Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low near 55F. W winds at 10 to 20 mph, decreasing to 5 to 10 mph..
Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low near 55F. W winds at 10 to 20 mph, decreasing to 5 to 10 mph.
Updated: June 20, 2026 @ 5:30 pm
Editor,
The April 29 letter to the editor “Another view on license plate readers” in response to my April 21 opinion piece about Automated License Plate Readers asserted that there is no right to privacy in public places and that ALPRs prevent crime.
Both are wrong.
The electronic age has spawned conflict over the right to privacy on many fronts. The U.S. Supreme Court, though exerting itself not to arbitrate this conflict, has ruled that “a person does not surrender all (privacy) protections by venturing into the public sphere … With access to (cell-site location information), the government can now travel back in time to retrace a person’s whereabouts.”
ALPRs do not prevent crime. Even law enforcement advocates don’t make the claim. ALPRs are passive data-collecting devices that can be combined with vast amounts of other data to investigate a criminal case after a crime has been committed.
Not even Flock Safety, Foster City’s new vendor, claims crime prevention as a feature.
Consider Flock’s home base, Atlanta, Georgia, with 15 public surveillance cameras per 1,000 population, the second-most surveilled city, after London, in the Western Hemisphere. City-data.com’s 2018 crime index for Atlanta, the most current, was higher than 94% of U.S. cities.
California State Auditor Elaine Howle investigated 391 California law enforcement agencies’ ALPR policies and practices in 2019. One finding: All had policies to audit their systems to prevent abuse. None audited. Another: “the agencies have risked individuals’ privacy by not making informed decisions about sharing ALPR images … by not considering how they are using ALPR data … by following poor practices for granting their staff access to the ALPR systems, and by failing to audit system use.” The report is at auditor.ca.gov.
Don Shoecraft
Belmont
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(1) comment
Mr. Shoecraft – interesting points. Are you implying the majority of Georgia’s crime is related to crimes that would be affected or solved by ALPR data? Or are you reporting that crime, in general, is higher to the tune of all crimes, ALPR-related or not? There may be a significant difference. How would you be able to determine whether Sheriff Bolanos’ examples of successful ALPR data did not prevent any future crimes? After all, potential criminals read the newspaper and opinion sections and would take ALPR considerations in mind during their next “venture.” How about a compromise? A pilot program for a set period of time, say a year, or two, and then a re-evaluation of the program? In two years, we’d be able to discover whether these ALPRs are an asset or a detriment to public safety. Or is it a case of ALPR data "floating" out there that is your main concern, regardless of public safety?
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