Every time you drive in Colorado, a camera may be reading your license plate and logging where you were and when. Automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), made by companies like Flock and Axon, quietly build a record of where ordinary, law-abiding people drive. Most of us never agreed to that, and most of us never hear about it.
Here's some good news, though. Someone wants to do something about it. Cameron Westbrook, an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation, reached out to the LPEPC. Pacific Legal Foundation is a nonprofit law firm that sues the government, and it represents people for free in constitutional cases. They're looking at a possible legal challenge to ALPR cameras in Colorado.
To bring a case, they need real people with real stories. Have you, or someone you know, been affected by a license plate camera? Maybe you were pulled over because of a misread plate, questioned about where you'd driven, or something else entirely. You don't need to have been stopped or questioned, though. If you regularly drive past these cameras, your movements are probably being recorded, and that may be enough. Not everyone is affected the same way, and that's exactly why they want to hear from you.
The Libertarian Party platform says it plainly that "Libertarians advocate individual privacy and government transparency." License plate cameras flip that upside down. The government gets a detailed record of our movements, while we get very little transparency about how that data is kept, shared, or used.
If you have a story, share it directly with Pacific Legal Foundation here:
Share your story with Pacific Legal Foundationhttps://pacificlegal.org/submit-a-case/
Your submission goes straight to Pacific Legal Foundation, not to the LPEPC, and they decide which cases to take. If this isn't you, please share this post with someone it might be. You never know who has a story worth telling.
Questions? Email me at communications@lpepc.org.
Paotie Dawson
Communications Chair, Libertarian Party of El Paso County