Chris Dzombak

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ALPRs in Ann Arbor

A brief overview of Ann Arbor’s current use of ALPRs.

ALPRs in Ann Arbor

I recently inquired about Ann Arbor’s use of automated license plate readers, aka ALPRs. This technology can be useful for things like parking violation enforcement (which Ann Arbor uses it for), but depending on a police department’s use of the technology, it can have worrying privacy implications.

This EFF article should help understand the power of ALPR data as well as some of the potential pitfalls (in particular, EFF found that lower-income and minority communities in Oakland, CA were disproportionately subject to surveillance).

My questions were:

I received a friendly response from Police Chief James Baird which adequately addressed my privacy concerns.

Takeaways

In brief, my takeaways from the response:

The complete response emails are available through A2Docs.

AAPD ALPR An Ann Arbor Police Department ALPR.