Last month, Charlie Wolf attended a meeting of the Greers Ferry, Arkansas, city council to complain about a license plate camera that he said was violating the Fourth Amendment by regularly taking pictures of his driveway and front yard. Greers Ferry Police Chief Kallen Lacy acknowledged Wolf's "distress" but rejected his legal analysis, saying "over 5,000 cities" across the country use such cameras, "so there is no constitutional violation there."
Despite Lacy's assurance, the widespread acceptance of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) as a crime-fighting tool only magnifies the privacy concerns they raise. They enable routine surveillance of a sort that would have troubled the Fourth Amendment's framers.
"Unlike red-light cameras or speed cameras that are triggered by specific violations," the Institute for Justice notes, ALPRs "photograph every vehicle that drives by and can use artificial intelligence to create a profile with identifying information that then gets stored in a massive database. Once that happens, officials can search the database for any vehicle they wish, all without a warrant."
