Los Alamitos is the latest city to record license plates, expanding OC surveillance network – Orange County Register

Los Alamitos is the latest community to be part of a 24-hour automated surveillance network capable of tracking traffic throughout Orange County, with the recent placement of license plate readers across the country. city.

The devices began operating on February 2, Los Alamitos Police Captain Wayne Byerley said. A total of 12 license plate readers have been installed along the main roads leading into and out of town.

Array reader excels at identifying stolen vehicles, Orange County Sheriff, Sgt. Ryan Anderson said. The installation of devices in Los Alamitos, which saw 16 motor vehicle thefts along with a relatively low crime rate in 2019, underscores the prevalence of the technology across Southern California and beyond. again.

“They’re tracking things that we might not have known we needed,” Anderson said.

But the devices cause trouble for others, like American Civil Liberties Association Attorney Mohammad Tajsar, who calls readers “an integral part of an evolving surveillance architecture.” “can have unintended consequences.

High-tech equipment that recognizes and records the number plates of every passing vehicle. It can be mounted on stop lights, traffic signs and vehicles. The license plate reader is fully automatic, operates 24 hours a day, and can immediately notify law enforcement whenever a vehicle is detected by authorities.

Police in Los Alamitos hope their new license plate reader will assist police in combating the recent rise in catalytic converter thefts and help locate the vehicles of those reported missing. , Byerley said.

Readers were hired from Flock Safety as part of a 1-year pilot program. The deal was unanimously approved by the city council in June and will cost a total of $33,000 in public funds.

The company’s spokeswoman Holly Beilin said Flock Safety currently has nine contracts with law enforcement agencies in Orange County. And it’s not the only company supplying high-tech surveillance equipment to the police department.

In Lake Forest, with a population more than seven times that of Los Alamitos, license plate readers have been tracked since December 2020. High-speed cameras detected 24 stolen cars by 2021. , Anderson said. And within two weeks in late January and early February, they helped congressmen recover four stolen cars in the city and flagged another one as linked to a kidnapping that officials said. The sheriff said happened outside of Orange County.

In Fountain Valley, Police Det. Bryan Nguyen recalls how detectives used disc readers designed by another surveillance equipment vendor, Vigilance Platform, to profile a suspect in a drug investigation. without making him suspicious. Automated surveillance helped officers find out where he was living, and also led them to other locations to investigate.

“It’s a tool that really helps us do the work we’ve always done,” says Nguyen. “We have always had the ability to play discs and this just allows us to do it faster.”

Critics of surveillance technology widely admit it can be a powerful investigative tool. But they argue that there isn’t enough evidence to say whether its advantages over traditional law enforcement methods are worth the impact on Americans’ privacy. Tajsar said he believes there is little to be done to ensure that information discreetly collected by a broad network of readers will somehow not be used against law-abiding people.

The Sheriff’s Department retains information recorded by disc readers from the Vigilance Platforms for up to one year. Access to it is closely monitored and the deputy must clearly state why they are requesting data from the system, according to department policy.

In Los Alamitos and most other cities that contract with Flock, disc-reader data is deleted after 30 days. Lake Forest officials pay an additional fee to retain information for up to a year, as they believe it could be “invaluable” in future criminal investigations, the City Manager said. Deborah Rose said.

The dashboard reader does not track anyone who may be inside a scanned vehicle.

“We don’t include facial recognition, so there’s no way to compare a person in the car with the database,” Beilin said.

“There is no expectation of privacy on public roads,” she added, a view echoed by other surveillance companies and law enforcement agencies that use the device.

In several landmark cases brought by the Supreme Court in 2012 and 2018, Judges ruled that authorities must have orders to use GPS or cell phone tower data to track movement of people. Those two decisions indicate that the whereabouts of private citizens are not public information, and that the police are not authorized to use it, Tajsar said.

The judges gave no weight to the license plate reader.