I was recently contacted through Change.org regarding a local petition calling for automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, to be removed from Chattanooga and surrounding communities. It caused me to think more about a subject I have been following for some time.

I understand why law enforcement wants these systems.

I spent 10 years working as a 911 dispatcher. I have worked alongside police officers, listened to calls as crimes were unfolding and seen the importance of getting useful information to officers quickly.

When I was campaigning for my first term on the Signal Mountain Town Council, I remember discussing license plate readers with one of our officers. From a law-enforcement perspective, the appeal was easy to understand: a tool that can help locate a stolen vehicle, identify a suspect vehicle or find someone who is missing can have real value.

At the time, I was generally receptive to that argument.

But the more I have learned about the capabilities of modern ALPR networks, the more concerned I have become.

Unlike a traditional police investigation focused on a particular suspect, these systems can collect information on thousands of ordinary people who are suspected of nothing. A license plate, vehicle description, location and time can be recorded simply because someone drove down a public road. Those individual observations can become much more revealing when they are searchable across locations and agencies.

That changes the question for me.

The question is no longer simply, “Can this technology help solve crimes?” Clearly, it can.

The better question is, “How much surveillance infrastructure should government build around everyone in order to investigate the relatively small number of people suspected of committing crimes?”

There are also legitimate concerns about misuse. These aren’t entirely hypothetical. This summer, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested five former Albany police officers after an internal audit found they had allegedly accessed retained license-plate information for non-law-enforcement purposes. Other departments have conducted similar audits as concerns about improper searches have grown.

That does not mean our local law-enforcement officers are abusing these systems. I have no reason to make that accusation.

It does demonstrate something more fundamental: when we build a powerful database, we also create the possibility that someone - today or years from now - will use it for a purpose for which it was never intended.

Technology companies and police agencies have responded to many of these concerns with audit logs, access controls and other safeguards. Those are positive steps. But safeguards around a surveillance system are different from deciding whether the surveillance should occur in the first place.

Signal Mountain wrestled with this question before I was elected. The town was approached about participating in an ALPR program, and concerns were raised about how the resulting information could be stored and used. The town ultimately did not participate.

Since taking office, I have raised my own concerns about ALPRs with our town manager and with Hamilton County Commissioner Chip Baker.

The issue has now become even more immediate. On Aug. 31, Hamilton County Sheriff Austin Garrett announced a pause in the Sheriff’s Office’s Flock and Motorola license-plate-reader programs, involving approximately 70 cameras. Importantly, Sheriff Garrett made clear that he believes the technology can help fight crime, while also citing serious concerns about public data and potential misuse.

I think that pause is the right decision.

Knox County reached an even stronger conclusion the same day, with its County Commission unanimously ordering the sheriff’s Flock cameras removed within 30 days.

I don’t view this as a left-versus-right issue, and I don’t think supporting law enforcement and protecting individual privacy should be competing values.

Police officers should have effective tools to investigate crimes. Citizens should also be able to drive to work, church, a doctor’s office, a political meeting or a friend’s home without government routinely building a searchable record of those movements simply because the technology makes it possible.

There may eventually be a version of this technology with sufficiently narrow purposes, strong local control, minimal retention, strict limits on data sharing, independent auditing and meaningful consequences for misuse.

I am not convinced we are there today.

For now, I believe Hamilton County is right to pause these systems, examine them carefully and put the burden on the technology - not the public - to demonstrate that its benefits justify the intrusion it creates.

Good government occasionally requires saying no to a useful tool because the power that comes with it is greater than we are comfortable giving government.

Public safety matters. So does privacy.

We should insist on both.

J. Miles Jorgensen
Town Councilman, Signal Mountain