RICHMOND, Va. — Richmond police have deployed 99 Flock Safety automatic license plate readers across the city, and while the technology has been credited with helping solve crimes, it has also sparked debate over privacy, data security and cost.
The cameras are mounted on black poles or light poles with a solar panel and are always running, capturing images of every car or person that passes. But according to Dr. William Pelfrey, a criminal justice professor at VCU’s Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, they do far more than read license plates.
“If you drive down a toll road, a license plate reader takes a picture of your license plate and make sure that you’re paying your toll as you go through,” Pelfrey said. “Flock cameras do a lot more than that. They monitor stickers on your car, damage on your car, make a model of your car, sometimes even the tires on your car, so they can produce a searchable database that has all this information about you, and that worries some people.”…