The Louisiana state legislature is presently considering a bill which is really quite impressive in the way it combines invasion of privacy with special government favors for a crony capitalist company. Here’s part of what it does:
Senate Bill 54 would authorize the installation of special cameras in law enforcement vehicles that would automatically scan license plates of passing cars and match them to a state database to catch offenders—much in the same way that New Orleans’ controversial traffic cameras issue fines to speeders and red-light runners.
So that by itself would be bad enough. Other electronic traffic monitoring—from red light cameras to more traditional license plate tracking—have long been the subject of significant privacy concerns.
In my state of Minnesota, for instance, red light cameras were found unconstitutional because they cut into due process rights. Likewise, civil libertarians have rightly sounded the alarm that, with license plate tracking, police can “query a database to see years of data on where your car was photographed at specific times,” and they don’t need a warrant to do it.
The Louisiana bill is arguably even more dangerous for privacy rights than that more passive style of license plate tracking, where officers have to specifically search for your name or plates. Here, the database search is automatic, and with overcriminalization on the scale we have today, this technology will no doubt affect many more regular Louisianans than lawmakers realize.
But it gets worse:
[T]he proposed law was the brainchild of a private company that is planning to make a healthy return on a $5 million investment by taking a large cut of each fine paid by uninsured motorists caught by the cameras. [State officials] Ballay and Johns disclosed the role of the private company only after two committee members asked for a better explanation on the program, since it requires no government expenditure. In an interview, Johns said he didn’t know anything about the company.
Ah, so this actually a way for a company to make money by expanding the security state. Intriguingly, Louisiana State Police specifically rejected a similar proposal five years ago because of its crony capitalism and potential for misuse.
For while the profit motive is a great thing in the free market, when a government program is explicitly designed to line someone’s pockets, it’s not hard to see how it will come to be abused.
Unsurprisingly, supporters of the bill are selling it by fearmongering about the number of uninsured drivers in Louisiana. They’ve claimed as many as one in four drivers are on the roads without insurance, but it’s actually about half that. Should every Louisianan have their movements tracked without a warrant because a few might be delinquent on their insurance payments?
That’s absurd—and unconstitutional.
This bill is such an amalgam of unpleasantries that it should be able to attract opposition from across the political spectrum. Louisianans who want to protect privacy, oppose corruption, and/or value the perspective of their state police can contact their representatives here to oppose the bill.