The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and the University of Iowa College of Law called for local governments to carefully review existing license plate reader contracts and ensure the state has strict limits on data use and access to protect residents’ privacy at a digital news conference Wednesday.

This comes as the ACLU released their findings on an investigation into Automatic License Plate Reader, or ALPR, which are camera systems, primarily used by law enforcement, that automatically capture and record license plates on all passing vehicles, not just those suspected of violating a law. 

According to Rita Bettis Austen, legal director for ACLU of Iowa, the cameras log plate numbers, dates, times, and locations, creating detailed records of vehicle movements that can feed into national databases maintained by private surveillance vendors, 

“All of this data can be pulled to really track someone and their daily comings and goings, providing a picture of where they go to church, where they go shop at the grocery store, if they go to the doctor’s office, if they attend a political rally, all of those things,” Bettis Austen said during the news conference. “We want Iowans to be aware that this is happening.”

In their report, the ACLU team reviewed how Iowa’s ALPR policies compare to other Midwestern states, where they emphasized that Iowa offers far fewer privacy protections than the surrounding regions.

“It absolutely is the case that if you’re somebody driving through the country, you are going to be more protected in terms of these concerns in Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota and Nebraska,” Megan Graham, associate clinical professor at the UI College of Law, said. “You’re going to hit Iowa, and it’s the Wild West.”

Graham said the report was an attempt to put the scattered information about ALPR use in Iowa into one cohesive place.

“The goal of the report was to take a step back and look more systematically at ALPR use in a wide array of Iowa communities to see what is happening on the ground in the state,” Graham said. 

During the news conference, Bettis Austen, Graham, and their ACLU colleagues discussed the responses they received to open-records requests sent to 48 law enforcement agencies. Five agencies — the Des Moines, Clinton, Fayette, Fremont, and Mills police departments — did not provide substantive responses, while others, including Bettendorf and Oelwein, claimed the data collected by ALPRs was confidential under the Iowa Open Records Law.

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“ALPRs are being used to create comprehensive records of everybody’s comings and goings,” Bettis Austen said in a news release prior to the news conference. “In our country, the government should not be tracking us without individualized suspicion that we are actually breaking the law, and warrants should be required in many circumstances.”

The ACLU team also addressed questions about the use of ALPRs by private vendors. Multiple companies, including Motorola Solutions, Axon, and Flock Safety, which is the largest ALPR vendor in Iowa, with contracts in 27 agencies, were discussed during the session.

Graham said 19 agencies with Flock cameras had transparency portals that showed data collected between Nov. 8 and Dec. 7. In that period, over 4.2 million vehicle detections were recorded, with an average of 90,615 detections per camera, and 13 Flock “Hot List” hits per 1,000 vehicles.

“ALPR cameras are actually small enough that you likely don’t know that you’re passing one,” Bettis Austen said. “And there’s nothing in Iowa code, for example, that requires that Iowans are told about ALPRs tracking them.”

Their report details several instances of law enforcement officials abusing the ALPR data, including Texas police tracking a woman who they believed had an abortion through Illinois data and cases where police used ALPRs to find and stalk previous romantic partners.

Pete McRoberts, policy and advocacy director at the ACLU of Iowa, stressed the need for statewide legislative action.

“Our view is that all of these contracts really do need to be put on hold while the legislature concludes what they’ll do for what we hope is a comprehensive fix on privacy, so if these things are used, they are used for appropriate reasons that protect people’s privacy,” McRoberts said during the news conference. “We’re enthusiastic that the legislature can move in the right direction on this.”