Colleagues:

In the near future, I intend to introduce legislation to prohibit the mass, suspicionless collection and retention of Pennsylvanians' movements through automated license plate reader systems.

Automated license plate readers (ALPRs), including systems operated by Flock Safety and other vendors, have expanded rapidly across the nation. These cameras automatically photograph passing vehicles, identify their license plates, record the time and location of each encounter, and can transmit that information into searchable databases.

There are legitimate circumstances in which this technology can assist law enforcement. Police looking for a stolen vehicle, an abducted child, a wanted fugitive, or a vehicle specifically connected to a criminal investigation should be able to use appropriate technology to protect the public.

But that is fundamentally different from continuously photographing and recording the movements of every motorist who happens to drive past a camera.
Police should investigate people when there is a legitimate reason to suspect wrongdoing. Government should not surveil everyone in hopes of finding wrongdoing.

That distinction will be at the heart of my legislation.

Mass Surveillance Should Not Be the Price of Driving on a Public Road
A Pennsylvania family driving to church, a parent taking a child to school, an employee commuting to work, or a citizen visiting a doctor should not unknowingly become part of a government-accessible database simply because they drove on a public road.
Yet networks of automated cameras can potentially create precisely such a record.
One camera records a vehicle at one location. A network of cameras can reveal considerably more—where someone travels, when they travel, how frequently they visit particular locations, and potentially patterns concerning where they live, work, worship, shop, obtain medical care, associate with others, or participate in lawful political and civic activities.

The overwhelming majority of people whose movements are captured by these systems are not suspected of committing any crime.

They are simply Americans living their lives.

Government should not be permitted to create a massive database of their movements simply because technology now makes it cheap and easy to do so.

The Potential for Abuse Is Real

The danger is not theoretical.

Cases around the country have raised serious concerns about law-enforcement personnel allegedly using license plate databases to track spouses, former romantic partners, and other individuals for personal purposes.

Such incidents expose an inherent danger in creating enormous searchable databases containing information about citizens' movements.

If the database exists, someone will have access to it.

And if thousands of individuals across numerous agencies can access it, the opportunity for abuse grows considerably.

No Pennsylvanian should have to wonder whether a police officer, government employee, former romantic partner working within an agency, or other authorized user can type his or her license plate into a computer and quietly reconstruct that person's movements.

Technology Should Not Eliminate the Fourth Amendment

For generations, systematically following an individual required police officers, investigators, time, resources, and—in circumstances requiring it—judicial authorization.
Modern surveillance technology changes that equation dramatically.

Government can potentially collect information about millions of innocent citizens automatically, retain it, and search it later.

That turns the traditional investigative process on its head.
Instead of:
crime → evidence → suspect → investigation,
mass surveillance allows:
surveil everyone → store the information → search it later for a suspect.
That is not a direction Pennsylvania should embrace.

The protections Americans enjoy against unreasonable government searches should not diminish simply because technology has made surveillance easier.

Other States Have Recognized the Danger

Pennsylvania would not be breaking new ground by establishing strong protections.
Maine law takes a prohibition-first approach to automated license plate recognition systems. It generally prohibits their use and then establishes limited exceptions, including specified law-enforcement purposes. Even within those exceptions, law-enforcement information must be based upon specific and articulable facts concerning safety, wrongdoing, or a criminal investigation, or other specifically authorized sources.
Other states have adopted restrictions involving who may use ALPR systems, how information may be accessed, how long it may be retained, and how it may be shared.
Pennsylvania should act before these surveillance networks become so widespread and interconnected that meaningful limitations become considerably more difficult.

What My Legislation Will Do

My legislation will begin with a simple principle:

Pennsylvania should prohibit the routine, suspicionless collection and retention of motorists' movements through automated license plate surveillance.
The prohibition will apply to the technology and activity, not merely to one company or brand. Replacing Flock Safety with another vendor should not allow an agency to circumvent the law.

At the same time, the legislation will preserve narrowly defined uses when law enforcement has an actual public-safety or investigative reason to identify a vehicle.
Those exceptions may include circumstances involving:

• A stolen vehicle;
• An AMBER Alert or missing or endangered person;
• A wanted or dangerous individual;
• A vehicle reasonably believed to be connected to a specific criminal investigation;
• A specific and articulable threat to public safety;
• A search conducted pursuant to a warrant or other lawful judicial order; and
• Other carefully defined emergency circumstances involving an imminent threat to life or safety.

The legislation will also prohibit using automated license plate surveillance as a general-purpose system for continuously collecting motorists' movements or creating a historical database of innocent citizens' travels.

It will prohibit personal or unauthorized searches and establish meaningful penalties for intentionally abusing the technology to stalk, harass, intimidate, or improperly monitor another person.

The legislation will further examine appropriate restrictions on the sharing, sale, transfer, and retention of vehicle-location information so that Pennsylvania cannot simply prohibit mass surveillance by its own agencies while allowing the same information to be obtained indirectly from a private company or another jurisdiction.

This Is Not an Anti-Law-Enforcement Proposal

I strongly support Pennsylvania's law-enforcement officers and the difficult work they perform every day.

This legislation is not intended to prevent police from using technology to find dangerous criminals, recover stolen vehicles, rescue abducted children, or respond to genuine threats.

It draws a line between targeted law enforcement and mass surveillance.
A police officer with a legitimate reason to look for a particular vehicle should have the tools necessary to do the job.

What government should not have is the ability to record the movements of millions of innocent Pennsylvanians simply because someday someone might want to search those records.

Clear boundaries also protect good police officers. They establish what is permissible, deter misconduct, and preserve public confidence in legitimate law-enforcement tools.

A Simple Principle

Technology will continue to advance. The constitutional principles governing government power should not retreat with every technological innovation.
Our citizens should not be required to choose between public safety and personal liberty.

We can have both.

Investigate suspects. Pursue criminals. Protect the public. But do not place every Pennsylvanian under continuous surveillance simply because the technology exists to do it.

Pennsylvanians should not have to surrender their privacy merely because they drive on a public road.

I look forward to working with my colleagues, law enforcement, prosecutors, constitutional and privacy experts, and other interested parties as this legislation is developed.