Police licence plate readers raise privacy concerns for Charlottetown driver

A Charlottetown man is raising concerns about the collection of data by Charlottetown police after his licence plate was scanned and he received a ticket for an expired registration several days later.

Josh Biggley said last week a Charlottetown police officer knocked on his door to deliver a summons for an expired registration on his car.

"The first thing that puzzled me is that in addition to the regular ticket you would get from an officer, we got a photo of our licence plate and that immediately concerned me," Biggley said.

'It feels like an invasion of privacy'

Charlottetown police have been using automatic licence plate readers on two of their vehicles since last year. The readers automatically read the plates and compare them to information on a database.

Fixed cameras have been operating around the city for several years.

Biggley said he was aware of the surveillance cameras but didn't know about the plate readers.

"I do not have a problem with technologies being used ... but I'm certainly not in favour of an indiscriminate collection of private data," Biggley said. "It feels like an invasion of privacy."

Biggley is asking questions about where the data is coming from, where it's shared and how long it's stored.

Scanners make police work more 'efficient'

According to Charlottetown police, the readers will scan a licence plate and filter it through a police database that determines if there are any violations connected to that vehicle.

Deputy Chief Brad MacConnell said the database contains information from police reports and from the province. That includes data on vehicles with expired registrations.

"It's an efficient way to collect that data and notify police," MacConnell said.

He said all scanned plates are stored on a server for two weeks. Any vehicles found in violation are stored for three months.

MacConnell also said the data is only shared for police purposes. "We will not use it in any way that is not appropriate for a directed police use and that is directly attributed to improving road safety or public safety."

He said police are governed by Police Act regulations and computer use policies."We're very mindful of people's privacy and respect people's privacy.... There's a number of things that keep us accountable."

'There has to be a line'

But Biggley said this level of data collection is going too far.

"There has to be a line in which we say we are no longer comfortable with our privacy being infringed upon in order to enforce a particular law," he said.

Biggley said he's reached out to both Charlottetown police and city hall.

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