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I guess I thought this would get a little more attention than it has.  On Tuesday, the Washington Post’s Lisa Rein reported:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security tracked the protest plans of a peaceful Washington area antiwar group and passed the information to the Maryland State Police, which had previously labeled the activists as terrorists in an intelligence file. The federal agency obtained two e-mails containing plans for upcoming demonstrations at a military recruiting center in Silver Spring in 2005, the first indication that DHS might have worked with the police to monitor advocacy groups.

While a DHS spokesman claimed the communications were “taken off the Internet,” that is disputed by Pat Elder, a leader of the group involved (the now dissolved DC Anti-War Network, or DAWN):

“They would have had to join our group as a member,” said Pat Elder of Bethesda, the leader of a national network that opposes military recruitment in high schools. He said he was in contact in 2005 with an activist in Atlanta about how to build the cardboard coffins frequently used by protesters against the Iraq war as a symbol of what activists have called needless military deaths.

The e-mails were forwarded to the Maryland State Police from a DHS office in Atlanta.

Nice database work!
It’s interesting how well coordinated the passage of information was.  It’s as if… as if… why, it’s as if there was some kind of federal database that would enable far-flung agencies to be aware of a mutual interest in a given “terrorist” like Mr. Elder once he was entered in the system.

Read the rest of this entry »

You had to live - did live, from
habit that became instinct - in
the assumption that every sound
you made was overheard, and,
except in darkness, every
movement scrutinised.
– “1984″, George Orwell

Suppose that the local police in
a particular jurisdiction were to
decide to station a police car at the
entrance to the parking lot of a
well patronized bar from 5:30 p.m.
to 7:30 p.m. every business day for
the purpose of making a list of the
license plates of cars that were
driven in and parked in the lot
during that time… I would guess
that the great majority of people
who might have the question
posed to them would say that
this is not a proper police
function…
– William Rehnquist, 1974

They who can give up essential
liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty
nor safety.
– Benjamin Franklin

This page is a resource page about the proposed acquisition of a license plate scanner system by the Takoma Park Police Department.  I believe there are substantive civil liberties concerns with these systems.

Takoma Park

• Takoma Park City Council
• Press release, 12/17/08: “NEWS RELEASE - Takoma Park Police to Acquire License Plate Recognition Scanner“; my discussion.
• Grant application by TPPD to Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention; my discussion.
• TPPD 2008 Annual Report: auto thefts down 24% from 2007 (before scanner proposal);  TPPD Bulletin summary: stolen cars rarely reported involved in other crimes; my discussion.
• City Council January 26 worksession:
  • Briefing memorandum (.PDF, 2 pages)
  • Video (worksession begins at 52:20); my discussion.
  • Transcript (partial: ~ first 17 minutes of the worksession)
• Selected relevant City Council resolutions:
  • October 28, 2002: opposing PATRIOT Act
  • November 3, 2008: re Maryland State Police spy scandal
• February 25 forum:
  • Video link; draft transcript
  • My introduction, my discussion
  • Coverage: Gazette, Takoma Voice
• April 13 worksession
  • Briefing memorandum; first draft policy proposed by TPPD
  • Video link (worksession begins at 1:09:11, my public comments at 16:48)

Civil liberties, civil rights, privacy

• The Constitution Project: “Guidelines for Public Video Surveillance: With Model Legislation” (.PDF, 104 pages)
• ACLU Privacy & Technology site
• The Fourth Amendment:
  
  The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Relevant law

• Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA; Title 18, 2721 of U.S. Code)** and EPIC fact sheet
• Maryland 10-616 of State Government Article; MD DOT MVA “Protecting Your Privacy” **

Articles, opinions

• Mine, collected under the tag “license plate scanner” on this site
• Security expert Bruce Schneier “City Cops’ Plate Scanner is a License to Snoop” (Sep 2004); “Privacy in the Age of Persistence” (Feb 2009)

Technical

• Manufacturers: PlateScan (motto: “The License Plate is just the Beginning”), ELSAG
• Automatic number plate recognition (Wikipedia)*
• Evidence for counterfeit or stolen plates as car theft strategy and way of defeating scanners: UK Home Office Consultation Document, undated, response deadline 12/8/2008: “As regards misrepresentation of vehicle registration marks, we understand from the police that there has been a steady increase in the numbers using illegal number plates. Breaches of the legislation include altering the layout of letters and numerals, illegal fonts and the use of tape to change the appearance of the plate. This has significant implications for criminal investigations and crime detection, eg by Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) systems and automatic speed detection devices.” See also WSJ, BBC (via), CBS; more generally, vehicle cloning report by Natl. Insurance Crime Bureau.

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* Common acronyms for these systems include ANPR (automatic number plate recognition), ALPR, LPR, (license plate), and AVI (vehicle identification).
** DPPA and MD 10-616 are mainly relevant to invasions of privacy by non-law enforcement persons — but both disprove the widespread notion that there is no expectation of privacy for license plate information.

At my request, the city sent me a copy of the license plate scanner grant application made by the Takoma Park Police Department.  The application, made to the Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention (GOCCP), can be seen below.

TPPD license plate recognition scanner grant application (click expansion icon at upper right for better view)

In the following, I make a few comments about the application. While I have criticisms, I don’t want readers to think I’m imputing bad motives or bad faith to the Takoma Park Police Department. The goal of recovering stolen cars is sensible, of course. But as written, the application goes beyond that in some ways, and makes no provision for civil liberties concerns or procedures.
Read the rest of this entry »

Another point of view about license plate scanners, followed by my response.

You’re going to have to come up with something better than the Fourth Amendment if you want the Constitution to support your position. Unreasonable search and seizure? I’m sure you’re not referring to “seizure” so “search” must be the issue. You want to try to craft a definition of “search” that fits here? I can’t.

=====

From my perspective, the license plate scanner issue is one of surveillance and data protection.  Those issues are not just about what is and is not narrowly permissible to the police and the state, but about what our rights should be. Those rights were not exhaustively described by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights — how could they have been, by people who had no inkling of computers, video surveillance, GPS systems, etc.

I believe that the plain spirit of the Fourth Amendment and the Bill of Rights supports my view that license plate scanners represent an unreasonable search or seizure of information.

But whether I’m right about that or not, we still have the right to choose a less-surveilled, less abuse-prone society over a more heavily surveilled one. We can decide what kind of community we want. And I should think the burden ought to be on those who want more surveillance, not those who want less of it.

I’m not a legal expert (obviously, many will snort). I just try to reason out how my fundamental rights are or are not protected by what I see happening. I understand the counterarguments — you won’t need to repeat them — but the “search” or “seizure” of my “effects” that I see happening takes place at the time my license plate identification is compared to a database, for no reason other than that a squad car rolled past my car. (I use both words only because while it seems more like a “search” to me, some legally trained people I’ve talked to say it’s perhaps more of a “seizure”.)

But even if license plate scanning is permissible under the 4th amendment, as narrowly understood and adjudicated today, I’m more concerned with the anti-surveillance spirit that caused that amendment to be written. We fought a revolution once, among other things to be rid of unwarranted intrusions and chilling oversight, to be able to stand up and say we’re a free people, secure in the knowledge that we control and monitor our police and our government, not the other way around.

I like that spirit better than one seeking to justify “security” measures of little value. I hold out hope that we’ll either reject this particular security measure, or very, very strongly regulate its use.

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EDIT, 9/22/10: ‘that amendment’ for ‘them’.

I’ve mentioned the listserv discussions I’ve been a part of on the Takoma Park license plate scanner issue. Here’s the nub of another point of view, followed by my response; while some of the response is similar to the points in a previous post, enough of it isn’t to warrant a post of its own.  A listserv member wrote:

The Fourth Amendment clearly does not bar the police from observing what is in plain sight in public places — for instance, automobile license plates. You shouldn’t have to consult a constitutional scholar to understand that. Common sense and the ability to comprehend plain written English are all you need.

=====

It simply isn’t that simple, in my opinion. I have no problem with a single policeman writing down a license plate of a car he thinks is ‘hinky’ for some reason, and seeing if it comes up as a stolen car or whatever. But the operative phrase in the prior sentence is ‘for some reason’, just as ‘unreasonable’ is in the 4th Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

There’s the plain written English for you. If 30 or 300 years from now a robot computer system comes along that replicates that policeman’s “hmm… that’s odd… I think I’ll look up that license plate” reasoning process, I might be more willing to consider it. But that’s not what this is; it’s almost literally the opposite of “reasonable” — multiplied by potentially thousands of plates a day — since it isn’t *reasoned* at all. And that seems like common sense to *me*.

But you’re right, we don’t need to try to be legal experts — in that we don’t have to settle for what merely “gets by” legally. We can ask ourselves, “is this really the kind of community we want?” License plate scanners? With all due respect to the 2007 Council — tasers? What’s next — the latest SWAT gear? armored personnel carriers? (Don’t laugh, it happens.*) Some of these are obviously water under the bridge. But cumulatively this seems to me to be heading the wrong way, away from the Takoma Park I want.

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* Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, Radley Balko.

Last night the Takoma Park City Council took up the proposed license plate scanner system that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. A video of the meeting can be viewed via this link (Windows Media player required); the worksession begins around the 52:20 minute mark.  A 2-page briefing (.PDF) can be seen here.

While civil liberties concerns were expressed, I mainly sensed a desire not to disagree very much with the plan.  It seemed to me councilmembers were still coming to grips with the issue, let alone opposing, reining in, or even closely questioning the police about the device — or they might have called other witnesses and experts: perhaps the city attorney, perhaps any of a number of other lawyers the town boasts.

After the meeting, I talked with several of the police officials. Captain Coursey — the officer who wrote the grant proposal for the device — told me that the systems he was looking at included PlateScan (slogan: “The License Plate is Just the Beginning” ) and ELSAG, maker of the “Mobile Plate Hunter 900“, which brags that “after-action analysis” of license plate data can lead to, among other things, “watch list development” and “pattern recognition.”

What was frustrating to me was that a number of assertions were made during the meeting, or emerged after the meeting, that deserved clear rejoinders but didn’t get them.  Herewith some of those assertions and my own rejoinders:

• License plates are public knowledge; people can pay a business like this one a few bucks and find out who owns a given license plate.

Answer: I don’t like that people can buy such information either.  But at any rate, I expect more of our police department, and what it or other agencies could do with the information is of even more concern to me than what some snoopy private citizen might do.  Moreover, as a citizen, I can hope to do more about it.

• With this system, there are no “pings” of another agency’s database — all the queries are done against downloaded data.

Answer: That is undeniably a good thing, and at least the PlateScan and ELSAG systems do appear to do checks against downloaded data, rather than sending data elsewhere to be checked and stored.  But notice also that in the past, those “pings” were (or ought to have been) based on some policeman’s or policewoman’s suspicion about a car — it matched a description she’d heard, something about the driving behavior was off.  Now it’s simply wholesale surveillance.

• Read the rest of this entry »

…for Playmobil Security Check Point:

• “I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger’s shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger’s scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said “that’s the worst security ever!”. But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.”

• “The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society. My son said he wants the Playmobil Neighborhood Surveillence System set for Christmas. I’ve heard that the CC TV cameras on that thing are pretty worthless in terms of quality and motion detection, so I think I’ll get him the Playmobil Abu-Gharib Interogation Set instead (it comes with a cute little memo from George Bush).”

• “My family was planning a vacation to Europe, so I purchased this item to teach my twins about what to expect at the airport and hopefully, alleviate some of their anxiety. We also downloaded the actual TSA security checklist from the American Airlines website and then proceeded with our demonstration. Well, first we had to round up a Barbie and a few Bratz dolls to play the other family members, so that cost us a few extra bucks at the Dollar General and it is aggravating that the manufacturer did not make this product “family-friendly.” Of course, since the playmobil Dad could not remove his shoes or other clothing items, unlike the Barbie, the playmobil security agent became suspicious and after waving her wand wildy a few dozen times, called her supervisor to wisk the Dad into a special body-cavity search room…”

• “I like the basic idea. I applaud Playmobile for attempting to provide us with the tools we need to teach our children to unquestioningly obey the commands of the State Security Apparatus, but unfortunately, this product falls short of doing that. There’s no brown figure for little Josh to profile, taser, and detain? Where are all the frightened plastic Heartlanders pointing at the brown figure as they whisper “terrorist?” Where are the hippy couple figures being denied boarding passes? And shouldn’t someone be forcing a mother figure to drink her own breast milk?”

Via Brett Schenker. See also Playmobil Police Checkpoint.

Last month I happened to open an email on a neighborhood listserv I follow.  It was a Takoma Park Police Department press release titled “Takoma Park Police to Acquire License Plate Recognition Scanner.”  The announcement was as follows:

Chief Ricucci is pleased to announce that the Takoma Park Police Department has been granted funding in FY2009, through the Governor’s Office of Crime Control & Prevention (GOCCP), for a “License Plate Recognition Scanner (LETC).”

LETC is attached to a police cruiser. It works by capturing digital license plate images as they pass a camera, whether mobile or fixed. The plates are automatically cross-checked in real time against multiple local, regional, statewide and, if appropriate, national databases to identify vehicles that are of interest to the authorities. In fact, LETC can access multiple databases simultaneously and report not only matches but which database contained the vehicle of interest. Vehicle matches are reported instantly, allowing the officer to take appropriate action. [...]

Research has shown that patrol officers equipped with the technology can have arrest rates significantly higher than officers working without it. This will deliver reductions in crime, enhanced community safety and safer roads.”

It turns out that “LETC” is not a technical acronym, but merely a funding source — it stands for “Law Enforcement and Corrections Tech Center” (and is therefore sometimes abbreviated LECTC), which is a federal funding mechanism (via the Department of Justice) for law enforcement technology grants such as this one.  The Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Control & Prevention (GOCCP) receives LETC funds and disburses them to grant applicants deemed worthy of support; I’ll return to that in a moment.

This kind of program is something security expert Bruce Schneier calls “wholesale surveillance,” and it’s spreading fast.  Possibly the best known example is New York City’s “Operation Sentinel” scanning license plates coming into Manhattan via bridges and tunnels; in August 2008, WJZ (Baltimore) reported that a $4.5 million Homeland Security grant will pay for about 200 of the devices (either fixed or in squad cars) in the Maryland/DC area.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Legal Times’s Joe Palazzolo reports that Obama’s Department of Justice transition team has run into a little not unexpected difficulty:

A senior Justice Department official said today that “99.8 percent” of the department’s work with President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has gone smoothly. The 0.2 percent snag: The department has reservations about granting the team’s request to review classified legal opinions related to secret CIA and National Security Agency programs.  [...]

The opinions, some of which have been released to Congress in redacted form, contain the legal rationale of the NSA’s warrantless spying program and the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies, among other intelligence initiatives.

A reasonable guess about some of the documents involved can be gleaned from an October 2007 list of documents OLC chief Steven Bradbury refused to release in in response to an ACLU/EPIC lawsuit , summarized by ‘emptywheel’ in “Warrantless Wiretap Memos Timeline.”*  Palazzolo continues:

In an unprecedented move, the Justice Department began providing provisional security clearances to Obama’s staff prior to the election. A select group was cleared for access to even more sensitive information, but [Attorney General] Mukasey said last week that some documents may not be made available to Obama’s staff until they take their oath of office.  [...]

The Justice official said the dispute over access to the NSA and CIA opinions has made its way up to Williams & Connolly’s Gregory Craig, who earlier this month was named to be Obama’s White House counsel. Craig was expected to meet with current White House counsel Fred Fielding to discuss the issue, the official said. It’s unclear whether such a meeting has already taken place.

Given the past eight years, it’s hard not to be suspicious that the “99.8%” cooperation is the easy stuff, for public relations.  Meanwhile, that “0.2% snag” — stuff Obama’s transition team will have to wait until January 21st for — might also be relabeled “stuff Bush will pardon people for on January 20th.”  Still, it’s interesting and heartening to learn just who is on that transition team:

Obama’s Justice Department transition team is led by Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr’s David Ogden. Also on the team are OLC veterans Dawn Johnsen, a professor at Indiana University School of Law; Martin Lederman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center; and Christopher Schroeder, a professor at Duke University School of Law.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) executive director Mike Tidwell writes that he, too, was listed as a “terrorist” by the Maryland State Police on their now-infamous “Case Explorer” database.  Tidwell:

Since 2001, I have devoted my life entirely to the peaceful promotion of windmills and solar panels to solve global warming. Apparently not everyone liked my work, however. Believe it or not, the Maryland State Police - your state police - put my name in their criminal intelligence database as a “suspected terrorist” as part of their larger program of collecting information about political activists in 2005-2006. I was on this outrageous “watch” list apparently because of a single act of peaceful civil disobedience I participated in outside a coal-fired power plant in 2004. CCAN’s former deputy director Josh Tulkin was also put in the database as was another former CCAN staffer who has chosen to remain anonymous. Neither of these people has ever been arrested for anything in their entire lives. (See background below)

So about one third of the entire Maryland CCAN staff - one of the largest environmental groups in the state - was officially spied on by the police while we peacefully promoted clean electricity and clean cars for Maryland. This is, of course, an outrage and a threat, not just to civil liberties in Maryland, but to the state’s entire environmental community. When people who are trying SAVE the climate and SAVE the Bay are considered terrorists, the world has truly been turned upside down.

Tidwell asks readers to send an email to Governor Martin O’Malley asking him to release all surveillance files gathered by the MSP (who prefer to destroy the files), and to support comprehensive legislation (being drafted by local State Senator Jamie Raskin) to prevent similar abuses from happening again.  There will also be a 10:30 am rally tomorrow at the Silver Spring Metro station to further publicize the scandal and press these demands.  The rally and email campaign are both coordinated with the ACLU-Maryland, whose lawsuit helped uncover the scandal earlier this year.

This fishing expedition by the Maryland State Police task force was as un-American as McCarthyism or Nixon’s “dirty tricks” — it was a dry run for Chinese- or Stasi-style surveillance and infiltration of innocuous activist groups, and their labeling as literally enemies of the state.  Dry run is putting it kindly, actually — this was the real thing. The recently released Sachs report relays what I consider a snickering, bald-faced lie about how the “terrorist” designation was considered no big deal by those aware of it:

While the MSP employees with whom we spoke recognized that the individuals and groups under investigation here were not “terrorists,” under any reasonable and accepted definition of that word, none who were aware of the use of the designation seemed to consider that a government agency’s decision to label someone a terrorist, particularly when that label is included in an external database, could cause serious harm to that person’s reputation, career, and standing in the community.

Baloney. They knew full well they were putting a bureaucratic scarlet “T” on all of the people they labeled that way. For this assault on civil liberties to be fully repulsed, that needs to be turned on its head: the superiors involved should be disciplined and demoted, and those doing their bidding should be reassigned to simpler chores, like checking parking meters or directing traffic.

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UPDATE, 10/23: CCAN online communications manager Susanna Murley has set up a “No Police Spying” facebook group, with photos from the rally; alternatively, see the CCAN blog post about it.  Also, the New York Times  Andrew Revkin (”.Dot Earth” blog) is covering the story.