By John Chigos: It?s a new year and with it comes the obligatory news media scare story regarding privacy and license plate recognition (LPR or ANPR) technologies. If you haven?t seen it already, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday (January 26, 2015) on a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) license-plate tracking program and database designed to trace the movements of drug traffickers in the United States.
What apparently has the ACLU and the privacy-concerned like-minded up in arms is the recent revelation, according to the WSJ, that the DEA?s program does not confine its tracking activities and data collection to the area around the U.S./Mexico border. Rather, the agency has been working for some time to expand the program nationwide, with individual states being given the option to connect their surveillance cameras to feed into the database.
Furthermore, the collected data is made available to other law enforcement agencies for criminal investigations that may or may not be drug-related.
So, the cries of panic about ?Big Brother? and the rise of the surveillance state have begun anew, and personally I am baffled, quite frankly.
Why should anybody be surprised that the DEA is building a national tracking database?
Do they think that every drug trafficker is stopped at the border?
The fact that illegal drugs continue to proliferate in this country would seem to suggest that that is not the case and that therefore the DEA needs to have expanded surveillance.
It should also not come as a surprise to anybody that the DEA is using License Plate Recognition technology as part of this program.
LPR is one of the most reliable security technologies available and it does not violate individual privacy rights, as the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled.
It simply captures and stores information that is already displayed in public, just as any citizen can legally do.
Furthermore, why should the DEA not make that data available for other law enforcement purposes?
As long as neither the government nor any private entity is profiting financially from such information sharing activities, it is only right and proper that they do so.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the AMBER Alert system is one of the entities that draw on this database.
Would any parent argue against having such resources at the police?s disposal if their child disappeared?
There are those who will contend that the real issue is the existence of the database itself. That the DEA should not have in its possession such voluminous data, most of which is not associated with a crime.
This was the argument that the ACLU used to oppose Homeland Security?s attempt to create a National LPR Database, an effort that was subsequently abandoned.
The thrust of the argument, of course, is that a government that has that much data can and will track everybody?s movements 24/7/365.
A scary thought, to be sure, but untrue. As I have repeatedly pointed out in the past, LPR and other types of electronic surveillance systems collect and store far more data far faster than the government or law enforcement agencies can ever hope to keep up with.
Put simply, these organizations have no reason or motivation to look at any data point or pattern of behavior unless other evidence, such as that left by drug traffickers, has led them to it. Not only is it impractical to track everyone, it?s impracticable, and nearly impossible.
I have no problem with reasonable restrictions on the retention periods of non-crime-related data if they put the ACLU and the public at ease.
But the fact is I am not personally engaged in any criminal or terrorist activity so I don?t worry.
In fact, I sleep just a little better at night knowing that the DEA and organizations like it are using these advanced technologies to keep an eye out for those who would do us harm.
I often wonder if there would still be such intense concern if another 9/11 were to occur, another horrendous event in our history that might have been prevented through the analysis of this kind of data.
Again, my question to naysayers is, what is it about this kind of technology that really scares us?
What are those things that go bump in the night that so frighten us about LPR?
Are those bumps in the night scarier than the booms of imploding buildings?
Remember that we make voluntary use of technologies every single day that give away far more personal information about us than LPR does, from grocery store checkouts to smart phones to ATM cards to E-Z Pass devices and more.
If LPR can save even one life or prevent even one terrorist attack, who really wants to be the one to stand up and oppose it?
About The Author: John Chigos is the Founder, Chairman & CEO at PlateSmart Technologies, Inc. http://www.platesmart.com/