A New Tool
License Plate Recognition
By Daniel Muniz

License plate recognition technology has the potential to revolutionize law enforcement by scanning and identifying the license plates of cars on public roads. However, critics contend that such tools violate the Fourth Amendment from unreasonable searches and seizures while eroding our privacy.

So is this leap in technology a blessing or a curse?

Here’s how it works. First of all, cops already routinely do this but manually. For example, suppose a police car is at a stoplight and there is a vehicle in front of it. The officer can manually key in the license plate number he or she visually sees into the computer of the squad car that is directly tied to a police database. If any kind of flag pops up, the police officer can then pull over that vehicle and identify who is driving it.

Overall, it is a great way to find people who have warrants out for their arrest or who need to be detained for questioning or determine whether or not the vehicle is a stolen car.

But doing this work manually is slow and cumbersome. As a result, a single police officer can only feed his or her computer a small token of license plate numbers during a shift.

Now to have an electronic device that can do the same thing autonomously without human intervention has enormous value because it can simultaneously perform a search on a multitude of cars. There is no way a cop can scan thousands of license plates on a single shift but a machine tied to a police database certainly can.

This tool also tackles one nagging problem that has plagued municipalities for decades.

Locating criminals with outstanding warrants or people who don’t want to be found is a Herculean task. Sadly, law enforcement only allocates a tiny portion of its resources to track down criminals and even that percentage is only dedicated to finding the most dangerous lowlife degenerates. As a result, the people who have neglected to pay off traffic tickets or other low level crimes really have nothing to fear. Now a much bigger problem arises with the people who have committed more serious crimes but who are loose on our streets.

However, the problem that hug-a-thug advocate groups have such as the ACLU is that they are hell-bent on protecting the privacy of hoodlums. They often cite the Fourth Amendment as a way to stymie the efforts of law enforcement.

But there really isn’t a constitutional question with this technology. The naked eye is already doing the same job but high tech electronics simply does the job so much better on a vastly more efficient scale.

So far courts have already struck down cases involving the thermal imaging of houses which is an easy way to catch marijuana growers who operate a huge number of lamps that helps the plants grow faster. Although I disagree with such decisions, I would be willing to concede that thermal imaging does “peek” into people’s homes. Perhaps it is a bit of a stretch to claim a “probable cause” although I don’t see a problem with thermal imaging especially if it is performed from a public street. However, I do understand how it can be tied to an unreasonable search.

But that is simply not the case with license plate recognition technology.

There is absolutely no “peeking” into anything because a vehicle is already out in public.

As for eroding privacy, the moment any automobile is on a public street, it is no longer private. In fact, it’s license plate, inspection sticker, and vehicle registration is already public information that anybody can view. Also, it is a legal requirement in every state for a car to have insurance and a driver to have a valid driver’s license. In addition, every vehicle is required to have a state mandated inspection sticker and a registration sticker in order to be allowed on any publicly maintained roadway.

So to be on a public street that was financed by the government, a car is required by law to have quite a bit of identifying information on it at all times and so does the individual who is driving it.

Now taking a stroll on the sidewalk may be a legitimate issue. And I would have to agree with civil libertarians that an individual is under no obligation to carry any sort of identification on their person and he or she would have a reasonable expectation of privacy against searches and seizures.

But that is not the case with driving a car. Driving on our streets and highways is a privilege instead of a right particularly since the roadways were constructed with public money. There is just not that kind of invasive intrusion that privacy proponents feel that occurs.

Overall, this technology is really a great tool that law enforcement needs to combat crime at all levels. The people with outstanding warrants who have been roaming our streets with impunity should no longer have that kind of freedom. Stolen cars will also be so much easier to identify and emergency situations like kidnappings can also benefit from it.

Now I will admit that the danger of an automated justice system does exist and that is a valid concern of civil libertarians. Our legal system does need sufficient safeguards to prevent the country from becoming a surveillance society in which everything and everyone is monitored. And there are already too many municipalities that want their cities under constant surveillance, much like what Western Europe is under.

However, I disagree with the notion that license plate recognition technology represents the beginning of a slippery slope of unceasing monitoring. I agree that it can be abused and that is something that a free society must always be vigilant against. But if used properly, it can help get thugs and lowlife degenerates off the streets and make our communities safer for everyone.

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