Once again, D.A. Morales and Three Sonorans are reporting on something vitally important before most of the public even knows it is happening.
I did not understand that when a vehicle passes one of these cameras, it does not necessarily disappear from view. Its license plate, location, date, and time may become part of a searchable record that can potentially be accessed or shared far beyond the community where it was collected.
I recognize that license-plate readers can help law enforcement solve serious crimes. But that cannot be the end of the discussion. The real questions are: Who can search this information? How long is it retained? Which other agencies can access it? Is every search recorded? Who conducts the audits, and will the public ever see the results?
What happened in Chandler should be a warning. Years of supposedly clean human audits failed to uncover activity that the automated system finally flagged. In Georgia, a police chief was accused of using the system hundreds of times to track a former girlfriend and her teenage daughter.
This is the same principle I have learned from more than twenty years working for transparent elections: trust should never require blindness. Whether we are counting votes or operating a surveillance network, accountability must be built into the system.
Pima County residents deserve public answers before these networks expand any further. Thank you, D.A. Morales, for asking the questions our public officials—and much of the larger media—have failed to ask.
Once again, D.A. Morales and Three Sonorans are reporting on something vitally important before most of the public even knows it is happening.
I did not understand that when a vehicle passes one of these cameras, it does not necessarily disappear from view. Its license plate, location, date, and time may become part of a searchable record that can potentially be accessed or shared far beyond the community where it was collected.
I recognize that license-plate readers can help law enforcement solve serious crimes. But that cannot be the end of the discussion. The real questions are: Who can search this information? How long is it retained? Which other agencies can access it? Is every search recorded? Who conducts the audits, and will the public ever see the results?
What happened in Chandler should be a warning. Years of supposedly clean human audits failed to uncover activity that the automated system finally flagged. In Georgia, a police chief was accused of using the system hundreds of times to track a former girlfriend and her teenage daughter.
This is the same principle I have learned from more than twenty years working for transparent elections: trust should never require blindness. Whether we are counting votes or operating a surveillance network, accountability must be built into the system.
Pima County residents deserve public answers before these networks expand any further. Thank you, D.A. Morales, for asking the questions our public officials—and much of the larger media—have failed to ask.