ALPR
breaking the law. When running a plate from afar, an Fourth Amendment when officers run plates randomly
officer essentially is checking for outstanding wants or without reasonable suspicion. A New Hampshire case,
and warrants on the vehicle or against its title-holder. which was adjudicated in 2000, briefly addressed the
The unique sequence of letters and numbers only con- validity of running a license plate without probable
nects to the registered owner, who is not, necessarily, cause. Although the attending officer perceived no ille-
the driver. The officer reads the plate and relays the gal behavior, as the vehicle went past, he arbitrarily
alphanumeric sequence and issuing jurisdiction - either chose to run its plate. The inquiry revealed a lawful reg-
verbally or via a keyboard - to police headquarters. istration; but, it also indicated the owner had a sus-
Now, intelligent video recognition and communications pended license. Accordingly, the officer decided to stop
technologies are streamlining the process. Packaged the car and arrest the driver who, in fact, was the regis-
and housed on-board police cruisers, they find, scan, tered title-holder. Based solely on the license plate
transmit and interrogate plate alphanumerics, automat- check, the driver contended, the policeman could not
ically; serving as efficient and cost-effective tools. have known the registered owner was driving the vehi-
cle at that time. He contested the stop. The State Supreme
Popular misnomers Court recognized “...the authority of police to run ran-
One mistaken notion held by critics is that automatic dom computer checks of passing vehicle licenses, with-
recognition systems acquire license plate images and out suspicion of criminal conduct [and that] such a check
archive them in permanent databases. At the core of is not a search subject to the protections of the Fourth
their argument, opponents maintain such enforcement Amendment.”
applications indefinitely retain imagery of innocent vic-
tims’ plates. In reality, today’s systems make no record of The right of appeal
any plate nor its contents unless there is a match to a In cases where United States District Court rulings were
pre-existing “hot-list” entry. The controversy centers on counter to those findings, Courts of Appeal overturned
whether running plates (manually or automatically) those verdicts. Fifth Circuit (New Orleans, Louisiana),
without reasonable suspicion or probable cause is a Sixth Circuit (Cincinnati, Ohio) and Tenth Circuit (Den-
violation of one’s privacy and the right to be free from ver, Colorado) Courts affirmed, “...so long as the officer
undue searches and seizures. had a right to be in a position to observe the defendant’s
The law does afford some protection from invasion of license plate, any such observation and corresponding
privacy by government officials. The
Fourth Amendment to the United States
“Automatic ID
use of the information on the plate does
not violate the Fourth Amendment...”
Constitution guarantees “the right of the
technologies face
Other Appellate Courts have arrived
people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers and effects, against
hurdles in
at the same conclusions. The Tenth Cir-
cuit opined on two occasions that license
unreasonable searches and seizures.” A
attempting to
plates are “in plain view on the outside
legal analysis of any potential violation
of the Fourth Amendment by govern-
demonstrate a
of the car” and are “subject to seizure”
because there is no reasonable expec-
ment action must consider factors such
reasonable
tation of privacy. One panel wrote,
as the implication of a “legally protected
privacy interest”, whether an individual
expectation of
“[T]here is no case law indicating that
there can be any reasonable expecta-
had “reasonable expectation of pri-
privacy”
tion of privacy in license plates which
vacy,” and if there was probable cause are required by law to be displayed in
to perform the search. public on...any vehicle on a public street. It is apparent
Challenges to automatic identification technologies that when a vehicle is...readily subject to observation
face fairly large hurdles in attempting to demonstrate a by members of the public, it is no search for the police to
“reasonable expectation of privacy” for the data con- look at the exterior of the vehicle.”
tained on license plates, the movements of vehicles in Those who erroneously believe automatic identifica-
public space and “seizure” of that information. tion systems can track the movements of law-abiding
The United States Supreme Court held that individuals citizens, also would be likely to encounter a struggle in
do not have “reasonable expectation of privacy” regard- demonstrating a violation of the Fourth Amendment
ing VINs (vehicle identification numbers), which are right to privacy. A Supreme Court finding stated that a
located inside the vehicle and typically attached to the “person traveling in an automobile on public thorough-
dashboard but visible from outside. Further, the Court fares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his
noted “[it is] unreasonable to have an expectation of pri- movements from one place to another.” According to the
vacy in an object required by law to be located in a place Court, a driver voluntarily conveys - to any observer -
ordinarily in plain view from the exterior of the automo- the fact that he is using a specific roadway, going in a
bile.” Applying the same logic to license plates, it precise direction, plus the stops he elects to make as
becomes apparent that because they must be affixed to well as his final destination.
the vehicle’s outer surface and in clear sight, there can Proving “seizure” similarly may be problematic.
be no expectation of privacy for plate alphanumerics. Absent an “intentional acquisition of physical control”,
Courts continue to support those positions and state the Ninth Circuit (Akron, Ohio) affirmed that traffic cita-
that there is no right to privacy and no breach of the tions derived from photo-radar systems do not consti-
46 Vol 4 No 1 Thinking Highways www.thinkinghighways.com
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