Automatic license plate readers are being used by police consistently around the nation, including Indiana. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
When a Colorado woman was accused of being a porch pirate, police were certain they had the right person. After all, it was caught on camera — specifically, on automatic license plate readers. She found herself having to painstakingly comb through her life to demonstrate that she couldn’t have been the one who committed the crime — she wasn’t even in the area at the time. After police dropped the charges, she told a news station, “It became my job to prove my innocence. And I thought it was supposed to be the other way around.”
She is, of course, correct. In fact, she articulated a core principle of the American justice system: we are innocent until proven guilty. Because of this, the government should not invade our privacy just in case we do something illegal. But law enforcement agencies are increasingly using license plate readers for mass location tracking and surveillance of everyone — not just those suspected of a crime…