Ubiquitous license plate readers enable unconstitutional ‘Dragnet surveillance program,’ lawsuit says

A new federal lawsuit filed in Virginia makes mass transit even more attractive. The Institute for Justice, a civil liberties organization, is suing the city of Norfolk, Virginia, over its use of Flock cameras, automated license plate readers that the organization says violate citizen protections of the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures. 404 Media was the first to report on the affair.

There are currently 172 operational Flock cameras in Norfolk, which use AI to passively check nearby cars. Images are stored in a database for 30 days before being destroyed but can be downloaded during this time and retained indefinitely.

“The city of Norfolk, Virginia, installed a network of cameras that prevent people from driving anywhere without their movements being tracked, photographed and stored in an AI-powered database that allows for surveillance without mandate of each of their movements. This civil rights lawsuit seeks to end this systematic surveillance program,” the lawsuit reads.

Flock cameras have been deployed in more than 5,000 communities across the United States and have already been used in at least one criminal case in which prosecutors used evidence from a Flock camera to try a defendant for theft.

Some may say that citizens do not have the right to privacy when they are in the public square. But the Institute for Justice, in its lawsuit, points to another Virginia case in which the judge ordered the suppression of evidence from a Flock camera because of the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights. “It would not be difficult to make mistakes linking law-abiding citizens to crime due to the nature of the Flock system and in the event that a law enforcement officer seeks to create a suspect where one did not exist not otherwise would it be a simple task,” said Judge Jamilah LeCruise.

In its lawsuit, the Institute for Justice represents two Virginia residents as plaintiffs. One of them, Lee Schmidt, worries that Norfolk police could use Flock cameras to easily infer their daily routine. “If Flock Cameras record Lee walking directly through the intersection outside his neighborhood, for example, the NDP can infer that he is on his way to his daughter’s school. If the cameras capture him turning right, the NPD can infer that he is heading toward the shooting range. If the cameras capture him making a left turn, the NDP can infer that he is heading toward the grocery store. Flock cameras capture the start of almost every trip Lee makes in his car, so he effectively can’t leave his neighborhood without the NPD knowing.

Police and criminal investigators constantly want more technology to help them solve crimes, and companies like Flock benefit from the fact that law enforcement will never say no to more tools that make their jobs easier. But we’ve seen countless examples of things going wrong with new surveillance technologies. Already, the proliferation of facial recognition in policing has led to the wrongful detention of innocent individuals, particularly people of color, after an AI system mistakenly linked them to surveillance footage at the scene of a crime. Judge LeCruise’s concern that law enforcement mistakenly links law-abiding citizens to a crime is not just a theoretical idea.

There is a constant tug of war between the public and law enforcement over how much access they should have into our lives. Apple has fought hard against the Justice Department and the FBI over their iPhone backdoor claims, and it’s not hard to see why, considering how authoritarian countries have abused the iOS flaws to target dissidents and others.

Investigators were able to solve crimes before AI and smartphones existed: their whole job is to investigate things, and they should be able to do that without delving deep into our personal lives. They can find potential witnesses, request CCTV footage from businesses, take fingerprints or do any of the many other things investigators have done in the past to solve crimes. Any attempts to increase surveillance capabilities should be viewed, at the very least, with skepticism, due to the imbalance of power and the real capacity to harm the lives of innocent people. Of course, perhaps Flock cameras can help locate stolen rental vehicles more quickly. But is it worth it?

This high-speed train between Los Angeles and Las Vegas couldn’t arrive any sooner.