A rush to surveil in Lorain

It took less than 12 minutes of public debate last week for Lorain City Council to approve blanketing the city with license plate readers. It wasn't even much of a debate. Most Council members bought into the argument from Lorain Police Chief Jim McCann that the license plate readers were necessary to fight crime in the city limits and beyond. The database created by Flock Safety's Falcon cameras will be accessible to other law enforcement agencies using the technology. Sure, Councilman Rey Carrion, D-6th Ward, suggested that the legislation, which was introduced in the same meeting in which it was passed, go to a committee, but that idea was quickly dropped. Mayor Jack Bradley explained that Council had already approved spending American Rescue Plan Act dollars on law enforcement. Originally, the money was supposed to be spent to hire 10 police officers. Instead, Bradley said, that ARPA funding would be used to hire six officers with the remainder devoted to the $531,500, five-year Flock contract. And so, once the city's Board of Control gives the program a final blessing, 40 license plate readers will be installed around the city. (Bradley said last week he wasn't sure exactly where they would be deployed.) In addition to capturing license plate information, the system also records the make and model of a vehicle, as well as its bumper stickers and other identifiable features. The only member of Council who seemed to recognize the potential dangers was Councilwoman Victoria Kempton, D-2nd Ward, who later told our reporter Carissa Woytach that she found the technology invasive. Kempton, the only member of Council to vote against the Falcon system, also raised legitimate concerns about whether the information gathered would be shared with federal immigration authorities seeking undocumented immigrants. While the technology would be good for tracking stolen cars or vehicles connected to specific crimes, it also would be gathering information on every car that passed by. That could have an impact on how folks behave. Also, what sorts of crimes will police be tracking with this technology? Just felonies or will low-level misdemeanors also warrant its use? All of these topics were ripe for deeper exploration in a committee meeting or, better yet, a public hearing on whether Lorain residents want to be subjected to increased surveillance. Bradley downplayed the privacy risks, saying a license plate would be logged only if it had been entered into the system by law enforcement. "It doesn't affect random citizens," he said. "It only affects people that have been put into a police database." McCann, too, argued that the readers were merely a crime-fighting tool. "They're not cameras, they're not red-light cameras, they're not speed cameras," McCann said. "They're allocated for one thing only: license plate readers." It's good that the city isn't using the readers to catch motorists running red lights or speeding, which is more about generating revenue for cities than improving public safety. (Lorain has explored the idea of such cameras in the past.) Despite city officials' assurances that only those driving a car linked to a crime have reason to worry, the license plate readers can impact privacy. Flock's website said that it stores the information it collects for 30 days, which would allow police to look back and track the movements of vehicles. Even if motorists have done nothing wrong, their vehicles' information would still be captured by the license plate readers, making it possible to keep tabs on their whereabouts. Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, raised similar concerns in a story last week in The Vindicator of Youngstown about license plate readers being adopted in the Mahoning Valley. "There's absolutely a concern about privacy with license plate readers," he said. "They could be used to track our movements. If someone wanted to follow you to a house of worship or a political meeting or protest or to a medical facility, what stops them? It's highly irresponsible to adopt the use of these with no protections in place." The ACLU is pushing for a state law to direct how license plate readers and the information they collect can be used by law enforcement. As it stands, those safeguards and policies are decided by individual police departments. Better rules governing surveillance technology would be good, but it's also worth asking whether the technology should be deployed in the first place. It's a question that deserved more than 12 minutes of discussion.