Cops Released a Car’s Travel History to a Total Stranger

· Jun 13, 2024 at 10:14 AM

In a rare instance of too much transparency, an Ohio police department released the precise movements of a particular vehicle in response to a public records request, showing just how invasive license plate reading technology can be.

Cops Released a Car’s Travel History to a Total Stranger — Image: 404 Media.

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At 8:56 a.m. on Saturday April 27, a car was on a road just off the highstreet in Orrville, Ohio. A couple of minutes later, at 8:59 a.m., it was spotted at another location. Then at 9:07 a.m., the same car was on a street towards the center of the small city. Nearly an hour later, it was spotted farther south.

All of this information is included in a PDF of precise timestamps and approximate locations related to a certain license plate, and by extension, driver, which the Orrville Police Department provided as part of a public records request. But the requester wasn’t the owner of the car, and the police did not verify their identity at all, meaning that a stranger simply requested the movements of another person’s car, with the police obliging.