License-reader firm says new law curbs free speech
Feb 13, 2014 2:12 PM (ET)
By JACK GILLUM
Associated Press
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20140213/DABUHI9G2.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The surveillance industry is fighting back. A company
that makes automated license plate readers sued Utah's government
Thursday over a new law there intended to protect drivers' privacy.
Digital Recognition Network Inc. of Fort Worth, which makes
license-plate readers that rapidly scan the tags of passing vehicles,
argues that a new state ban on license-plate scanning by private
companies infringes on its free-speech rights to collect and disseminate
the information it captures, and has effectively put it out of business
there.
The case is an early example of pushback as Congress and state
legislatures consider proposals to rein in phone-records collection,
drones and license-plate readers. At least 14 states are considering
measures that would curb such collections.
Republican state Sen. Todd Weiler, who sponsored the new law, said his
proposal gained momentum after legislators discovered police were
gathering widespread data from mobile license-plate readers. He said
those cameras can be useful, such as recovering stolen cars, but he
worried about the privacy implications when organizations store that
data indefinitely.
"It's one thing to take a photo," he said. "It's another to take photos
every 80th of a millisecond, and then store that data you can later be
identified by."
The Texas company says it's not a police agency - law enforcement
already is exempt from the ban under Utah's new law - nor can it access
in bulk federally protected driver data that personally identifies the
letters and numbers it collects from license plates in public. The
company said it only wants to find cars that have been stolen or
repossessed, not to cull large swaths of data and incriminate people
from their travel habits.
"People tend to invoke privacy and suspend judgment and skepticism,"
said Michael Carvin of Jones Day, a law firm representing the company
and Vigilant Solutions Inc., a license-data network that shares
information with authorities to find missing people. "We don't track
people," he said.
Thursday's lawsuit marks one of the first times surveillance-technology
firms have invoked the First Amendment arguments to defend their
businesses. The lawsuit, which asks a federal judge to put Utah's law on
hold, relies in part on the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling.
It stripped away restrictions on corporate and union spending in
elections on free-speech grounds.
The company's founder, Todd Hodnett, said the technology has helped
recover more than 300,000 stolen cars in five years. Companies like
Vigilant have lobbied the federal government recently on law-enforcement
uses of license-plate-reader technology.
Revelations about surveillance programs run by the National Security
Agency have driven a sustained debate since summer on the balance
between privacy and government intrusion. Classified NSA documents,
leaked to news organizations, showed the NSA was collecting telephone
records, emails and video chats of millions of Americans who were not
suspected of a crime.
Some state legislatures have been unhappy with the speed Congress has
pushed for reform. Their proposals include a Colorado law that would
limit the retention of images from license-plate readers, an Oregon bill
that would require "urgent circumstances" to obtain cellphone location
data and a Delaware plan designed to enhance privacy protections for
text messages.
Republicans and Democrats have joined in proposing the measures,
reflecting the unusual mix of political alliances formed since the NSA
revelations. Establishment leadership has generally favored the
programs, while conservative, limited-government advocates and liberal
privacy supporters have opposed them.
Catherine Crump, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties
Union, said license-plate readers pose substantial privacy risks because
they can aggregate millions of license-plate hits. "That poses the
possibility of charting people's movements in great detail over time,"
she said. She acknowledged that laws like Utah's raise questions that
should balance First Amendment rights, such as taking photos in public.
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George Antunes Voice (713) 743-3923
Associate Professor Fax (713) 743-3927
Political Science Mail: antunes at uh dot edu
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-3011
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