This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at coloradosun.com.
A bill that would have tightened rules on how government agencies use data from automated license plate readers won’t advance this year, after drawing significant pushback from law enforcement agencies, lead sponsors of Senate Bill 70 said Wednesday.
The bipartisan bill, introduced by Boulder Democrat Sen. Judy Amabile and El Paso County Republican Sen. Lynda Zamora Wilson, aimed to enforce “common-sense guardrails” on how the technology is used and data is stored, while helping protect privacy rights of Coloradans, Amabile said.
“My constituents and all of your constituents are demanding that we do something because they do not want to live in a society where their movements are constantly monitored and tracked,” Amabile told lawmakers Wednesday on the Senate floor. “This camera technology is spreading like wildfire across our state and across the country.”
Without clear safeguards on how the data is used and stored, Amabile feared residents’ privacy and freedom would be eroded.
“We have no idea what each individual locality is doing with this data. There are no rules. It is unfettered and it is changing the way we interact with our government in a fundamental way that needs protections,” she added.
Senate Bill 70 would have required agencies to get a warrant before accessing databases if more than 72 hours have passed since the crime. It also would have mandated agencies to record when and why they access the data and compile an annual report for the public. The annual reports would have had to disclose the number of surveillance devices used by the agency and their location.
Supporters of the legislation argued that limits on the growing technology are necessary to protect residents’ privacy and from the tools from being abused.
But the bill was met with overwhelming opposition, primarily from law enforcement officers who testified that retention limits of the data under the bill do not reflect real investigative timelines.
Officers from various departments around the state testified the license plate cameras also help identify suspects tied to violent crimes, when a lack of evidence and witnesses made traditional investigative methods impossible.
Zamora Wilson said the bill’s failure is frustrating, but that she’s not giving up on tackling the issue.
“The good news is we’ve started the discussion,” she said. “I think it’s really critical that we got the ball rolling.”
On the Senate floor Wednesday, Zamora Wilson said the databases hold sensitive location information that are a “prime target” for hackers and foreign adversaries. The lawmaker said she was among the victims of a 2014 data breach when Chinese hackers compromised the personal information of 21.5 million federal employees.
“Imagine that power in the wrong hands. Regardless of which party holds the reins, when the government can track your vehicle’s history back months or years through these databases, any reasonable expectation of privacy is effectively dead, and it’s not the role of the government to have a God’s eye view on its citizens,” she said.
Amabile said she decided to lay over the bill until July 4 — a parliamentary move that effectively defeats it for this session — because of the law enforcement opposition and a signal from the governor that he intended to veto the bill over its requirement for a warrant.
“On the one hand, we could have put together a watered-down bill, but many of my colleagues rejected that. We could have had a more robust bill, but that also was rejected, and at the end of the day, we’ve decided that we need to come back, live to fight another day, and that is what we intend to do.”
Colorado was not alone in pursuing legislation targeting governments’ unfettered access to license plate reader data. States, Democratic and Republican, including Iowa, West Virginia, and New York are considering reforms. Kentucky’s proposed legislation died earlier this month.
Last month, Washington’s governor signed the state’s first regulation of ALPRs, known as the Driver Privacy Act. The new law bars the federal government and agencies outside of Washington from accessing data generated by the cameras that are owned by public agencies in the state.
It also prohibits public agencies from placing cameras in “sensitive” areas, including near healthcare facilities, courts and facilities where immigration matters are conducted.
