Data Driven: Explore how cops are collecting and sharing our travel patterns using automated license plate readers
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock have filed hundreds of public records requests with law enforcement agencies around the country to reveal how data collected from automated license plate readers is used to track the travel patterns of drivers. Today we are releasing records obtained from 200 agencies, accounting for more than 2.5 -billion license plate scans in 2016 and 2017.
Explore the Data
You can sort the ALPR table by any of the main fields. You may also search it using the query box at the upper left of the table.
What We Learned
Our research shows that 173 agencies from 23 states and the federal government accounted for roughly 2.5 -billion license plate scans in 2016 and 2017. The remaining 27 agencies refused to turn over reports on how much data they collected.
Help us File More Requests
We’ve only asked a small percentage of the thousands of police departments currently active in the United States for their ALPR records. If you don’t see your local law enforcement in our database, we hope you’ll let us know. MuckRock and EFF will send them a request and add their response to our expanding resource.
Understanding the Source Documents
Part of our strategy with this public records campaign was to seek two separate, uniform classes of documents easily exportable through Vigilant Solutions’ LEARN system. We provided each agency with a guide to producing these records straight from the user manual, which had been obtained through open records law by Mike Katz-Lacabe of the Center for Human Rights and Privacy. Most agencies were able to follow these instructions and provide the standardized records. Some did not and require a little work to decipher.
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