License plate readers FOIA

[vielmetti]

Contact at the city is Deputy Chief Greg Basick

[cdzombak]

What happened on thsi one, @vielmetti ?

[vielmetti]

Let me see....

Last message I have on the topic is from March 2015, and it reads as follows, from Greg Bazick:

Good Morning Ed,

I recall the discussion in 2013. Thanks for sending the link to the EFF page. I had not heard of the organization before. The visualizations in the article are really informative. I like it.

Could we start out with you sending me questions first? What’s your time frame for responses?

I’ve not looked at our ALPRs or data since our last communication in 2013. It will take me a day or two to get the help I need from IT to access the data and then I’m off for a week on vacation.

To my knowledge only one unit is still regularly deployed and that is by community standards. I could be mistaken though so don’t quote me on that yet.

If we take that approach I’ll call you when I return and we can go from there.

Sound ok?

Thanks,

Greg

[vielmetti]

So given that, the question is, what is the question? If we have a comparable FOIA from some other jurisdiction, we can replay it here, or contact the police chief directly with questions.

I see this from EFF:

https://www.eff.org/foia/automated-license-plate-readers

which is what I think I was pursuing at the time before I dropped this.

[vielmetti]

Bazick is no longer deputy chief; the new person in that role is Robert Pfannes.

https://localwiki.org/ann-arbor/Greg_Bazick
http://www.a2gov.org/news/pages/article.aspx?i=257

[cdzombak]

So given that, the question is, what is the question?

Good question!

If we have a comparable FOIA from some other jurisdiction, we can replay it here

I'm using this strategy in another investigation, based on a request from the ACLU.

A quick search turns up:

• https://www.aclu.org/automatic-license-plate-reader-foia-documents-federal-government
• https://www.aclu.org/search/%20?f%5B0%5D=field_issues%3A106
• https://www.aclu.org/foia-collection/alpr-foia
• https://www.aclu.org/map/automatic-license-plate-reader-documents-interactive-map
• and of course https://www.eff.org/foia/automated-license-plate-readers

I would be happy to take this project on once I finish my current investigation (which will be a while).

[cdzombak]

I would be happy to take this project on…

Meaning, my goal would be to produce a report on these devices in our county, including discussion of who has them, who uses them, who has borrowed them, where we got them, how much they cost, how frequently they are used, usage guidelines and data retention policies, etc… with the goal of having a more informed public.

(assign this issue to me if you'd like me to take a lead here)

[vielmetti]

Putting the pieces in the works for @cdzombak to be assigned the issue, which starts with making you a contributor to the repo

[cdzombak]

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/what-we-learned-oakland-raw-alpr-data is an interesting report from Oakland ALPR data

[cdzombak]

FYI: I got some feedback out-of-band from someone else who's interested in working on this project, too.

[cdzombak]

Wondering if https://www.dzombak.com/local/2017-08-01-ALPRs-in-Ann-Arbor.html is sufficient to resolve this question for now.

[vielmetti]

Looks good to me!

[vielmetti]

Thread by PF Anderson regarding ALPR, time to open this issue back up / start a new issue.

https://twitter.com/pfanderson/status/1514364384885329920

[vielmetti]

FAQ from the county: https://www.washtenaw.org/DocumentCenter/View/24932/LPR-FAQ-Sheet

[vielmetti]

I think this deserves a new issue specifically to target Ypsilanti Township's proposed use of license plate readers, circa 2022. There is also open source license plate reader tech which could be deployed anywhere there's a public or private camera with sufficient resolution.