Folks driving in and out of Traer via US 63 on the north side in recent weeks may have noticed a peculiar black camera aimed toward the highway. According to the Tama County Sheriff’s Office, the camera fitted with a couple of solar panels is an automatic license plate reader (ALPR).

“[T]hey are indeed license plate reader (LPR) cameras,” Chief Deputy Joe Quandt told the newspaper in an email. “They are non-revenue cameras for intelligence information only. They give us alerts on vehicles related to Amber Alerts, stolen vehicles, etc.”

At this time, the camera is for demonstration purposes only, Quandt said, and is only in a testing phase.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa, ALPRs are high-speed cameras that “snap a photograph of every license plate that passes them, capturing information on up to thousands of cars per minute. The devices convert each license plate number into machine-readable text and check them against agency-selected databases or manually entered license plate numbers, providing an alert to a patrol officer whenever a match or ‘hit’ appears.”

vehicle passes by the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) installed on a pole along US 63 north of Traer on Sunday afternoon. The device along with a second ALPR near Gladbrook is currently being tested out by the Tama County Sheriff’s Office.

While the ACLU of Iowa supports the use of ALPRs in the narrow, regulated manner of assisting law enforcement in the recovery of stolen cars and arresting people with outstanding warrants, the nonprofit civil rights organization is wary of the large amount of data the cameras are able to collect and store — possibly indefinitely.

“The biggest problem with ALPR systems is the creation of databases with location information on every motorist who encounters the system, not just those whom the government suspects of criminal activity,” the ACLU’s website states. “Police departments nationwide are using ALPR to quietly accumulate millions of plate records, storing them in backend databases. We want to make sure that Iowa law enforcement is not violating the privacy rights of Iowa citizens.”

As part of its advocacy work around the issue, the ACLU of Iowa is calling for “the adoption of legislation and law enforcement agency policies adhering to strict privacy principles to prevent the government and others from tracking our movements on a massive scale.”

In addition the camera on US 63 – which is attached to a pole on the west side of the road in front of the former North Tama Activity Center (212 North Main) — Tama County is also testing out an ALPR in the Gladbrook area on Hwy 96, Chief Deputy Quandt said.