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Copyright © 2013 Albuquerque Journal

APD captures license plate information but you can’t see it; backs off six-month retention

Each day, on average, thousands of license plates on Albuquerque streets are photographed, processed, stamped with time and location, and shot off to a federal database.

Within 0.017 seconds, computers determine whether the plate belongs to a stolen car or is otherwise associated with criminal activity, like an arrest warrant or missing person.

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The vast majority of those license plates are in no way associated with criminal activity or investigations. But that doesn’t mean Albuquerque police are done with them.

For the next six months, license plate information for cars observed at all hours of the day and night at supermarkets, churches, neighborhoods, bowling alleys, malls and other places is stored in a city-owned database.

That database includes between 200,000 and 300,000 license plate numbers at any one time.

At least that was the case until Friday afternoon.

Following inquiries from the Journal, Chief Administrative Officer Rob Perry said the city was going to make a “prompt change” to its policy, reducing the amount of time the information is kept from six months to 14 days. Mayor Richard Berry said earlier in the week that he was “open” to a shorter retention period.

Still, if you want to know where police have observed your license plate and recorded the location, you’re out of luck. The city won’t provide that information.

In mid-July, the Journal filed a public records request asking for any data relating to seven particular license plate numbers of cars belonging to the newspaper’s employees. Also requested were all license plates gathered on a particular day, specifically July 17, 2013.

The city refused to produce the information, saying the data requested had been provided to the federal National Crime Information Center.

“The information you requested from the license plate readers is information that is entered into NCIC … ,” Deputy City Attorney Kathryn Levy said in the denial. “The information indexed in NCIC is for law enforcement purposes only.”

However, the Albuquerque Police Department’s standard operating procedure on use of the readers mandates that all license plate data received be “stored on a city-owned and -maintained computer.”

And an FBI spokesman in West Virginia said the agency does not keep data on license plate numbers sent to it by other law enforcement agencies, such as APD. The deluge of license plate data referenced against NCIC lists is called a “probe request.”

“NCIC’s role is to be queried and provide a response,” said FBI spokesman Stephen Fischer in an email. “We don’t keep/maintain the probe requests.”

An APD spokeswoman said the database doesn’t contain any personal information.

“We only store plates, never personal information in that database,” spokeswoman Tasia Martinez said in an email last month.

Also, Martinez said, the license plate numbers captured stay in the system for six months before being purged, “which I believe is much more frequent than other agencies.”

The department initially bought six automatic license plate readers in the summer of 2011. It now has seven.

Investigation tool

The plate readers are mounted atop police vehicles as they go about their daily patrols. The cameras are coupled with a software system that compares license plate data collected in real time with federal and local hot lists. The information is then stored in a city database.

Sgt. George Vega of the APD Auto Theft Unit said in an emailed statement reviewed by city attorneys that the database is used for investigations and follow-ups.

“This (database) permits designated detectives to access the information for investigative purposes and to follow up on leads involving information on license plates,” Vega said.

The readers have resulted in the recovery of between three and five stolen vehicles a week, he said.

However, the city would not provide details about any specific case solved through the use of the database, saying the information would reveal confidential police methods.

“The use of the data has assisted in solving multiple crimes, in addition to auto theft,” Vega said. “The City cannot point to a specific case as its use is a confidential method which would be exempt from disclosure … .”

On Thursday, interim APD Chief Allen Banks said he wasn’t sure why the database existed or why information was maintained for six months. Banks became interim chief in early August.

“That’s one of the things that I get a chance to learn as chief of the police department,” Banks said Thursday during a meeting with Journal editors and reporters.

Berry said the Journal public records request prompted him to review the city’s policy of maintaining the data for six months.

“What’s magic about six months? That’s a discussion we’re going to be having,” Berry said. ” … It wouldn’t bother me if we shortened it.”

Vega, in the statement, said the six-month interval was decided after reviewing policies of other departments and determining what would be “reasonable” to assist in additional investigations.

In announcing the policy change Friday, Perry said keeping the data for 14 days would be useful for law enforcement in auto theft and other cases while still striking a balance against privacy concerns.

“It’s been something, quite honestly, that there’s been concern and question about,” he said.

The data will still not be made public, Perry said. Two weeks is a period of time “reasonably related to the duration of an auto theft investigation,” he said.

The new policy should be in effect Monday. A copy of the new police standard operating procedures provided by the city shows the necessary changes, in addition to a new sentence:

“Protecting the privacy of our citizens through strict policy and procedure is a priority of this program.”

The American Civil Liberties Union in New Mexico called the change in policy a “vast improvement” to the six-month rule. However, it hopes the city can justify to the public why it needs to keep the data at all.

“Over time, this data can establish patterns of travel, reveal what church you go to, what political meetings you attend, relationship infidelities, and other information most people would rather the government not know,” ACLU-NM spokesman Micah McCoy said in an email.

“This is why it is so important that law enforcement not store license plate reader data gathered on innocent people in long-term databases.”

City Councilor Brad Winter had planned to introduce legislation at the next City Council meeting that would have prohibited the information from being kept for more than a week.

After learning of the city’s Friday afternoon change of plans, Winter said he doesn’t know whether he’ll still introduce the legislation, but he said he was nervous that the mayor can change the amount of time the data is kept within the executive branch.

“That seems like it’s a policy that the City Council should decide on,” Winter said.

Technology successes

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is in charge of NCIC, which maintains hot lists of suspect descriptions, license plate numbers and other information pertinent to ongoing criminal investigations. As of September 2011, 46 states, 33 local agencies and one federal agency had agreements to provide license plate reader data to NCIC, according to an FBI spokesman.

Fischer said the license plate reader agreements between NCIC and other law enforcement agencies have led to significant arrests and seizures. A March 2011 survey found that more than 1,100 stolen vehicles were recovered and 818 people on “Wanted Persons” lists were arrested since the law enforcement agencies first began using the technology in 2004.

The technology has also been credited with the recovery of 19 missing persons.

Federal regulations warn of civil and criminal penalties should NCIC information be given to an unauthorized source, and APD regulations require that its database only be searched for “official criminal and administrative purposes.”

The regulations say “any other use or search in the system is not authorized.”

Vega said two auto theft officers can access the database to add and delete information. That includes a sergeant and a detective, whom he described as “having the most knowledge concerning the database, its history and use, and to ensure that there is coverage if the sergeant is unavailable”.

Fifteen other detectives from Auto Theft, Violent Crimes, impact teams and other investigative units are trained and authorized to access the database, Vega said, but they can’t add or delete information.

The database maintains a log of every time it is accessed, Vega said, and it is audited.

Public record question

The fact that the city is storing the data separately from NCIC but refuses to release it prompted one New Mexico open government activist to compare the database to recent National Security Agency leaks that revealed widespread data mining of phone calls.

Terry Schleder, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, said the database presents both privacy issues and open government concerns.

Schleder said the city is withholding public information by not releasing records kept in the database.

“The public is entitled to the know the details, the who, the what, the when, the how,” Schleder said.

McCoy, the ACLU-NM spokesman, said that while he believes the data collected constitutes a public record, he’s concerned it could be used improperly if anyone could file a public records request on, say, a spouse’s late-night whereabouts or the workplace of an ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend.

“The key here is to avoid long-term storage of data on innocent people,” McCoy said. “The potential for abuse decreases exponentially when this factor is eliminated. Otherwise, information that is not part of an ongoing criminal investigation should be accessible via public information requests.”