Residents cite mistrust of BPD and the technology’s use elsewhere to assist ICE. But a majority of the Board of Estimates, including Mayor Scott, vote to approve the $1.46 million contract.
Additional license plate reading technology that will give Baltimore Police quick access to new kinds of data on a driver – going back 10 years – has been approved by the Board of Estimates, despite public objections that the additional capability will lead to abuses and loss of privacy.
The $1.46 million contract between the BPD and Thomson Reuters CLEAR gives officers the ability to pull up a decade’s worth of location history and activity history, cross referencing it with additional commercial and other sources and even “drawing connections between cars that happen to be within 1/4 mile of each other,” according to documentation submitted as part of the request…