License-plate reader company claims First Amendment right to build a 1.8-billion-image database

Did you know these companies cruise the parking lots of clinics and doctor’s offices, taking pictures of the license plates? They sell them to Big Pharma so the companies can target you to sell you stuff. So this Tech Dirt article tells us about how Big Data wants to preserve that:

Private companies engaging in large-scale surveillance are pushing back against the push back against large-scale surveillance… by filing lawsuitsalleging their First Amendment right to photograph license plates is being infringed on by state laws forbidding the use of automatic license plate readers by private companies.

Now, these laws aren’t saying law enforcement agencies can’t use these readers. They can. What they do say (or did… Utah’s law was amendedafter a lawsuit by license plate reader company Vigilant) is that private companies, like repossession firms and tow truck services, can’t use these readers. But apparently they do, and those who manufacture and support the equipment would like to continue capturing this market.

Cyrus Farivar at Ars Technica reports that Vigilant has filed another lawsuit, this time against the state of Arkansas, arguing that a state law curbing the use of LPRs by private companies tampers with its free speech rights.

In this case, the two firms in question—Digital Recognition Network (DRN) and Vigilant Systems—generate, maintain, and share access to the license plate reader database with law enforcement.The new Arkansas state law took effect in 2014, and it bans the private collection of license plate reader data while still allowing the cops to use the devices, usually mounted on patrol cars. The two companies say that their First Amendment rights are being violated, as they are allowed to photograph—even under an automated, high-speed process that is then shared with law enforcement—any and all license plates, anywhere.

There’s a bit of a disconnect in Viglant’s/DRN’s logic, but one that’s a bit troublesome for the courts to address. By portraying the capture of license plates at a rate of nearly 1,000 per hour as little more than a digital version of someone taking individual photographs of publicly-displayed plates, the companies hope to make its technology look less intrusive than it is.

The troublesome part is that courts have held that privacy violations that don’t exist in the singular can’t magically be summoned by en massecollections. There are definitely privacy concerns, however, especially when this information is used (and misused) by law enforcement. But the companies argue that there’s nothing personally identifiable about a license plate, at least without access to other databases like those held by states’ departments of motor vehicles. (Oddly, law enforcement officials have madethe same argument, despite having this access.) This is true, but it’s of little comfort when the privately-held database contains 1.8 billion records and is growing at the rate of 70 million per month.