July 17, 2013

Documents obtained from Colorado police departments show tracking data is kept for years, even indefinitely

Denver – Police departments in Colorado and all around the country are rapidly expanding their use of automatic license plate readers to track the location of drivers, but few have meaningful rules in place to protect privacy rights, according to documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union. As a result, the new documents reveal, many departments are keeping innocent people’s location information stored for years or even indefinitely, regardless of whether there is any suspicion of a crime.

“License plate scanners can be a legitimate tool for law enforcement when their use is narrowly tailored and focused on an ongoing criminal investigation,” said ACLU of Colorado Public Policy Director Denise Maes, “but these documents show that police departments around the state are using license plate scanners to conduct broad, invasive surveillance of all citizens in case they might someday commit a crime.”

In Colorado, grants from the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority (CAPTA) directly or indirectly funded the purchase of automated license readers in Boulder, Longmont, Lafayette, Erie, Louisville, Commerce City, and Thornton. The Adams County Sheriff’s Office also received funding from CAPTA for automated license plate reader equipment.

The systems use cameras mounted on patrol cars or on objects like road signs and bridges, and the documents show that their deployment is increasing rapidly. They photograph every license plate they encounter, use software to read the number and add a time and location stamp, then record the information in a database. Police are alerted when numbers match lists containing license numbers of interest, such as stolen cars.

View an interactive slideshow on automated license plate readers

Last summer, the ACLU of Colorado joined affiliates in 37 states to file nearly 600 freedom of information requests asking federal, state, and local agencies how they use the readers. The 26,000 pages of documents produced by the agencies that responded – about half – include training materials, internal memos, and policy statements. The results and analysis are detailed in an ACLU report released today called “You Are Being Tracked,” which includes charts and policy recommendations.

The study found that not only are license plate scanners widely deployed, but few police departments place any substantial restrictions on how they can be used. A tiny fraction of the license plate scans are flagged as “hits.” For example, in Maryland, for every million plates read, only 47 (0.005 percent) were potentially associated with a stolen car or a person wanted for a serious crime. Yet, the documents show that many police departments are storing – for long periods of time – huge numbers of records on scanned plates that do not return hits.

In Colorado, for example, Commerce City and Aurora keep all driver location data from automated license readers for two years. In Aurora, some scans are then transferred to a database for indefinite retention.

The City of Longmont maintains all automated license reader data for a minimum of one year and a maximum of two. Longmont license plate readers do not distinguish between Colorado and out-of-state plates, occasionally resulting in false hits for innocent drivers.

“Without sufficient privacy protections, we could quickly reach a point where these devices are in operation on every block, monitoring like a GPS tracker every movement we make, including what friends, doctors, protests, political events, or churches we visit,” added Maes.

The ACLU report contains over a dozen specific recommendations for government use of license plate scanner systems, including: police must have reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred before examining the data; unless there are legitimate reasons to retain records, they should be deleted within days or weeks at most; and, people should be able to find out if their cars’ location history is in a law enforcement database.

The report, an interactive map with links to the documents, and an interactive slide show are available at: www.aclu.org/alpr. 

June 26, 2013

Colorado’s ban on marriage equality puts state at a moral and competitive disadvantage after ruling

Statement of ACLU of Colorado Executive Director Nathan Woodliff-Stanley on the Supreme Court’s ruling on the ACLU lawsuit, Windsor v. United States, invalidating the discriminatory policies of the Defense of Marriage Act.

“Today is a great day for equality and the beginning of the end for official discrimination against lesbians and gay men. The Defense of Marriage Act is the last federal law on the books that mandates discrimination against gay people just because they're gay, and today the Supreme Court took down its core.

“In Colorado, we recently made important progress by allowing same-sex couples to enter into civil unions. But civil unions are not the same as marriage, and won't qualify couples for all the federal benefits that marriage would. Today’s decision only holds some promise for those same-sex couples living in Colorado who married elsewhere: the federal government will recognize their marriage in certain instances. But this decision does not allow same-sex couples to marry in Colorado and it does not change the fact that many married same-sex couples living in Colorado are not considered married by our state.

“All loving and committed couples in Colorado should have the right to marry. The impediment is Colorado’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, which is a relic of the same discriminatory sentiment that produced DOMA. It is unjust and, after today, it puts our state at both a moral and competitive disadvantage against states that recognize full marriage equality. The ACLU of Colorado is committed to ending our state’s ban on marriage equality, so that all Coloradans can marry.”

June 25, 2013

Statement of ACLU of Colorado Executive Director Nathan Woodliff-Stanley on the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act

"Today’s Supreme Court ruling makes voting less free and fair, and it is a step backward, not forward, for civil rights and minority access to the democratic process.

"The court's decision is a significant departure from the Supreme Court's previous four decisions over four decades recognizing that Congress is in the best position to evaluate and set specific voting rights protections.

"When Congress last extended the Voting Rights Act in 2006, it did so with broad and overwhelming bipartisan support. Members from both sides of the aisle understood that strong federal legislation remains necessary so that all Americans can exercise the right to vote free from racial discrimination.

"The ACLU of Colorado will continue to work with our state and national lawmakers to protect and expand the right to vote."