When a company called Flock Safety Cameras offered to install them free at ten intersections in Charlottesville, city council voted 3 to 2 to give them a try, but member Michael Payne was concerned.
"It’s a huge problem to have a privately-owned company building a national surveillance system of vehicles and vehicle locations," he explains.
The city voted to keep data for no more than seven days, and the state requires an audit and monthly review of how information is used, but Payne and many other citizens were not reassured.
"Data is shared between jurisdictions, so when you have this national system, you can have any department in Virginia -- if they are not following policies, the system has a fail point there."
Charlottesville’s police chief said the decision was up to council, but he told members that license plate readers could help to catch criminals.
“Often a shooting or another violent crime happens with a stolen vehicle, so if you can more quickly track where a stolen vehicle was, that will help you solve other violent crimes.”
But it could also be used to track women going to an abortion clinic or undocumented immigrants – abuses already seen in other states.
And Payne says plate readers are doing more than checking cars in and out of municipal garages where customers must register using their phones and credit cards.
"The automatic license plate readers that were installed in our parking garages read biometric data, and they say that in the contract, and they can also combine it with other data sets that already exist, like your cell phone data, credit card purchases, just to create a deeper advertising profile of every individual," he explains. "In their contract it says they can collect information on the phone used, apps that were open on the phone, your credit card information, and they explicitly say they can sell that data for any commercial purpose and that they never have to delete the data."
Joan Fenton, who owns a women’s clothing and gift boutique on the downtown mall, heard more immediate complaints from customers who had come in to shop for Christmas.
"December 15th, at the height of the holiday season, the city decided in their infinite wisdom that it was the perfect time to change how you park in the garage, and when I asked somebody from economic development I was actually told, ‘Well, whenever you did it, it was going to be difficult.’”
And she heard of one consumer who was seriously overcharged.
"Somebody who parked there for an hour got charged $17.95 for their hour."
And it turned out the company it used to manage municipal parking was facing a number of lawsuits – some by state attorneys general.
"These lawsuits involve things such as Metropolis improperly accessing DMV data, improperly charging people and not reversing the charge, because the AI camera misread which car actually went through."
The city must now decide if it wants to end its contract with Metropolis, but it has already voted to remove Flock cameras from city streets – following the lead of Staunton which ended its agreement after the company complained of an organized campaign against it. Again, Charlottesville city councilman Michael Payne.
"You know they said this was an organized movement of radical activists and people who promote defending the police, but + I heard from who were opposed to it were Republicans, were conservative, were libertarians along with progressives and liberals. This was not a partisan issue."
He knows artificial intelligence is a growing presence in our lives but argues local governments need to be careful.
"When it’s private companies monetizing the data, and we don’t have any privacy protections that are really robust in the United States, what risks does that create?"
"Technology is always going to change, but I think we have to be very mindful and cautious about how these private companies are sacrificing civil liberties and privacy to maximize their profit."
Meanwhile, Republicans in congress are talking about banning the use of cameras that catch people speeding or going through red lights – arguing they’re just another way for local governments to grab cash and make life less affordable for Americans.
