Officials with the Department of Human Assistance, or DHA, in Sacramento, California, have been using license plate readers since 2016 to investigate welfare fraud, the Sacramento Beereported last week. Police use of the readers, which match pictures of license plates taken from street poles and cop cars to a searchable database, have been on the rise over the past decade. According to the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, it is highly unusual for welfare departments to employ the technology. Moreover, the foundation alleges that the DHA violated California state laws dictating that any entity using a license plate database must institute a privacy-and-usage policy that includes regular audits and record keeping. The department reportedly did not have such a policy until the foundation inquired as to whether one existed.
“It’s really used to help us locate folks that are being investigated for welfare fraud. Sometimes they’re not at their stated address,” DHA Director Ann Edwards told the Sacramento Bee. “I think we use it very judiciously and only when needed to investigate fraud.” The DHA says it has uncovered about 13,000 incidents of welfare fraud in the 35,412 cases it investigated—a 37 percent detection rate—since it began using the license plate data in 2016. Officials accessed the license plate reader database 1,110 times in that period.* The DHA was using a feature of the license plate reader that collects data about every single vehicle in a particular location, regardless of whether the vehicle belonged to a welfare recipient.
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