This is an urgent effort to prevent the Vista City Council from installing automated license plate readers (ALPRs). ALPRs are a dangerous form of mass surveillance which does not improve public safety, but severely undermines personal freedoms and privacy.

Our position is supported by several key arguments:

• Ineffectiveness: Studies have shown that ALPRs have no measurable impact on violent or property crime rates. The technology often misreads number plates, resulting in the police pursuing innocent people. This can result in dangerous confrontations, illegal arrests and expensive legal action against our city.
• Privacy invasion: Automated License Plate Readers are mass surveillance devices that collect detailed information about our lives, recording bumper stickers, locations visited and routines. This level of intrusion does not make us safer; it makes us less free.
• Potential for abuse: In multiple cases across the country, police have used ALPR systems to obtain information on romantic partners, business associates, religious groups, journalists and others, for reasons unrelated to daily work. Here in San Diego County, an investigation found law enforcement agencies were sharing ALPR data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in violation of SB34.
• Data security and profit: The companies behind ALPRs profit by selling our location data to marketers and agencies like ICE. ICE is actively using this data to facilitate mass deportations. Even if the data is kept “in-house,” it is vulnerable. The entire United Kingdom’s ALPR dataset was hacked. The only safe data is the data that is never collected.
• A Threat to everyone's rights: This mass surveillance violates every person’s right to privacy and liberty under both the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment. It restricts our freedom to visit places of worship, medical clinics or protests without being tracked.