Cynthia Lum
Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University
Key Findings
- Individuals who expressed high levels of police trust were more likely to support LPR to locate stolen vehicles.
- Individuals who considered LPR data to be non-private were much more likely to approve its use to detect stolen vehicles.
- Over 53% of individuals considered LPR data was private, 29.2% considered it was not private and 17.3% were neutral on the topic.
- Significant effects were found when examining the relationship between trust and support for use of LPR to check passing vehicles for unpaid tickets, to look into the past activities of individuals under criminal investigation, and to investigate vehicles near important landmarks.
Description
In the article, “Predicting public support for the use of license plate recognition technology by police,” Lum and her co-author examine the uses of licence plate recognition (LPR) technology, which uses can range from recovering stolen vehicles to complex surveillance and predictive functions. LPR technology scans and stores the licence plate number, date/time/location, and an image for future reference. This information can also be used as surveillance to track citizens’ daily movements. To conduct their study, the researchers created and distributed a survey to 2,000 randomly selected residents of Fairfax County and Alexandria City in Virginia to determine their opinions on trust and approval of LPR technology. The researchers controlled for seven different variables including police trust, information privacy, individual rights, and demographics. The results showed that individuals who expressed high levels of police trust were more likely to support LPR to locate stolen vehicles. They also found those who considered LPR data to be non-private were much more likely to approve its use to detect stolen vehicles. Significant effects were found when examining the relationship between trust and support for the use of LPR to check passing vehicles for unpaid tickets, to look into the past activities of individuals under criminal investigation, and to investigate vehicles near important landmarks. On the topic of whether LPR data was public or private, 53.4% indicated it was private, 29.2% said it was not private and 17.3% were neutral. The authors concluded that more research is needed to help police agencies assess trade-offs between privacy and technology.