How To Stop Warrantless License Plate Tracking In Our State

I am writing as your constituent to ask your administration to issue an executive order establishing interim standards for the deployment and use of automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, while the legislature considers comprehensive legislation. California, New Hampshire, and Maine provide useful models. Their statutes address permissible uses, retention limits, agency policies, public reporting, data security, access controls, and accountability. New Hampshire’s 3-seocnd non-hit retention period offers a superb model for data minimization. Maine’s restrictions on authorized use, confidentiality provisions, and enforcement mechanisms help prevent unnecessary surveillance. California’s requirements for written policies, transparency, security, and oversight provide a useful governance framework. ALPRs can help law enforcement locate stolen vehicles, missing persons, and vehicles associated with serious offenses. They can also create detailed records of the movements and associations of people who are not suspected of wrongdoing. Without clear standards, ALPR systems may enable prolonged tracking, surveillance of protected activities, unauthorized data sharing, and the creation of permanent movement databases. I respectfully ask your administration to determine whether existing authority can be used to limit ALPR deployment to clearly defined public-safety purposes; prohibit monitoring of political, religious, labor, journalistic, and other protected activity; and establish a strict deletion period for non-hit data. The order should require a warrant before historical searches, movement reconstruction, person identification, geofence or pattern searches, searches involving sensitive locations, preservation of data that would otherwise be deleted, or sharing historical data with another agency or government. Warrantless real-time alerts should be limited to confirmed stolen vehicles, missing or endangered persons, or imminent threats of death or serious bodily injury. An ALPR alert should never alone justify a stop, search, or arrest. The order should also require written agency policies, role-based access, audit logs, security testing, accuracy safeguards, independent oversight, public reporting, and meaningful remedies for violations. Agencies should be prohibited from evading these requirements by obtaining data from private vendors, commercial databases, federal systems, or other jurisdictions. I further urge you to prohibit state agencies and publicly supported law-enforcement entities from using nondisclosure agreements to conceal material information about ALPR systems. Policies, camera locations, vendor contracts, retention periods, data-sharing arrangements, audit results, security incidents, and aggregate usage statistics should be public, subject only to narrowly tailored protections for active investigations, personal information, and cybersecurity. An executive order would establish a reasonable baseline while preserving legislative authority to enact a durable framework. I urge you to direct the relevant agencies to draft such an order through a process involving legislative leaders, local governments, law enforcement, civil-liberties organizations, privacy experts, and affected residents. Thank you for your consideration.