How police avoid a warrant to search for your car

Police have signalled they may want to go further and introduce extra ways to trigger alerts about someone's vehicle using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology. Photo / RNZ

No warrant is required by police searching for number plates captured by CCTV surveillance networks, even when the vehicles are snapped at the time of the search or seconds before.

Inquiries by the Herald have confirmed that the police definition of a “historic” search - and so not needing a warrant - includes number plates “captured at, or very close to, the time of the query being made”.

Police use of the two private CCTV networks - operated by Auror and SaferCities - has soared with figures obtained through the Official Information Act showing officers have embraced the power of the new technology.

The networks draw in footage gathered by cameras at petrol stations, shopping malls, supermarkets and business districts across the country.

The Herald was told the frequency of SaferCities’ vGRID searches went from 54 in November 2020 to 11,389 searches in September 2022.

Figures for searching on the Auror system have not been provided, with the company saying it considers the information to be private.

The other option open to police is to log a number plate in the privately-owned CCTV surveillance networks to which they have access, so they receive an alert whenever it is spotted in “real-time”.

The “real-time” option requires police to seek a surveillance warrant from a judge or a forward-looking production order from a senior officer, to whom officers have to justify the crime being investigated warrants the breach of privacy involved.

OIA data showed police were able to access the vGRID system in June this year and had logged 119 specific “plates of interest” on which to receive “real-time” alerts. In the same period, police made 43,758 “historic” searches.

It was this option police used when searching for the three women blamed for the Auckland-Northland border lockdown, by falsely listing vehicles to which they were linked, as stolen.

The move prompted police to carry out an audit of how its staff use the systems with a report due to be presented to Police Minister Chris Hipkins and then made public.

Police guidelines for using the system were also updated to say: “You must not classify a vehicle as stolen in NIA if the only purpose is to track that vehicle and it has not been stolen”.

Privacy advocates have voiced concern about the police use of the technology with the NZ Council for Civil Liberties raising questions about the legal basis of “historic” searching under the Search and Surveillance Act.

The council’s chairman Thomas Beagle said the law’s definition of “tracking” - which required a surveillance warrant - appeared to match with the way police carried out “historic” searching and should also require judicial oversight.

The manual for using the vGRID system shows how the “historic” search could provide police with six months of location data whenever a number plate is captured on the thousands of cameras on the network.

A spokeswoman for police headquarters said: “If a specific vehicle licence plate is captured by an ANPR-capable [automatic number plate recognition] camera, and a search is subsequently performed for that plate, all results will be displayed including those captured at, or very close to, the time of the query being made.

“In these instances, searching for this information after the fact means this is not a live track”.

The spokeswoman said police were able to gain “location information after the fact pursuant to a Search and Surveillance production order, or by consent, and a surveillance device warrant is not required”.

Police Minister Chris Hipkins. Photo / Mark Mitchell

In the case of the number plate recognition systems, police said the holders of the information recording vehicles’ locations were the retailers and organisations that operated the CCTV networks which were then fed into the Auror or SaferCities platforms.

As they held the information, they could provide consent to police wanting to access the information on a “historic” basis.

Doing so would “return results for any past detection” but would not create an embedded alert for any new sighting. “Any new detection after the query is made will not appear,” said the spokeswoman.

Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster had yet to receive the results of the police audit, having sought assurance from police last year over how ANPR was being used.

He said it was expected police should use the technology in line with the Privacy Act.

“That means the personal information being collected should be done so in a way that has a clear, legal purpose and is proportionate.”

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner had provided advice on use of the technology and has clear expectations about how the Police will use this technology.

“Collection of personal information should not be driven by the technological ability to do so, but a clear need to collect information to carry out the agency’s lawful functions.”

Police’s lawful function in law leaned heavily on community and national security but the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said there were also legal obligations under the Privacy Act.

“We expect the police to comply with law and protect individual privacy and rights when utilising technology of this type.”