Driver Privacy and Safety Act

ALPRs are cameras mounted on patrol cars or on objects along roads – such as telephone poles or the underside of bridges – that snap photographs of every license plate that enters their fields of view. Each time the ALPR system captures a license plate image, it records the time, date, and GPS location of the photograph and stores that information in a database. While ALPRs can have legitimate and beneficial uses for public safety, when left unregulated they pose a significant danger to the privacy of every New Mexican who drives.

Many law enforcement agencies in New Mexico share their data widely with other agencies to help solve crimes across jurisdictional lines. Sharing like this is useful and important, but requires basic guardrails to prevent misuse, like tracking patients who receive reproductive healthcare or fueling the Trump administration’s mass deportation scheme. Just last year, a sheriff’s office in Texas used ALPR data to track someone who’d had an abortion—and accessed New Mexico data in their search. And in one New Mexico city alone, records show that out-of-state agencies accessed their data thousands of times for searches with reasons like “ICE,” “immigrant,” or “immigration.”

The Driver Privacy and Safety Act will enact common-sense protections similar to those already in place in several other states.

Under the bill, ALPR users in New Mexico, such as law enforcement agencies, may not share any ALPR data with any third party unless they first receive an affirmation that the data will not be used to prosecute activity that is legal in New Mexico, activity protected under the First Amendment, or to enforce immigration laws. Law enforcement in New Mexico will continue to be able to use ALPRs for legitimate purposes, while sensitive data on everyday New Mexicans will be protected.

The Driver Privacy and Safety Act ensures that the massive amounts of data that law enforcement collect using Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) won’t be shared with third parties—such as out-of-state police departments, federal agencies, or private companies— if they plan to use it in ways that violate New Mexico values.

At the same time, the bill preserves New Mexico law enforcement’s ability to use ALRPS to investigate crimes here at home.