According to the Tacoma News Tribune (November 9, 2018) Gig Harbor Police Chief Kelly Busey says state law should be changed so that law enforcement investigators can get information from the toll system about people crossing the eastbound Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
“If there is a homicide, and we think the suspect went through the toll bridge at 5:21 a.m., we can’t get that information,” Busey said in a recent interview. “That’s ridiculous.”
Because of privacy concerns, current law states that “no photograph, digital photograph, microphotograph, videotape, other recording image, or other record identifying a specific instance of travel may be used for any purpose other than toll collection or enforcement of civil penalties.”
The toll system obtains a photo of the license plates of all vehicles traveling eastbound on the bridge, as well as the time of which they crossed.
The bridge cameras were installed only for tolling purposes, and the law limiting use of the photos and other information was enacted to protect all citizens’ privacy, said Shanktar Narayan, the Technology and Liberty Project director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.
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Some might ask, why shouldn't police be able to get this information? Simply put, because the information can be abused. What is used to support a major case criminal investigation today, can be used in an illegal investigation tomorrow. Allowing information obtained for one specific purpose to then be used for other purposes is a slippery slope that can lead to nothing but harm of our privacy rights and civil liberties.
We need to ensure that some out of control government employee in a basement office somewhere isn't keeping secret files about us hidden on a government computer network. We need to ensure that information collected about citizens in Washington is only being used for narrowly defined purposes.
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