Nevada County Cops Install Orwellian Spy Network and Nobody Notices

In a landscape where the masses question the government’s increasing invasion of the people’s private lives, a new taxpayer-funded weapon against privacy has been deployed by local police with almost no fanfare. 

Camera at South Auburn and McKnight. Photo: Jason Tedder

Some months ago, the cities of Grass Valley and Truckee funded and adopted the use of 24 license plate “cameras” being placed in undisclosed locations within their respective city limits. In a news article dated September 16, 2021, Chief of Grass Valley Police, Alex Gammelgard, touted the technology as a means to “trace abductions, Amber alerts (child abductions) or homicides.” The article followed after the Grass Valley City Council unanimously voted to install the cameras for a one year trial period. One councilwoman, Hilary Hodge, expressed her concerns about civil liberties being violated, but seemingly limited her apprehensions to people of color being targeted. Chief Gammelgard offered the concession that he was aware of “the potential abuse of the technology,” and that there were limited statutory regulations to govern its use. However, he was able to sway the council with his assurances that his department would not overstep their discretion in collecting, storing, and using the data. Gammelgard also explained that “camera” does not accurately describe the technology but preferred calling them “Automated License Plate Readers, or ALPRs” instead.

The pilot program was said to last for a year and was apparently funded again in 2022 but any record of it was not accessible online. Gammelgard took again to the local press on November 23, 2023 to report some of the many successful instances where the cameras were used to solve cases involving vehicles.

Soon after, the police department for the City of Truckee approached their city council asking to fund ALPRs too. The Truckee Police Department cited the similar uses of ALPRs as Grass Valley did, but added that the “cameras would not use facial recognition software and will not work with federal agencies for immigration enforcement purposes.” The pictures offered in the local press did not show the level of detail of the vehicles that is available to police.

Image credit: Flock Safety

The camera essentially takes a picture of the cars at 30 frames per second and uploads them to a cloud server via cell networks. The picture of the car is then scanned by software and the characters of the license are converted to digital text. The cameras do much more than just license plates though. According to Flock Safety, the technology can also identify make and model, vehicle color, and unique modifications like bumper stickers and roof racks. The system tracks all cars, all the time, regardless if they are of interest to the police with high-definition quality photos that even capture occupants and political stickers. These cameras are also publicly available and are utilized by civilians too, like neighborhood watches and tow trucks. Police can aggregate information from all these cameras, ones in other jurisdictions, and in some cases other platforms as well. As cars pass the various cameras attached to vehicles like police cars or stationary mounted positions, the software can build a route of travel, combine it with historical data for that vehicle, and aid in predicting a destination. Every picture has a latitude and longitude attached to it and speed can be calculated through triangulation. These functions also serve to establish travel patterns over time. The only safeguard Flock has in place to prevent people from being snoopy is that a user must sign in and put a reason for why they are searching the database.

Image by Flock Safety

Local law enforcement has agreed to erase the data every 30 days, but it is not clear how well, or to what extent. Additionally, this is only a policy set locally; any data shared with other agencies may not have such a policy, and therefore that data may not get deleted. All information is stored by a third party in the cloud. Numerous databases such as these have been hacked all over the nation, including law enforcement and federal entities like the Office of Personnel Management, and for the most part, it seems there is no recourse for individuals who have their information stolen in such events.

Being a fairly new technology, the use of it has not made its way through the courts very much, but many legal entities are questioning ALPRs’ constitutionality, specifically protections under the Fourth Amendment. The primary complaint has been reactionary to law enforcement accessing this data without a warrant and using the data collected as means to help detain and prosecute individuals. Granted, bad guys do not like getting caught and the technology is undeniably effective at gathering evidence of criminal activity and a suspect’s whereabouts. However, from the resources available it seems that there is too much discretion for ALPR users to search the database because statutes do not yet rigidly define probable cause to do so. This issue is most likely something that will have to be sorted out case by case. Finding instances of abusive use in audit logs will likely be the impetus for developing stricter access. Nevertheless, what is also undeniable is that law enforcement is actively collecting information on people who are not suspected of any crime.

The courts have generally adopted a reasonable person standard regarding a citizen's expectation of privacy. The Supreme Court case Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 360 (1967) is often cited as the basis for a person's reasonable expectation of his or her privacy. The first prong of the Katz test is whether a person has manifested some sense of privacy and the second is if society at large would find it reasonable that a person could expect privacy in a given situation. It seems reasonable that an adult minding their own business should have some privacy with where and whom they visit outside of their home. Indeed, the Court affirmed in Katz that the Fourth Amendment protects people not places. The Supreme Court held in Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979) that the government has no right to intrude into a person’s privacy without a warrant supported by probable cause. One problem though is that the Court has yet to catch up with the pace of technology. 

Cell phone location information or CSLI is probably the most relevant and analogous technology to compare ALPR with. Although it was once scoffed at as a conspiracy theory, cell phone companies and law enforcement are now rather open about the fact that cell phone providers collect real-time location data of their customers, archive it, use it, and even sell it. The government has on occasion been able to get around obtaining warrants for information that is considered under the “Third Party Doctrine” as outlined in Smith and United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435 (1976). This essentially means that information knowingly and willingly stored by third parties has a lower expectation of privacy. The verbiage for this sort of relinquishing of rights is usually hidden in the extensive and enthralling “end user agreements” (EUA). 

CSLI has become very accurate and is openly sold, and thanks to your informed consent/EUA, anyone willing to pay for it (such as police) can access it. A divided Court in Carpenter v. United States, 138 S.Ct. 2206 (2018), took on the issue of CSLI access by law enforcement and found that looking at a person's CSLI without a warrant is a IV Amendment search. In this opinion, it was held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy concerning their whereabouts and movements and that simply being in public does not negate all privacy rights. While the court was split over the application of the Third-Party Doctrine in Carpenter, in terms of APLRs, this data is being actively collected by law enforcement and paid for by tax dollars. Considering this issue and how the Court has handled APLR’s nearest cousin CSLI, it seems reasonable that this is an overstep of the state into citizen’s Fourth Amendment protections. 

On March 28, County Supervisor Ed Scofield joined Supervisors Hardy Bullock, Lisa Swarthout, and Susan Hoek and signed Resolution 23-142. At the request of Sheriff Moon, the Board approved the purchase of 25 more cameras to be placed around the unincorporated areas of Nevada County. Supervisor Heidi Hall voted against it fearing that people coming to California looking for abortions might have their medical privacy impacted.

At first glance, it seems prudent to want to give our law enforcement the best tools available to help keep our communities safe. The advent of the cheap portable camera has been a game changer for criminal investigation and security cameras are widely deployed and accessible through probable cause. I fully support law enforcement, because I believe in the spirit and equal application of the law. In this case, the law says we as citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our movements, associations, and destinations. There is no 100 percent guarantee that the information collected is safe, being deleted, or not being looked at by law enforcement without a warrant. Additionally, the dangers of this being weaponized to identify the movements of targeted groups are easily within the realm of reality. To some, ALPRs might appear to be a logical next step, but to me, there is a point where I am unwilling to exchange my liberty for a little bit of temporary security. My wife is the only person who has any right to know whom I visit, where I shop, who travels with me, what political functions I go to, and what doctors I see, and only because I willingly consent to her knowing. I would call it foreseeable that this information could be used illegally. To be blunt, I do not consent to the government tracking me on my dime and that is not the sort of world I want to leave to our children even if that means a few bad guys get away. How about you? 

Call to action

If you do not consent to these cameras being put up please let me know, and send me pictures of any that you find mounted around town.