ACLU Recommendations
Data Retention
Whether ALPRs are being used for Amber Alerts, toll collection, or to identify stolen vehicles, a license plate can be run against a watchlist in seconds. The police do not need records of every person’s coming and goings, including trips to doctor’s offices, religious institutions, and political gatherings.
New Hampshire state law, which requires law enforcement to delete non-hit license plate capture data within three minutes, is a good model. But you should get the shortest retention period you can in your community. From worst to best, here are three approaches that can be taken to the retention of ALPR data:
Worst Approach (From Flock’s standard “Government Agency Customer Agreement”): “Footage is stored for no longer than 30 days in compliance with Flock’s records retention policy.” |
Better Approach Add by law or as an addendum to Flock contract: “Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary, ALPR photos or data captured by the customer’s Flock camera, or otherwise provided to or shared with Flock by the customer, or any data generated therefrom, shall be deleted and destroyed by Flock no more than 72 hours after such photos or data are first captured by, provided to, or shared with Flock, unless the customer or their authorized representative specifically requests, in writing, that a specific plate scan and/or the data generated therewith or therefrom be retained for a longer period, or unless otherwise required by applicable law.” |
Best Approach (Adopted from New Hampshire state law): Add by law or as an addendum to Flock contract: “Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary, ALPR photos or data captured by the customer’s Flock camera, or otherwise provided to or shared with Flock by the customer, or any data generated therefrom, shall be deleted and destroyed by Flock no more than three minutes after such photos or data are first captured by, provided to, or shared with Flock, unless otherwise required by applicable law.” |
Data Sharing/Use by Others
One of the most important privacy-protective steps you can take is to restrict your community’s ALPR system to local use, meaning local ALPR scans are only checked against locally developed watch lists. Allowing local ALPR data to be used by outside law enforcement creates significant risks. Your local ALPR data could be used to enforce anti-abortion or anti-immigrant laws from other jurisdictions, or even to assist foreign, authoritarian regimes in hunting down political opponents and refugees living in America (Flock’s default provisions give the company a “worldwide” license to use its customers’ APLR data).
These risks are simply not worth taking, especially since there are many other companies that sell locally focused systems. From worst to best, here are three data sharing and use approaches:
Worst Approach (From Flock’s standard “Government Agency Customer Agreement”): “For clarity, Flock may access, use, preserve and/or disclose the [ALPR] Footage to law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/or third parties ... if Flock has a good faith belief that such use, access, preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to ... protect the rights, property, or safety of Flock, its users, a third party, or the public as required or permitted by law.” |
Better Approach Add by law or as an addendum to Flock contract: Add by law or as an addendum to Flock contract: “Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary, ALPR photos or data captured by the customer’s Flock camera, or otherwise sent to or shared with Flock by the customer, or data produced therefrom, shall not be sent to or shared with any other person or entity unless (1) permission to do so, with respect to a specific plate scan and/or the data generated therewith or therefrom, is granted in writing by the customer or their authorized representative, and (2) the request pertains to the investigation of an Amber Alert or a violent felony. Notwithstanding the above, under no circumstances may data be voluntarily shared with, provided to, or used on behalf of any government entity, private entity, or person that is not subject to the laws and Constitution of the United States of America.” |
Best Approach Add by law or as an addendum to Flock contract: “Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary, ALPR photos or data captured by the customer’s Flock camera, or otherwise sent to or shared with Flock by the customer, or data produced therefrom, shall not be sent to, shared with, or used by or for any other person or entity.” |
Database Use
As much as we might hope that all police watchlists were 100 percent reliable, we know they are not. In fact, the largest and most commonly used national watch list — the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database — does not even comply with the 1974 United States Privacy Act’s basic accuracy, reliability, and completeness requirements. That means allowing your ALPR data to be run against such databases will subject anyone living in or visiting your town to unjustified arrest and detention, which is an especially dangerous proposition for members of vulnerable, already overpoliced communities. Again, from worst to best, here are three database use approaches:
Worst Approach (From Flock’s standard “Government Agency Customer Agreement”): “[The customer, government] Agency hereby grants Flock a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free right and license (during and after the Service Term hereof) to ... disclose the Agency Data and Non-Agency End User Data (both inclusive of any Footage) to enable law enforcement monitoring against law enforcement hot lists as well as provide Footage search access to law enforcement for investigative purposes only.” |
Better Approach (In addition to adding data sharing limitations above): Add by law or as an addendum to Flock contract: “Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary, any ‘hit’ or ‘flag’ generated by and reported to the customer by Flock as a result of a comparison with any database shall contain the following notice, in all capital letters, where that database (e.g, the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database) does not comply with the 1974 United States Privacy Act’s requirement that the database’s records be maintained with ‘such accuracy, relevance, timeliness, and completeness as is reasonably necessary to assure fairness to the individual’: ‘WARNING: THE DATABASE PRODUCING THIS HIT/FLAG DOES NOT COMPLY WITH THE 1974 U.S. PRIVACY ACT’S ACCURACY AND COMPLETENESS REQUIREMENTS. AS SUCH, THIS HIT/FLAG MAY BE INNACCURATE AND MUST BE INDEPENDENTLY CONFIRMEDBEFORE IT IS ACTED UPON.’” |
Best Approach (In addition to adding data sharing limitations above): Add by law or as an addendum to Flock contract: “Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary, ALPR photos or data captured by the customer’s Flock camera, or otherwise sent to or shared with Flock by the customer, or data produced therefrom, may be compared only to hot lists created by the government Agency that provided the ALPR photo or data.” |
In the end, neither local police departments, nor government officials, nor residents should blindly accept Flock’s model simply because it advances Flock’s bottom line, or because other jurisdictions have unwisely chosen to do so. We continue to believe that using Flock cameras should be opposed outright. But where that battle can’t be won, then any system should at least be confined to the community itself and not made part of a national and international mass-surveillance system.
