Earlier this month, Eugene paused the use of its automatic license plate reader cameras. They use AI to capture a car’s characteristics, like model and color, and can be used as a tool by law enforcement.
Local officials said the cameras have helped close more than 60 cases. But opponents of the technology say it can be used for mass surveillance, since the system is linked to a nationwide network.
Some residents say they’re concerned the technology could be abused under the Trump Administration and used to target people like immigrants, organizers and those seeking an abortion.
Rebecca Hansen-White is a KLCC reporter and has been covering this issue for the outlet. She joins us with details about the system.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. At the beginning of the summer, the Springfield and Eugene police departments deployed more than 80 automatic license plate reader cameras, created by a company called Flock. Those cameras are not currently in use. Residents were concerned the technology could be abused by the Trump administration and used to target immigrants, organizers or people seeking abortions. Meanwhile, just this week, the ACLU of Oregon said it was filing a suit against Eugene for failing to disclose public records about these cameras.
Rebecca Hansen-White is a KLCC reporter. She’s been covering this issue for months. She joins us now. It’s great to have you back on the show.
Rebecca Hansen-White: Thank you.
Miller: This story centers on this company called Flock. Can you describe the service they provide?
Hansen-White: Yeah, so they have a couple different things that they provide law enforcement. What’s relevant today is their cameras. They look like little webcams that attach to a pole with a solar panel. They also make drones and this audio system gunshot detection. So there’s a couple of different things that they sell [to] police departments.
For Eugene and Springfield, they sold them the use of their cameras, which can both capture license plates, but also they have an AI search capability where they can capture the make and model, and even stickers and weird characteristics about cars, and they can search that too.
That’s their digital fingerprint technology [where] you can search a license plate … or let’s say, a blue Subaru, that person stole my car, the police can search for blue Subarus and find people they think did crimes that way. So that’s kind of what we’re talking about here.
Miller: How widespread are these cameras nationwide and in Oregon right now?
Hansen-White: Flock says it has cameras in 6,000 communities and it’s police departments that have them, but they also sell them to private companies and homeowners associations. So car dealerships and other businesses that are worried about property crime and theft have also bought Flock cameras. So even if your police department in your community doesn’t have it yet, it’s very possible that a private business in your community has a Flock camera or a couple that they are using, and has a contract with this company. So they’re pretty widespread and a lot of police departments or private businesses in Oregon and elsewhere have them.
Miller: You found through public records requests that Eugene and Springfield have agreements for more than 80 of these cameras, but Springfield said last month that they would not turn them on until there is a public discussion about them. Where does that stand?
Hansen-White: Yeah, they just had part one of that public discussion this week where the police department talked about how they’re really hoping to close more cases with this, and a lot of community members expressed some real nervousness about this. Basically, they’re driving around Springfield not doing anything wrong, and there’s pictures being taken of their vehicle and stored in a database for 30 days. So there was concern about that.
And then there’s a clinic in Springfield where you can get gender-affirming care. There’s also our two emergency rooms in Springfield, so I think that people are worried that, “oh, if I’m doing these innocent things, I could be targeted using this system.” So they decided to keep them. They keep them, but they’re still not on, neither in Eugene or Springfield. Lane County also has actually got into this too. They’re in the process of buying 22 cameras themselves, so soon they’ll be over 100 on various poles across our region. But they’re not quite, I believe, as far in the process as Eugene and Springfield are.
Miller: But Eugene police did use these, that they were turned on, unlike Springfield. What did Eugene police say about how these cameras have already been used?
Hansen-White: Eugene started using the cameras, I think before anyone even knew what they were or that they had been turned on. They use them, they use grant funds to just purchase and set them up. And I think that they’ve used them to close around 60 cases – so that’s finding missing people, that is arresting seven people linked to a burglary ring targeting Asian American business owners.
They say they’ve helped a lot in closing some of these difficult cases a lot faster, or that they might otherwise find kind of challenging. And they described them as a force multiplier – the word that they used to describe this technology – and that it’s really challenging for a lot of local governments right now to set aside more money for more human police officers.
So, having someone watching intersections all the time, I think they see it as a way to make up for the fact that they don’t have as many cops as they would like. They see this as a way to make up for resources that I think used to be available to them, as far as the human resources. So they are very interested and they want this technology back, because they think it’s really gonna help them close more cases.
Miller: In July, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden announced that he’d made a deal with this company, Flock, to limit other states’ access to Oregon data from these cameras. What did the company agree to?
Hansen-White: Flock agreed to exclude Oregon’s cameras from searches with the search justification, “abortion” or “immigration.” So when you make a search on a Flock system, you usually have to say why you’re doing it. That made our state … if someone said, “I’m looking for immigrants,” then our data wouldn’t show up. So that’s what that agreement that he made with Flock is. He’s kind of changed heart on that, since then.
He sent them another letter, I think after maybe hearing from some activists with their concerns about how this works. They think that that’s pretty easy to get around. You can just say, “I’m doing an investigation” and get the same results that were previously excluded from you. So they don’t really see that as a real, maybe even a false sense of safety.
I think after doing some more research, last week he wrote Flock another letter saying that he thinks that the community should consider taking them down because abuses of this technology are inevitable. Flock has replied to him saying they disagree, that they think that they can do even more safeguards than the ones that they have, [which] could work to protect people from having their rights violated.
Miller: So I want to understand more about this group’s concerns. This group that you mentioned, it’s called Eyes Off Eugene and it formed over the summer, saying that the data sharing limits secured by Sen. Wyden didn’t go far enough – and I guess as you said, he agrees now. But what exactly are their specific concerns? I mean, what kinds of scenarios are they saying this data could lead to?
Hansen-White: Yeah, I think there’s a couple different categories of concern. I think there’s the ever-present concern about innocent people being surveilled, [that] even if you don’t have anything to hide, is it OK for the cops to be watching us all the time? So there’s that Fourth Amendment, ever-present concern when you have a technology like this.
But I also think there’s additional concerns with this current administration and changes in different states, criminalizing things that are legal in Oregon: abortion, being a transgender youth, being an immigrant, those types of things. I think there is fear that someone in a state where those things are illegal, if you come to Oregon to get an abortion, that data could be used against you. Or if you are politically active, if you’re doing protesting, that these cameras could be used to monitor your constitutionally-protected activity, your ability to meet with other politically-minded people and do things that are protected under the Constitution.
So I think there’s the fear that minorities are going to be targeted with this technology, which is always a fear with this – and with the current administration even more. But then there’s the ever-present, is it right for the police to be watching us all the time?
Miller: Given Oregon’s sanctuary law, which prohibits local or state officials from taking part in immigration enforcement, could ICE agents access this data?
Hansen-White: Local police say they feel that their safeguards they’ve put on Flock make it so they’re not accessing this data. There have been cases that without even local police … and when I say local, I mean, we haven’t had any documented cases so far of data being taken from Eugene or Springfield cameras. But in other cities, including sanctuary cities and states, ICE, Homeland Security and Border Patrol has been able to get access to that data. I think just this week in Auburn, in Washington state, they just posted on Facebook, “Sorry, it looks like Border Patrol got access to our Flock data without our knowledge, and we found out after the fact, and we’re going to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
I think that local police are trying their best to put up safeguards, to make sure that federal agents that they don’t want to have access to Eugene’s people’s information or local information, that sometimes they’re still getting access, even when local law enforcement is trying to stop them. It’s happened in other states. And there’s also been cases, before the current Trump administration, in Southern Oregon where local police were, as kind of one-off favors, looking up things for federal agents that may have been a violation of sanctuary policy, to do an informal look up for someone.
So there’s been unintentional breaches and sometimes more borderline breaches where, despite sanctuary law, I think there is a question about whether this could unintentionally violate it.
Miller: Just to bring things up to the present, about two weeks ago, the Eugene City Council voted to have the city manager turn off that city’s automatic license plate readers – and the manager did do that. And then this week, the ACLU of Oregon announced it was suing the city on behalf of the group that we were talking about earlier, Eyes Off Eugene. What’s the reason for this new suit?
Hansen-White: It’s a public records lawsuit. Eyes off Eugene requested, or a member of the group requested a map of where Eugene’s 57 cameras are. And the city of Eugene Records officers said, “no, you can’t have that.” They believe that that’s an item of public interest and people should be able to see it. And in other cities, they actually requested the same thing. Springfield gave them a map of their cameras, no problem, no friction. So clearly not every government has the same interpretation of whether this is privileged information or not. They’re suing over access to where the cameras are and they believe that Eugene should release the locations of the cameras.
Miller: I totally understand the desire on the part of the ACLU and the people they represent to get this information from the city. But is it not, just practically speaking, relatively clear where the cameras are? In pictures I’ve seen, they look like a relatively distinctive solar panel and then, as you said, like a webcam beneath that. Do people have a pretty good sense where these cameras have been placed?
Hansen-White: I have noticed a few driving around that are kind of obvious, on a pole. But I guess it depends on how long it’s going to take you to drive around all of Eugene to find 57 cameras. So I think that it might be a principal thing of, specifically on a map, we’d like to see where you place the cameras, because I think people have crowdsourced. And there is an online map that they’ve created where they think that these cameras are and the ones that they’ve been able to find so far. But what if you missed one and there’s one recording somewhere that you don’t know?
Miller: Finally, you mentioned the Lane County Sheriff’s Office, which now has some of these cameras of its own. I’ve also seen reports of these cameras being used in Oregon City and in Florence. Are there any rumblings in Salem about state-level regulation?
Hansen-White: I have not heard anything specific from any Oregon lawmakers about that. Other states have, including Illinois; they have passed laws limiting how the Flock cameras can be used and empowering themselves to do audits. Partially why we know that federal officials have been able to get access to Flock cameras is because of other states’ efforts to have wider regulations and more official transparency, versus a private company deciding how transparent to be.
So I have not heard anything official, as far as state laws regulating this. Right now, it’s a lot of local police departments and local governments developing their own policies and guidelines for how they should be used.
Miller: Rebecca, thanks very much.
Hansen-White: Thank you.
Miller: Rebecca Hansen-White is a reporter at KLCC. She joined us to talk about automatic license plate reader cameras in Eugene and Lane County more broadly.
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