For the past several years I’ve had the privilege of working with excellent colleagues, Rob Wipond and Kevin McArthur, in opposing how Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems are deployed in BC. It’s been a long slog, and taken a long time, and led to an awful lot of writing, but after a favourable decision by the BC Privacy Commissioner about the technology (short: it’s permissible, in limited circumstances, so long as local police don’t upload innocent license plates snapped by the cameras, and confirm the validity of algorithmically identified guilty plates) it looked like the tides had turned.
And then we learned that the Commissioner’s decision wouldn’t necessarily apply to the RCMP. In response, Vincent Gogolek of the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association wrote piece about the limits of the BC Commissioner’s mandate, titled “It Takes Two To Kill Illegal Police Licence Surveillance.” His argument was that stopping the worst surveillance practices linked with ALPR would require ruling by the provincial and federal privacy commissioners. We also learned that some provincial police forces – which fell under the purview of the BC Commissioner – were refusing to comply with the Commissioner’s decision. This latter issue led Wipond to publishing an article titled “So it’s illegal surveillance, so what?”
Technology, Thoughts & Trinkets 