Privacy advocates scored a major victory in Boston this week when the city’s police department announced it would indefinitely suspend its use of automated license plate readers. The Boston Globe reports that the 14 devices currently in use let the BPD scan as many as four million vehicles a year, compiling the resulting date, time, and GPS coordinates into a massive database of private citizens’ movements around the city. Commissioner William Evans aims to review the policy surrounding license plate readers "so he knows that it’s being used effectively and that it doesn’t invade anyone’s privacy," said spokeswoman Cheryl Fiandaca.
The decision follows an inquiry by investigators at MuckRock that asked the BPD for its scan data in January, 2012. When the unredacted data was finally released in July, it revealed the precise GPS data and license plate numbers for over 40,000 different vehicles, prompting the department to freeze the program while it figures out how to proceed.
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