COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KOAA) — A bill advancing at the state capitol would limit when and how law enforcement agencies can access information from automatic license plate reader databases.
Numerous law enforcement agencies have come out against the legislation, SB26-070. The bill passed out of the Senate Appropriations committee Tuesday morning, it now moves to the full Senate for a vote.
Supporters of legislation argue these license plate readers are unconstitutional and that guardrails are needed to protect people’s privacy. The legislation would reduce the amount of time law enforcement can access databases before needing to get a search warrant.
"What it actually does is it takes a photograph, a snapshot in time, if you will, about a vehicle when it passes a very specific location," said Jeff Jensen, a Deputy Chief with the Colorado Springs Police Department.
"The City of Colorado Springs has 30,000 street lights. So to put it into perspective, we have 140 ALPR cameras that capture a very narrow focus of view," said Jensen.
Jensen said officers have used this technology to help find missing kids and track down sexual assault suspects.
Sen. Lynda Zamora-Wilson (R- El Paso County) is one of the bill’s sponsors, she is the only Republican sponsor on the bill.
"My constituents are feeling like this is becoming a surveillance state, and that's a concern," said Zamora-Wilson.
"I support our law enforcement. I want them to have this, but there's also got to be a balance between enabling law enforcement to utilize these tools, but also protecting citizens' information. And this bill puts up guardrails. And it's a delicate dance," said Zamora-Wilson.
Under the bill, law enforcement would be banned from sharing data with government agencies outside of Colorado and third parties. Concerns have come up across the country over law enforcement sharing this data with federal immigration authorities.
Under the legislation, investigators would be able to access information from these license plate readers for up to three days. After that, they would need to get a search warrant.
All the data would also be deleted after 30 days unless there is an active investigation or a valid warrant.
Jensen argues the process of getting a warrant requires summarizing a tremendous amount of information and having specificity about a vehicle.
Right now, Colorado Springs police officers can type a generic description of a vehicle into the database, he believes that wouldn’t be possible to get with a search warrant.
"The process of getting a warrant is summarizing a tremendous amount of information, but only if you have specificity that says, I am looking for this specific vehicle," said Jensen.
Jensen said this happened recently with a sexual assault investigation where officers had a grainy video recording of the suspect's vehicle.
After hours of comparing that video to the license plate database, they were able to track down the suspect. He worries under a law like this, it would not be possible.
"In that specific situation, there is no way to write a search warrant to say, I want to go into the system to search for every gray pickup truck to then narrow the investigation down because we haven't met that burden of specificity that a judge would allow us to do that," said Jensen.
Lawmakers argue the bill is not only about safety, but about protecting constitutional rights.
"If you go back to our founding fathers, when it comes to our Fourth Amendment and the search warrant, they had no idea what the future would be with technology. And so you can imagine, had they known this, there would have been restrictions to protect our information," said Zamora-Wilson.
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