QUOTE OF THE DAY: "“I think it’s really come full circle because you can see the ways that this data can be misused,” McGuire said. He said the ACLU has concerns that individuals living in a state where abortion or gender-affirming care is banned could face prosecution if they come to Connecticut seeking that care. “There is a real risk of criminal prosecution for folks that seek care here,” McGuire said.
———————————————————————
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The technology — most commonly found in Connecticut through the company FLOCK Safety— has also raised concerns about potentially being shared with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents in light of a push under the current administration for more immigration enforcement. “We have seen ICE really ramp up their enforcement here in Connecticut and go after families and use every shred of information they can to target people,” McGuire said. “And these databases are huge liabilities in that way. Because of the lack of regulation, this data that is collected every day here in Connecticut can really be misused against communities who are doing nothing wrong.” The worry from the ACLU is that the information could be used to undermine the state’s Trust Act and Shield Law, which, respectively, were put in place to protect immigrants as well as individuals who provide or receive reproductive and gender-affirming health care services."
————————————————-
The recent concerns stem from research conducted by Ken Barone, who has managed the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project since 2012. Barone said a police department in the state — which he did not wish to identify — recently allowed him to examine nine weeks of the searches that were conducted against data collected by its license plate readers. He said he found hundreds of thousands of searches coming from police in states of Texas, Florida, Illinois and Indiana. The number of queries from those states far surpassed those stemming from police departments in Connecticut, Barone said. The searches were not unique to Connecticut’s data, as the queries that Barone examined were conducted throughout the entire FLOCK database. “They’re doing a search of the whole database,” Barone said. “They’re looking for administrative offenses. But what we saw a lot of, particularly coming out of Texas and Georgia and Florida and Indiana, were searches where the reason they’re articulating was related to immigration enforcement.”
--------------------------------------------------
PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Kendell L. Coker, an attorney and clinical psychologist with Connecticut College, said the issue that arises when there’s a lack of legislation is the public is essentially expected to blindly trust that each municipality will not misuse the data. “It’s essentially like, ‘trust us,’” said Coker, whose research has explored racial and health-related disparities in the criminal justice system. “If you leave it up to specific municipalities to make those determinations then that just can blow in the wind. That can change with maybe a change in who’s in charge. “We’ve already seen disproportionate stops of black and brown people for years,” Coker added. “Now you have a system in place that then gives you a certain amount of broader discretion with regards to who you stop. “But if there’s actually federal or statewide regulations at some level, then it wouldn’t allow for so much discretion at such a local level,” Coker said. “The more safeguards you have, the more layers of it, the harder it would be for there to be misuse.”
------------------------------------------------------
STORY: "ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) of CT (Connecticut) seeks pause on license plate readers. Privacy, targeting individuals among concerns," by Reporter Justin Muszynski, published by The Hartford Courant on November 30, 2025.
GIST: "The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut has called for a temporary moratorium on automated license plate readers throughout the state until lawmakers take action to regulate them, citing privacy concerns and the possible targeting of individuals of certain populations.
The technology has proven very useful for law enforcement and has become a tool regularly used by dozens of police departments in Connecticut who say they use the real-time data to find violent offenders and wrap up criminal and other types of investigations much more rapidly than they otherwise would have.
David McGuire, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut, said concerns about license plate readers go back more than a decade, but the technology in recent years has exploded in popularity and the potential misuses have evolved.
“I think it’s really come full circle because you can see the ways that this data can be misused,” McGuire said.
He said the ACLU has concerns that individuals living in a state where abortion or gender-affirming care is banned could face prosecution if they come to Connecticut seeking that care.
“There is a real risk of criminal prosecution for folks that seek care here,” McGuire said.
The technology — most commonly found in Connecticut through the company FLOCK Safety— has also raised concerns about potentially being shared with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents in light of a push under the current administration for more immigration enforcement.
“We have seen ICE really ramp up their enforcement here in Connecticut and go after families and use every shred of information they can to target people,” McGuire said. “And these databases are huge liabilities in that way. Because of the lack of regulation, this data that is collected every day here in Connecticut can really be misused against communities who are doing nothing wrong.”
The worry from the ACLU is that the information could be used to undermine the state’s Trust Act and Shield Law, which, respectively, were put in place to protect immigrants as well as individuals who provide or receive reproductive and gender-affirming health care services.
“When our state’s location data is being accessed by ICE and states that criminalize abortion or gender-affirming care, that surveillance becomes a direct threat to people’s safety and freedom,” McGuire said. “This kind of unchecked monitoring has a chilling effect on people exercising their rights — whether visiting a health clinic, attending a protest, or going to worship. Until we have transparency and meaningful safeguards, Connecticut must halt the use of these systems.”
The recent concerns stem from research conducted by Ken Barone, who has managed the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project since 2012. Barone said a police department in the state — which he did not wish to identify — recently allowed him to examine nine weeks of the searches that were conducted against data collected by its license plate readers. He said he found hundreds of thousands of searches coming from police in states of Texas, Florida, Illinois and Indiana. The number of queries from those states far surpassed those stemming from police departments in Connecticut, Barone said.
The searches were not unique to Connecticut’s data, as the queries that Barone examined were conducted throughout the entire FLOCK database.
“They’re doing a search of the whole database,” Barone said. “They’re looking for administrative offenses. But what we saw a lot of, particularly coming out of Texas and Georgia and Florida and Indiana, were searches where the reason they’re articulating was related to immigration enforcement.”
“Because our data is plugged into this network, are we inadvertently violating the Trust Act?” Barone asked.
He said the records also showed that a police agency in Texas had searched the FLOCK database for an individual suspected of violating Texas’ abortion law.
Law enforcement searching through databases for specific license plates are required to enter their reason for the query, McGuire said, “so that that gives us some insight into the ways that it’s been used.”
But according to Barone, he found that many police who accessed the data would put a simple “dash” into the field, essentially bypassing the system requirement.
To get a better understanding of the situation, the ACLU has filed 94 public records requests with police departments across the state. The filings include 43 requests to 42 municipal police departments known to use FLOCK systems and one to Connecticut State Police, as well as 51 additional requests to other municipal departments for information about their use of the systems.
Similar “transparency projects” are underway at sister ACLU affiliates in Massachusetts and Maine, McGuire said.
Some police departments in the state, like those in Glastonbury, Windsor, Cheshire, Milford and other towns, have “transparency portal” pages that allow the public to know how many ALPRs are in their town, how many vehicles have been detected through the system in the past 30 days and other information. The portals say that the technology is prohibited from being used for immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement and on a basis of any protected class.
But according to Barone, police departments in the state may unintentionally be giving access to departments in other states who could be operating as an extension to ICE.
“It seems plausible that there are friendly sheriff’s offices and police departments in other states that may be pushing this data to federal ICE agents as a way to provide them information about the movements of potentially undocumented individuals,” Barone said. “And are we sort of unintentionally contributing to that here in Connecticut just by the fact that we have no limits on how this data can and is shared?”
Southington police Lt. Matthew Hammell said his department began using license plate readers in 2023 and that the town has seen a drastic reduction in car burglaries, car thefts and other areas of crime. He said the cameras can be instrumental in apprehending violent criminals and finding stolen cars. They can also help police locate someone in real-time, which can be especially helpful in situations where someone may be missing or having thoughts about suicide.
“It allows us to do things in a more timely fashion and allows us to be more effective rather than just going in blind searching areas,” Hammell said.
Lt. Aaron Boisvert of the Hartford Police Department said his department has also had a lot of success in using automated license plate readers. He called them “very important and useful tools” that have been used to solve “countless” murders, shootings, robberies and other violent crimes.
According to Boisvert, police have also found them useful in locating stolen vehicles and solving property crimes.
FLOCK tracks data through cameras that take a photo of the rear of vehicles and their license plates as they pass one of their locations. They do not capture people’s faces, the company states.
According to Holly Beilin, a spokesperson for FLOCK, police will receive a “hit” notification if a license plate that has been identified as having a link to a crime or a crisis was captured. Police can also conduct queries like the ones Barone examined.
FLOCK does not sell the data that is collected, though any police department or municipality using their services owns the rights to it and can choose to share it or not share it with other agencies as they wish, Beilin said.
“That’s one of the reasons we got FLOCK in the first place,” Hammell said. “FLOCK doesn’t sell the information that they obtain from these cameras.”
According to Beilin, FLOCK is being used in 49 states, including some that have laws in place similar to what the ACLU is calling for. Safeguards preventing agencies from misusing the data, depending on each state’s laws, can be activated with the simple click of a button, Beilin said.
“There’s a search filter that can be used blocking any search conducted in the system for reproductive health care that would block any sort of keywords like abortion,” Beilin said. “And there are searches that agencies can put into place that block anything around civil immigration.”
According to Hammell, the system also keeps a log any time someone in his department accesses the FLOCK system. Southington police conduct monthly audits to ensure all the uses are legitimate, he said.
In Southington, the data is stored for 30 days and is only shared with other municipal police departments and Connecticut State Police that have agreed to reciprocate. Hammell said Southington police do not share the data with agencies like ICE.
Kendell L. Coker, an attorney and clinical psychologist with Connecticut College, said the issue that arises when there’s a lack of legislation is the public is essentially expected to blindly trust that each municipality will not misuse the data.
“It’s essentially like, ‘trust us,’” said Coker, whose research has explored racial and health-related disparities in the criminal justice system. “If you leave it up to specific municipalities to make those determinations then that just can blow in the wind. That can change with maybe a change in who’s in charge.
“We’ve already seen disproportionate stops of black and brown people for years,” Coker added. “Now you have a system in place that then gives you a certain amount of broader discretion with regards to who you stop.
“But if there’s actually federal or statewide regulations at some level, then it wouldn’t allow for so much discretion at such a local level,” Coker said. “The more safeguards you have, the more layers of it, the harder it would be for there to be misuse.”
According to Coker, questions about automated license plate readers go as far back as to when they were first deployed and go beyond the concerns outlined by the ACLU. They have been a hot topic in regards to privacy concerns and whether any government agency should be allowed to track a citizen’s movements.
Any time a new technology is introduced into law enforcement, Coker said, there is always the possibility that the software could make an error.
“There have been uses of technology, even in the context of A.I. like facial recognition software, where it’s been used for some investigative purposes, but then it’s wrong,” Coker said.
“The reason that’s such a big issue is because it kind of intersects with the amount of faith we put in technology.”
In June, a Connecticut teenager was arrested and accused of going 132 mph on Interstate 91 in Cromwell before his attorney got the case thrown out in court, saying he found a number of differences between the teen’s vehicle and the one that sped past police. Body camera footage from the investigating trooper showed the policeman insisting to the teen that he had video and license plate reader evidence that could corroborate the allegations.
“There’s a tendency to believe the technology is always right, which is part of the reason we rely on it so much, because we see it as accurate and reliable, Coker said. “But with that comes a very, very big risk.”
Barone and Coker said they are both on board with the ACLU’s assertion that it’s time for the state to regulate the use and sharing of automated license plate reader data through legislation.
“I think it’s a place that’s ripe for some really simple and thoughtful regulation that still allows the technology to operate in a way that can make people in the state of Connecticut safe, but also doesn’t inadvertently share data in a way that could harm other values that we have here in Connecticut,” Barone said.
According to Beilin, the FLOCK system is very amenable to configurations that can ensure it operates within the confines of state regulations.
“We are very supportive of that type of regulation,” Beilin said. “It just provides clarity for the agencies and for us.”
Beilin said FLOCK is about “99%” supportive of what the Connecticut ACLU is after, but she believes a moratorium on usage of the readers would hinder law enforcement and the new ways they investigate things using the technology.
“If the legislature wants to take up a law, we absolutely will adhere to that law,” she said. “But all of those things do take time. Let’s encourage policies, but let’s not turn off technology that could, if a kid was kidnapped today, literally find that kid this afternoon.”
“I really just think it would be a disservice to the public,” Hammell said of a potential moratorium. “It helps us reduce crime, helps us deter and prevent crime from happening. And I think if we were to take that away — a tool of ours that’s very useful — I don’t think it would be a service to us and, more importantly, the public.”
Despite their widespread use, McGuire said he believes a moratorium temporarily halting the use of automated license plate readers is a realistic approach and one that he says municipalities and police agencies around the country have taken.
“Just until we could sit down and discuss this in the next session,” McGuire said.
“There are town councils and individual law enforcement agencies that are deciding to take a pause while they do this,” McGuire said. “So, it is not out of the realm of possibility. We do hope that agencies will really take a second look at this before legislation passes.""
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
———————————————————————————————
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
—————————————————————————————————
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
-------------------------------------------------------------------
