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Since 2016, Sacramento County officials have been accessing license plate reader data to track welfare recipients suspected of fraud, the Sacramento Bee reported over the weekend.
Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance Director Ann Edwards confirmed to the paper that welfare fraud investigators working under the DHA have used the data for two years on a “case-by-case” basis. Edwards said the DHA pays about $5,000 annually for access to the database.
Since June 2016, when the county started using ALPR data, investigators discovered fraud had occurred in about 13,000 of the 35,412 fraud referrals they investigated, or about 37 percent of the time, the DHA said. Welfare fraud includes activities like failing to report income and claiming care for a child who does not actually live with the benefits recipient, the DHA said.
Twenty-two welfare fraud investigators and investigative assistants have accessed ALPR data a total of 1,110 times in that two-year period, Edwards said, meaning they use ALPR data about 2.5 percent of the time.
“It doesn’t appear to be overused,” Edwards said. “I think we use it very judiciously and only when needed to investigate fraud.”
Edwards said DHA pays about $5,000 each year to access the data, which Vigilant Solutions sells to law enforcement and investigatory agencies around the country. Company representatives would not provide details about how data is collected or sold, but The Atlantic reported in 2016 that Vigilant Solutions had stored about 2.2 billion photos of license plates at the time, and photographs about 80 million per month.
The EFF, which examined the use of ALPR data by the county over a two-year period, has been collecting mandated privacy and use policies for agencies in California that rely on license plate data. It says DHA did not have one in place.
“Instead of telling me, ‘Hey, we don’t have a policy,’ they generated a policy really quickly and then gave it to me as if it had existed,” Maass said. “It was only when I called back again and said, ‘Hey did this exist (prior to our request),’ they said, ‘No, we didn’t know until you submitted a public records request.’”
Edwards said her department was unaware it was required by Senate Bill 34, which took effect at the beginning of 2016, to create a privacy and usage policy that respected people’s privacy and civil liberties. She said as soon as EFF told her department about the violation, DHA quickly created a policy and posted it on its website, in accordance with state law.
https://gizmodo.com/california-officials-admit-to-using-license-plate-reade-1828313821
Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance Director Ann Edwards confirmed to the paper that welfare fraud investigators working under the DHA have used the data for two years on a “case-by-case” basis. Edwards said the DHA pays about $5,000 annually for access to the database.
Since June 2016, when the county started using ALPR data, investigators discovered fraud had occurred in about 13,000 of the 35,412 fraud referrals they investigated, or about 37 percent of the time, the DHA said. Welfare fraud includes activities like failing to report income and claiming care for a child who does not actually live with the benefits recipient, the DHA said.
Twenty-two welfare fraud investigators and investigative assistants have accessed ALPR data a total of 1,110 times in that two-year period, Edwards said, meaning they use ALPR data about 2.5 percent of the time.
“It doesn’t appear to be overused,” Edwards said. “I think we use it very judiciously and only when needed to investigate fraud.”
Edwards said DHA pays about $5,000 each year to access the data, which Vigilant Solutions sells to law enforcement and investigatory agencies around the country. Company representatives would not provide details about how data is collected or sold, but The Atlantic reported in 2016 that Vigilant Solutions had stored about 2.2 billion photos of license plates at the time, and photographs about 80 million per month.
The EFF, which examined the use of ALPR data by the county over a two-year period, has been collecting mandated privacy and use policies for agencies in California that rely on license plate data. It says DHA did not have one in place.
“Instead of telling me, ‘Hey, we don’t have a policy,’ they generated a policy really quickly and then gave it to me as if it had existed,” Maass said. “It was only when I called back again and said, ‘Hey did this exist (prior to our request),’ they said, ‘No, we didn’t know until you submitted a public records request.’”
Edwards said her department was unaware it was required by Senate Bill 34, which took effect at the beginning of 2016, to create a privacy and usage policy that respected people’s privacy and civil liberties. She said as soon as EFF told her department about the violation, DHA quickly created a policy and posted it on its website, in accordance with state law.
https://gizmodo.com/california-officials-admit-to-using-license-plate-reade-1828313821
