When the Monroe County Legislature meets next month, it will consider a proposal from the Sheriff's Office to install license plate readers at 85 locations across the county.
But the readers would not be used for routine traffic enforcement, Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Michael Fowler told legislators during a committee meeting this week. Instead, they would be used for operations around things like retail theft and stolen vehicles.
"Just about anything that you can come up with where a mode of transportation is used on public roadways," Fowler said. "This would come into play, in addition, to all those non- criminal cases, such as our Silver Alerts, our Amber Alerts, missing persons, things like that."
In response to a question from Democratic Legislator Santos Cruz, Fowler also said that under Sheriff's Office policies, the readers would not be used to assist federal agencies unless their request involves a criminal charge at the federal level. It would not, he said, be used to help track people the federal government is pursuing for potential deportation or other immigration matters.
Fowler added that the state DMV systems are not connected with federal immigration systems, and that the state DMV does not provide information to immigration agents.
The Legislature is set to take up the license plate reader legislation during its May 13 meeting. A memo accompanying the legislation authorizing the effort says Monroe is the only county in New York with a major city that has not set up one of these systems. It notes they already exist in Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, and New York City.
Civil rights and privacy advocates have been critical of the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) systems, which they position as a form of mass surveillance.
"Taken in the aggregate, ALPR data can paint an intimate portrait of a driver’s life and even chill First Amendment protected activity," the Electronic Frontier Foundation said on its website. "ALPR technology can be used to target drivers who visit sensitive places such as health centers, immigration clinics, gun shops, union halls, protests, or centers of religious worship."
Republican Legislators Jackie Smith and Bob Colby each raised questions around privacy, the "surveillance state," and what safeguards would be in place to prevent inappropriate access to sensitive information.
Fowler responded that use of the system would have an audit log and trail to help identify whether anyone is using it improperly, and that law enforcement officers would only be allowed to access its data if they have "some articulable public safety cause."
"We recognize the risk associated with this equipment," Fowler said. "The fact (is) that we've earned the public trust, and we don't want to do anything to jeopardize that."
