ALPR Usage (Charleston County Sheriff's Office)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:

All documents relating to usage of Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology by the Charleston County Sheriff's Office, including but not limited to documents indicating:

-scope of ALPR deployment;
-purposes for which ALPR technology is employed;
-means of handling and storing ALPR data;
-extent and timeline for ALPR data storage; and
-protocols and extent of ALPR data sharing between CCSO and other government agencies.

Please include any relevant documents, including but not limited to memos, reports, emails, meeting minutes and contracts.

I also request that, if appropriate, fees be waived as I believe this request is in the public interest. The requested documents will be made available to the general public free of charge as part of the public information service at MuckRock.com, processed by a representative of the news media/press and is made in the process of news gathering and not for commercial usage.

In the event that fees cannot be waived, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 15 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Chris Meller

Thank you, Mr. Watson.

Can you provide the agreements or MOUs with SLED?

Thank you,

Chris Meller

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Feb. 9, 2014. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

Major Watson,

I apologize for the delay in responding to you. I have two questions related to your response:

1) The MOU you provided only references the back-office system for storing and accessing ALPR scans, it does not appear to cover the operation of any actual ALPR cameras. Can you please tell me how many and what kind (mobile, fixed, portable) of devices are in use?

2) The invoice for $11.00 indicates 22 pages were copied, but I only received the 6 page MOU. Is that an invoice mistake, or was something lost in transmission?

Again, apologies for the delay. Thank you for your help!

Hello,

A check has been dropped in the mail.

Thank you.