-Caveat Lector- http://www.sunspot.net/news/printedition/bal-ca.plates00aug12.story?coll=bal-pe-carroll Originally published August 12, 2001 License plate cameras raise privacy concerns Baltimore, Washington among airports using surveillance system By Eric Rosenberg Hearst Newspapers WASHINGTON - Major airports around the country are installing increasingly sophisticated camera systems in garages and parking lots to record the license plates of vehicles, raising concerns among privacy rights groups that a vast database could be tapped by law enforcement or sold to marketers. Several types of license plate recording systems already are in use across the country at most airports, including those in the Washington, D.C.-area and in Denver, Baltimore, San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix and Louisville, Ky. One of the most common types in use for several years takes a picture of the tag number when a motorist leaves a garage and matches it against a manifest of numbers manually entered into a computer by garage attendants. Other versions have a camera trained on the rear tag and an attendant at the booth keys in the plate when the driver exits. The effect is the same as a picture in that there is a documented record pegged to the license plate. More advanced model But a more advanced variant will soon be installed at Washington Dulles International Airport and is planned for other major airports. It records an image of the license plate when a vehicle enters a garage, matches it to a time-stamped ticket the driver receives at the same time, and takes a picture of the license plate upon exiting. The idea behind these so-called license plate recognition and license plate inventory systems is to make sure that, for example, a driver whose car has been in the garage for three nights doesn't swap his ticket for one that says fewer days have elapsed. The system also deters parking attendants from pocketing money in what is a predominantly cash-oriented business. But privacy concerns arise because in the process of protecting revenue, airport managers are collecting huge amounts of data that can be used to track the movements of individuals. Sarah Andrews, research director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a privacy rights advocacy group based here, said the system "raises significant problems, especially if it is going to be networked to other cameras or the information sold to commercial companies to get a broader profile of you and your habits." Chris Hoofnagle, EPIC's legislative counsel, added that the collection of personally identifiable data such as license plate numbers raises privacy worries because it could easily become available to law enforcement agencies with a subpoena. "We see in a lot of different areas that when some entity collects personal information, the police learn of the database and often ask for the data to be archived," Hoofnagle said. "Once you put any information in the hands of a third party, you lose your reasonable expectation of privacy to it. The police can walk in to those parking lots and get that information and have some ability to track people," he said. Ari Schwartz, an analyst with the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy rights group here, said the camera system is emblematic of the increasing use of surveillance and intrusion in everyday life. He mentioned cameras that snap pictures of red-light runners and so-called facial recognition cameras, used in Tampa, Fla., to scan faces and automatically compare them with criminal mug shots in a police database. "In each of these cases, where camera technology is introduced, we say it's just for use in a certain type of situation. But as we collect more and more information, we create more databases and eventually come back and use this information for other purposes," Schwartz said. "If the information is not being collected at all, we don't have to worry about what it's being used for down the line," Schwartz added. Motorists have choice Richard Diamond, a spokesman for Rep. Dick Armey, the House Republican majority leader from Texas who has led the fight against red light cameras, said that the license plate cameras were less of a privacy concern. A key difference, he argued, is that motorists have a choice of whether or not to use an airport parking facility and therefore to expose themselves to being documented. A chief privacy concern is what happens to the archived license plate data and how frequently it is purged from an airport's databases. The less frequently a database is purged, the more it can be used to discern an individual's habits, in this case, the dates and times of travel to and from an airport. According to Joe Survance, a vice president with Ascom USA of Atlanta, one of the largest manufactures of the camera equipment, each airport has different standards on when to purge the data. At some, including Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Dulles International, the license plate number, date and time the vehicle was in the parking lot are archived and stored for "several years," according to Tom Sullivan, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. He said that the actual images of the license plates are purged from the database after about two weeks. But Sullivan stressed that the camera equipment "is not intended to intrude" on privacy. "That's why the camera is centered on the license plate and not the driver. It still has some anonymity associated with it." Sullivan also said the airport authority maintains strict control over the data, which is not sold for commercial use. Privacy rights groups aren't aware of any instances in which police have subpoenaed parking facility data. Neither is Survance, whose company has been manufacturing and installing the equipment for airports for several years. "I have not heard of instances in which law enforcement has gone after this information," he said. "And I'm not aware of any abuse of the data that is collected, where it has been sold or shared." But there has been keen interest among some airport authorities in receiving the license plate numbers of stolen vehicles from law enforcement agencies so that all vehicles entering a garage can be cross-checked against the list, said Survance. Shelly Cameron, the head of financial management at Dulles International, said that airports are not interested in monitoring patrons. "Our interest is not to keep records of people's license plate numbers. It's to ensure that they aren't trying to cheat the system, which is actually a lot more prevalent than you might think." But if asked by authorities for access to the license plate database, "if it was in conjunction with a legitimate inquiry with a case, we would cooperate," she said. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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