San Jose Considers License Plate Readers For Garbage Trucks

License plate readers in police cars are already scanning vehicles throughout San Jose, but a new proposal would expand their use to the fleet of privately owned garbage trucks plying the city's streets.

Think about it: Trucks operated by contractor Republic Services cover the entire city once a week. That's something the San Jose Police Department can't necessarily say, as they struggle to recruit and retain police officers.

City Councilman Johnny Khamis says there's been an uptick in auto thefts, and mounting license plate readers on garbage trucks will allow the entire city to be swept for stolen cars every week.

"The truck drivers have no access to the information. It all gets automatically uploaded into the cloud and will ping the Police Department once a stolen car license plate has been spotted," Khamis says.

This may be the first instance of a city using garbage trucks to fight crime.

In a June 2013 investigation, the Center for Investigative Reporting found 32 Bay Area law enforcement agencies were using license plate readers. Many are stationary, like those used along the city limits of Piedmont and Tiburon. San Francisco has mounted them on Muni buses, and they're used to notify authorities of traffic problems, like if a vehicle is blocking a bus lane.

Using technology to look only for specific vehicles would have minimal privacy impact on the public, says policy attorney Chris Conley with the ACLU of Northern California.

"The concern arises if license plate readers are used to collect information on every car they see and then store that in a database somewhere," says Conley. "Questions arise about who has access to the information, how long is it being kept, what purposes is it being used for."

He says the city needs a written policy to avoid expanding the scope of the license plate readers.

"We’ve seen in the past that once this technology gets acquired, it's very easy for someone to have a great new idea about this other thing you can do with license plate readers," says Conley. "That can very quickly spiral out of control, without checks and balances from community leaders and local government."

The City Council’s Rules and Open Government Committee approved the plan Wednesday in a 4-1 vote, and its feasibility is now being studied by city staff. It was placed on the Sept. 1 City Council agenda.