ALPR Cameras: Why Should the Government Know Everywhere You've Been?

Automatic license plate readers were introduced as tools to locate stolen vehicles, identify suspects, and assist law enforcement. Those certainly sound like reasonable objectives.

But these cameras don't simply photograph vehicles associated with crimes. They routinely capture the license plates of innocent motorists, recording where and when their vehicles were observed.

That information can be stored, searched, and sometimes shared with other law enforcement agencies. With enough cameras, police can potentially reconstruct substantial portions of someone's travel history without that person ever being suspected of committing a crime.

Why should an innocent person's movements be recorded in a government-accessible database?

Here's a possible alternative: Compare license plates against vehicles already associated with legitimate investigations and immediately discard information about everyone else. Require a documented investigation and judicial authorization for searches of historical location records.

Would that preserve the legitimate benefits of ALPR technology without sacrificing everyone's privacy?

Or has society already accepted that driving on a public road means surrendering the ability to travel without being tracked?