation found that police, contrary to claims about why departments
supposedly needed plate readers, routinely failed to respond to alerts
notifying them of the presence of stolen cars. In one case, a stolen motorcycle
passed by a license plate reader nearly 60 times over a period of months, and
police apparently never did anything about it. That signaled to us that the BPD
was really just using plate readers to collect intelligence — vast troves of
information about where motorists drive, and when. The Globe investigation also
found that license plate reader data appears to have been stored for months
longer than the Department’s retention policy stipulates. And that’s not all.
A follow-up report published on muckrock.com
raises more alarms. The data Musgrave obtained via public records request
suggests that the Boston Police Department specifically targeted black and
working class neighborhoods when it deployed its license plate reader program.
Police apparently weren't doing much to follow the leads the technology gave
them in these neighborhoods, but instead just collected lots of data.
It’s difficult to say for certain if this is the
case, because the data is incomplete; the BPD has thus far refused to release
the missing information to Musgrave or the Globe. Specifically, some of the
thousands of license plate reads in the spreadsheets disclosed to the reporter
did not contain GPS coordinates. It’s therefore impossible to conclusively
determine whether or not the BPD’s plate reader program was predominately
deployed in Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury, South Boston, and Brighton, as the
available data suggests.
The Boston Police Department should release the rest
of the GPS coordinates to Musgrave so that the public can have a full
accounting of the license plate reader program. We need to know if, as it
appears, the police focused its plate reader program in working class and black
neighborhoods. This outcome wouldn’t exactly be shocking. Anyone familiar with
the field knows that racial disparities in policing are rampant, historically
and today.
But as high-powered surveillance technologies flood
police departments and cities and towns nationwide, we have to be very careful
that this history (and current reality) of disparate policing doesn’t get a
boost from seemingly neutral computer systems -- and that the technology
doesn't work to obscure the disparity.
Proponents of license plate readers have boasted
that the technology helps officers avoid the charge of racial profiling when
they pull over cars. That’s because the readers flag license plates, not
people. If the police are only using license plate readers in black and working
class neighborhoods, however, it doesn’t matter if the machine only detects
plates and not faces. The outcome is the same: unequal treatment and
disproportionate police attention to certain groups of people, based on where
they live — not anything they’ve done. Technology is not neutral as long as
human beings design and operate it, and plate readers are no different.
Like most American cities, Boston has a very
difficult history — and present — when it comes to racism and race relations,
and the police are part of that difficult narrative. These extremely troubling
findings should be seen in that context, but we need to know more. The
Department should promptly release the rest of the data, so that we can
understand exactly what happened with the license plate reader program.
One thing’s for sure: the BPD’s experience with this
powerful surveillance tool shows that, when it comes to invasive technologies,
police departments cannot be trusted to police themselves. The Massachusetts
legislature must act to pass
the License Plate Privacy Act. Until then, motorists statewide remain at
risk of being tracked for no good reason.
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