A House Republican is sponsoring Kentucky’s first statewide regulations limiting how police can use and keep data from widely utilized cameras that deploy artificial intelligence to track information on passing cars.
Rep. John Hodgson from Fisherville said his bill to regulate automated license plate readers won’t get in the way of using the controversial cameras for public safety reasons, but puts in place necessary protections for Kentuckians’ privacy.
“You can't retain the data forever. You can only sell it or give it away for very narrowly interpreted purposes,” Hodgson said in a House judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday. “We're going to continue to use them to enhance public safety and prevent crime.”
Law enforcement agencies in Kentucky — and across the country — have increasingly invested in automated license plate readers. Several in the state have built a fleet of license plate readers, often leased from the company Flock Safety.
Hodgson’s bill would specify the cameras can be used for things like controlling access to secure areas and promoting public safety. It unanimously passed the committee and now moves to the full House for consideration.
House Bill 58 would also allow law enforcement agencies to keep the huge pool of data that the cameras collect for up to 90 days unless it’s needed as evidence or subject to a subpoena. It also restricts sharing of that data to other law enforcement agencies or the National Insurance Crime Bureau, and requires only members of the agency deploying the cameras be the ones accessing it.
“It should be destroyed so it can't be used for future fishing expeditions, and also to strictly limit the sale or even giving away of that data to avoid invading people's personal privacy,” Hodgson said.
The Louisville Metro Police Department has posted nearly 190 cameras around the city with a hundred or so awaiting installation. The distinctive devices are often affixed to utility poles. They photograph passing vehicles, use artificial intelligence to analyze the information and catalog it in a database that’s shared with law enforcement agencies across the country.
But it’s not just Louisville and Lexington police using the cameras — university campuses, numerous smaller cities and private entities have also invested in license plate readers.
The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting recently lost an appeal to the attorney general to force the Louisville Police Department to disclose the location of its license plate readers. The department came under scrutiny last year after a KYCIR report revealed that the city’s network of Flock cameras had been used by an LMPD officer’s account to run immigration-related searches. It prompted LMPD to launch an investigation, which uncovered that a federal agent had used the officer's account to run those searches. The investigation resulted in the discipline of three officers and policy changes.
Members of the informal liberty caucus called for even tougher restrictions on license plate readers at the committee hearing. GOP Rep. Savannah Maddox of Dry Ridge voted yes, but said she wanted to see the cameras banned altogether.
Rep. T.J. Roberts, a Republican from Burlington, told Kentucky Public Radio the error rate on Flock cameras is “intolerable” and they should not be used at all. He has filed his own legislation, House Bill 375, to make using an automated license plate reader a Class D felony.
Flock has repeatedly refused to allow independent security technology firm IPVM to obtain a license plate reader for testing. A few high-profile incidents of erroneous Flock alerts have made headlines. Flock says its cameras have a high rate of accuracy, and any false positives are flagged to help improve the system.
Hodgson’s bill would require the police officer to “visually confirm” the scanned plate matched the alert before performing a traffic stop. Roberts, who voted in favor of the legislation in the committee, also said he has concerns about retained data allowing the state to track individuals over a long period of time.
“The government isn't entitled to your whereabouts. They are not entitled to your habits. They're not entitled to your routine,” Roberts said. “You have a right of privacy, and the surveillance state is something that the Founding Fathers would be sickened by if they saw what we live under right now.”
Angela Cooper, communications director with the ACLU of Kentucky, said the advocacy organization has ongoing concerns about the misuse of license plate readers and are hopeful the bill will create needed guardrails around excessive data retention.
“I do fear that the horse has left the barn, as the saying goes, because we do have so many of these license plate readers,” Cooper said. “There are a lot of privately owned cameras as well. We just want to see both the legislature and residents of the state taking a look at what the tradeoff is for their privacy rights when it comes to this type of monitoring.”
