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October 8, 2019 12:10 am

Automatic License Plate Readers Are Making Getaway Cars Extinct

An anonymous reader shares a report: On Tuesday, Sept. 10, the Total Choice Credit Union in Laplace, Louisiana was robbed. At approximately 3:06 pm, a man in his early thirties walked in wearing jeans, a white shirt, sunglasses, and a brown dreadlock wig, according to a now-unsealed complaint filed last month in US federal court. He passed a handwritten note to one of the tellers which read: "ROBBERY. I DON'T WANT TO (HURT) OR (KILL) YOU OR ANYONE IN HERE SO I AM GOING TO GIVE YOU (FIVE SECONDS) TO (EMPTY) YOUR (REGISTER)." The teller handed over more than $7,000 to the thief, who fled on foot. Investigators canvassed the area for nearby surveillance cameras that might have picked up any clues. They found one with footage of an "older model white single-cab pickup truck stopped in the area directly behind the bank," a minute or two before the robbery went down. That's when cops turned to a tool that has rendered the concept of a getaway car all but obsolete -- the national network of automated license plate readers. These are fixed cameras with sensors that can be found in on utility poles, streetlights, overpasses, in police cars, even within traffic cones and digital speed display signs that show drivers how fast they're going. The technology, known as ALPR, can clock roughly 2,000 plates a minute, on vehicles traveling up to 120 mph. Each license plate is photographed and the date, time, and location are recorded. Law enforcement can access a target's movements in real time, or mine the data later to track a suspect's daily patterns. ALPR systems cast an incredibly wide net that has made it far easier for cops to catch criminals. The method has also drawn harsh criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and privacy advocates as "a technology deployed with too few rules," and "a form of mass surveillance." There are few accurate estimates of the exact number of ALPRs across the US, which is a hodgepodge of local, state, and federal and tribal license plate readers.

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