By Becky Straus, Legislative Director

Tomorrow, I will be in Salem for the January Legislative Days, a time when our elected officials look ahead to the upcoming 2014 session. One of the issues being addressed will be the use of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) which have the potential to create permanent records of everywhere you drive, transforming the meaning of a "private life" and opening up many opportunities for abuse.

This surveillance data may be useful to law enforcement in identifying stolen cars or finding missing persons. But most of the information license plate readers capture is the day-to-day movements of innocent people, which is stored for years. Tracking of a person's location is a significant invasion of privacy, and can reveal things like visits to friends, doctors, protests, political events, and churches.

We must defend the core American principle that you are innocent until proven guilty. The government cannot collect information about your legal activities because you might do something wrong. Our legislators must take a stand against the tracking of our movements on a massive scale.

Download the ALPR Briefing Paper (PDF).