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    Memorandum: Dissemination Practices Act Restrictions On Governmental Collection of "Information

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    The police department obtained two vehicles equipped with Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems through grants. These systems allow police to scan license plates and check them against lists of wanted vehicles. If a match is found, the officer is notified. However, delays may prevent locating the vehicle. The systems also currently cannot identify the issuing state of plates. By default, ALPR systems store all scanned plate data, whether or not a match is found. The police department is currently only using ALPR in "active" mode, scanning plates and checking for matches. Any non-matching "passive" data is automatically purged within 24 hours without investigation review, in accordance with the state Attorney General's opinion restricting

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    Memorandum: Dissemination Practices Act Restrictions On Governmental Collection of "Information

    Uploaded by

    api-238721154
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    The police department obtained two vehicles equipped with Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems through grants. These systems allow police to scan license plates and check them against lists of wanted vehicles. If a match is found, the officer is notified. However, delays may prevent locating the vehicle. The systems also currently cannot identify the issuing state of plates. By default, ALPR systems store all scanned plate data, whether or not a match is found. The police department is currently only using ALPR in "active" mode, scanning plates and checking for matches. Any non-matching "passive" data is automatically purged within 24 hours without investigation review, in accordance with the state Attorney General's opinion restricting

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    The police department obtained two vehicles equipped with Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems through grants. These systems allow police to scan license plates and check them against lists of wanted vehicles. If a match is found, the officer is notified. However, delays may prevent locating the vehicle. The systems also currently cannot identify the issuing state of plates. By default, ALPR systems store all scanned plate data, whether or not a match is found. The police department is currently only using ALPR in "active" mode, scanning plates and checking for matches. Any non-matching "passive" data is automatically purged within 24 hours without investigation review, in accordance with the state Attorney General's opinion restricting

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    20 views2 pages

    Memorandum: Dissemination Practices Act Restrictions On Governmental Collection of "Information

    Uploaded by

    api-238721154
    The police department obtained two vehicles equipped with Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems through grants. These systems allow police to scan license plates and check them against lists of wanted vehicles. If a match is found, the officer is notified. However, delays may prevent locating the vehicle. The systems also currently cannot identify the issuing state of plates. By default, ALPR systems store all scanned plate data, whether or not a match is found. The police department is currently only using ALPR in "active" mode, scanning plates and checking for matches. Any non-matching "passive" data is automatically purged within 24 hours without investigation review, in accordance with the state Attorney General's opinion restricting

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    Police Department

    MEMORANDUM
    TO: FROM: DATE: RE:

    Mr. L.K. Payne, City Manager Colonel P.H. Snead, Chief of Police September 30, 2013 Automatic License Plate Recognition system usage

    You requested information on the Police Departments use of Automatic License Plate Recognition systems. The LPD currently has two vehicles equipped with ALPR systems. These ALPR systems were obtained through grants. ALPR is a relatively new technology that allows system-equipped police vehicles to read basic license plate information from other vehicles. Read data is then actively compared with recently-downloaded law enforcement be-on-the-lookout listings related to fugitives, missing persons and stolen vehicles. The ALPR system notifies the officer operating the vehicle when a system hit is generated meaning that a recently read license plate appears to match that of a wanted, missing or stolen vehicle. This process has been referred to as active data processing. Practical ALPR system limitations include the following: Hit notification delay, coupled with traffic conditions, may render officers unable to relocate the passing vehicle that triggered the hit. Current ALPR systems can identify tag numbers, but not the issuing states: follow-up is required to verify the number and the state of any tag generating a hit.

    The default setting for ALPR systems is to store all read data both data that triggers a system hit, and data that does not. Collecting and storing license tag data that does not trigger a system hit has been referred to as passive data processing. Read data that does not generate an active investigation hit is retained by the ALPR system until it is manually purged or the system is programmed to automatically purge data. The potential public safety benefit to retaining ALPR read data that has not immediately generated an investigation hit is that this data might provide hits when searched in future for fugitives, criminal suspects, missing persons or stolen property that have not yet become the focus of an investigation at the time the data is collected. As an example: A series of burglaries occurs over a three month period. Ongoing investigation develops a likely suspect during the fourth month after the first burglary occurred. That suspects vehicle is identified. The ability to go back and search archived ALPR data for the period during which the burglaries occurred for any date, time and location that an ALPR vehicle had observed the suspects vehicle would provide a very powerful investigative tool. The state Attorney General has rendered an opinion that active ALPR data collection and retention, as described above, is exempted from Virginia Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act restrictions on governmental collection of information thatdescribes, locates or indexes anything about an individualunless the need for it has been clearly established in advance. For the same reason, it is the Attorney Generals 1 of 2

    opinion that retention of passive ALPR data is prohibited by the Data Practices Act due to the fact that no need for [retaining] it has been clearly established in advance. The Attorney General does not deem the potential use of passively-collected ALPR data to aid in future investigations as being an adequately specific need to exempt retention of passive ALPR data from Data Practices Act restrictions as currently worded. The Attorney Generals opinion fostered a good deal of interpretive debate among Virginia law enforcement leaders. It is my understanding that the Virginia State Police and the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police will lobby the General Assembly, with my support, to amend the Data Practices Act to allow for access controlled, limited time storage of all ALPR data as a potentially significant aid in future investigations. My personal view is that retention of passive ALPR data for 6-12 months after collection should be allowed provided that agency controls are in place to provide data access only in active investigation situations within that data retention timeframe. For the present, the Lynchburg Police Department is using ALPR systems in active mode only, and is automatically purging passive ALPR data, without any investigative review of that data, within 24 hours of its being collected. It is my understanding that the Virginia State Police is following the same procedure that the LPD is following. Please advise if you need any further information.

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