Given the task definition and input, reply with output. In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.

Arizona Department of Public Safety officer David Callister keeps an eye on his dashboard computer as it reads passing car license plates from an infrared camera mounted on the front bumper of his police cruiser in 2007 in Phoenix. Ross D. Franklin 
  
 Drive down many highways, boulevards or small side streets in America, and your movements are being noted by electronic cameras. Eyes in the sky controlled by local police departments snap photos of every passing license plate and store the data, sometimes forever. Even the smallest of agencies now deploys these high-tech voyeuristic machines, creating massive databases where more than 99 percent of the entries represent innocent people. 
  
 All, warned the American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday, for a one-in-a-million chance that the cameras might aid in the apprehension of a serious criminal. 
  
 "Plate readers are the most pervasive system of location tracking that people haven't heard of," said Catherine Crump, a privacy lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union. She wrote the ACLU report released Wednesday questioning the way such cameras are being used. "Even though virtually all of us have had our cars logged into these databases, few know this technology exists." 
  
 Plate-reading cameras differ from speed cameras, red light cameras, or even parking enforcement cameras, which are designed to catch violators and criminals. Plate readers simply capture every car that goes by in a digital dragnet, then check the plate number against “hit lists” of cars associated with criminal activity. 
  
 The ACLU does not object to the use of so-called LPR (License Plate Reader) technologies, Crump said. Checking license plates can be an effective way to spot a stolen car or a fugitive. She objects to the long-term retention of that data, and what she argues is an out-of-whack balancing act between civil liberties and investigative tools. 
  
 "Law enforcement agencies should not be storing data about people who have done nothing wrong," she wrote in the report. "Ordinary people going about their daily lives have every right to expect that their movements will not be logged into massive government databases." 
  
 Data dilemma 
  
 The ACLU submitted Freedom of Information requests to 600 local and state police agencies seeking data on plate reader programs, and received 25,000 documents during the year-long project. 
  
 A "License Plate Reader" or LPR sits on the trunk of a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) car in Washington, D.C, in 2011. Paul J. Richards 
  
 The plate readers are capable of spotting and storing massive amounts of data. Jersey City, N.J., for example told the ACLU it collected 2 million plate numbers during 2012. A statewide directive requires police agencies to preseve data collected for five years, leading the ACLU to conclude that the city has 10 million license plate records. 
  
 ACLU research suggests there is often little to show for all that data collection. For example, the state of Maryland told the ACLU it collected 85 million plates in 2012. Of those, only 1 in 500 resulted in a "hit," and 97 percent of those hits were minor violations such as failure to comply with emissions testing rules. Only 47 were associated with what the ACLU identified as potentially serious crimes. 
  
 "In short, Maryland’s license plate readers collect massive amounts of data, almost none of which are tied to any known or even suspected wrongdoing," the report said. 
  
 In Minnesota, the results were similar: 1.7 million plates scanned between 2009-2011, resulting in 852 citations, and 131 arrests. 
  
 David Roberts, senior program manager for the International Association of Chiefs of Police technology center, defended use of license plate readers, saying they provide real value by automating a task that patrol officers formerly did manually, an inefficient process that wasted resources. He said he’s not surprised the hit rates are low, but said it’s important to place those numbers in context. 
  
 “Those are 47 cases that may not otherwise have every been resolved,” he said, referring to Maryland’s data. “Even though the number is small, if you can make 47 apprehensions, keep those 47 dangerous people off the street, that has real value.” 
  
 The other 99.9 percent 
  
 Still, with well over 99 percent of citizens whose data ends up in these databases being innocent, Crump thinks plate reader programs should be reconsidered. 
  
  
  
 "With hit rates of 0.1 percent, we ought to spend some time thinking about the other 99.9 percent of people's data," she said. 
  
 Several agencies do. In Minnesota, for example, plate data that does not result in a hit must be deleted after 48 hours. In other spots around the country, it is never stored at all. 
  
 But that contrasts with Los Angeles County, which retains the data for two years; the Delaware Department of Homeland Security, which keeps it for five; and Yonkers, N.Y., which retains it indefinitely. 
  
 "We just think innocent people shouldn't end up in a database ... the fact that some agencies delete the data shows it can be done," Crump said. 
  
 Roberts said some communities place cameras at the main entrances and exits from their cities, logging each car that arrives and leaves. He said he knows some citizens might consider that tactic — sometimes called geofencing — disturbing. 
  
 “I understand people's concerns,” he said. “Part of this is how the agency is using the technology. In a fixed deployment like that, you want to be able to trigger an alert, say if you are looking for an abduction. This is a lot more efficient that having a person sit there monitoring a video screen." 
  
 Popularity grows as prices drop 
  
 The International Association of Chiefs of Police predicted problems with inconsistent plate reader policies back in 2009, when it published a report on the privacy impact of plate readers. 
  
 "This lack of regulation can cause the public to fear that the information collected by law enforcement agencies through their utilization of LPR systems might be mismanaged or misinterpreted with real-world consequences," it said at the time. 
  
 Roberts says the association makes no blanket recommendations on records retention, but simply says agencies should tie their policies “to their objectives.” 
  
 “If you are looking for parking violators, that’s obviously a different situation than if you are looking for dangerous criminals,” he said. 
  
 Plate readers have become more popular as their price goes down — simple stand-alone plate readers now cost as little as $15,000, and versions that mount on police cars are even cheaper. They are cheaper still when purchased with federal grant money, which continues to flow to municipalities for purchase of the gadgets. One advantage for the federal Department of Homeland Security — it often gains access to the information through data sharing arrangements. 
  
 While there is no hard data on how many communities deploy the camera, Roberts said a 2007 survey showed that more than half of large police departments used them then, and since that time deployment has been “growing very quickly.” 
  
 The ACLU report comes at a time of increased scrutiny for government surveillance programs, in light of the disclosures by former NSA employee Edward Snowden about controversial surveillance programs run by that agency. Crump says plate readers are another part of that tech-surveillance culture. 
  
 "In some ways, I think they are part of a broader trend that more and more emphasizes collecting absolutely everything everything (people) say or do," Crump said. "Even from people who are completely innocent of any crime." ||||| Office Dennis Vafier of the Alexandria Police Dept., uses a laptop in his squad car to scan vehicle license plates during his patrols of the area, Tuesday, July 16, in Alexandria, Va. Local police departments across the country have amassed millions of digital records on the location and movements of every car truck with a license plate using automated scanners. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) 
  
 The spread of cheap, powerful cameras capable of reading license plates has allowed police to build databases on the movements of millions of Americans over months or even years, according to an American Civil Liberties Union report released Wednesday. 
  
 The license-plate readers, which authorities typically mount along major roadways or on the backs of cruisers and government vehicles, can identify cars almost instantly and compare them against “hot lists” of vehicles that have been stolen or involved in crimes. 
  
 But the systems collect records on every license plate they encounter — whether or not they are on hot lists — meaning that time and location data are gathered in databases that can be searched by police. Some departments purge information after a few weeks, some after a few months and some never, said the report, which warns that such data could be abused by authorities and chill freedom of speech and association. 
  
 “Using them to develop vast troves of information on where Americans travel is not an appropriate use,” said Catherine Crump, a staff lawyer at the ACLU and one of the authors of the report, “You Are Being Tracked: How License Plate Readers Are Being Used to Record Americans’ Movements.” 
  
 The use of license-plate readers is common in the Washington area, where concerns about terrorism have fueled major investments in the equipment, with much of the money coming from federal grants. Agreements among departments and jurisdictions allow sharing of the location information, with data typically retained for at least a year. 
  
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 Such details, police and law enforcement experts say, can help investigators reconstruct suspects’ movements before and after armed robberies, auto thefts and other crimes. Departments typically require that information be used only for law enforcement purposes and require audits designed to detect abuse. 
  
 “We’d like to be able to keep the data as long as possible, because it does provide a rich and enduring data set for investigations down the line,” said David J. Roberts, senior program manager for the Technology Center of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. 
  
 There is no definitive count on the numbers of license-plate readers in the Washington area, but the boxy cameras have become common sights in the region. They typically are mounted in pairs on government vehicles so that the lenses can gaze the adjacent lanes. Some cameras also are mounted on poles or overpasses, much as red-light cameras and speed cameras are. 
  
 The ACLU argues that data collection by most police departments is unnecessarily broad. In an analysis of data collected in Maryland, the report found that license-plate readers recorded the locations of vehicle plates 85 million times last year. 
  
 Based on a partial-year analysis of that data, the ACLU found that about one in 500 plates registered hits. In the overwhelming majority of cases, it said, the alleged offenses were minor, involving lapsed registrations or failures to comply with the state’s emission-control program. 
  
 For each million plates read in Maryland, 47 were associated with serious crimes, such as a stolen vehicle or a wanted person, the report said. Statistics collected by the ACLU in several other jurisdictions across the country also found hit rates far below 1 percent of license plates read. 
  
 Maryland officials have defended their program, which collects data from departments across the state in a fusion center that shares intelligence among federal, state and local agencies. In a recent three-month period, state officials said, license-plate readers contributed to 860 serious traffic citations and the apprehension of 180 people for crimes including stolen autos or license plates. 
  
 The center deletes the data one year after collection, in what officials said was a compromise between investigative needs and privacy rights. 
  
 “We don’t want to retain more information . . . than is necessary,” said Harvey Eisenberg, an assistant U.S. attorney who oversees Maryland’s Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council. “You strike the balance because people are legitimately concerned.” 
  
 The license-plate readers are also widely used in Northern Virginia and the District, which mounts them on many major roadways entering and exiting the city. 
  
 A D.C. police spokeswoman declined to comment on the ACLU report, but a general order posted on the department’s Web site said that data from license-plate readers are kept for two years before being destroyed, though the information can be kept for longer if it is needed for ongoing litigation. 
  
 Fairfax County police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell said the department uses the technology but was unable to provide details about the program. The ACLU report does not have information on readers in Northern Virginia. |||||

You know about speed cameras and red-light cameras. But did you know about plate-reading cameras? Few people do, and that's a worry for the ACLU, which says the cameras are infringing on our civil liberties. Unlike the speed and red-light cameras, which are activated only when someone violates a traffic law, plate cameras photograph every license plate that goes by. Vehicles are instantly IDed then checked against cars associated with crimes, the Washington Post reports. The problem, says the ACLU, is that the license plate info is being stored, creating huge databases of motorists and where they travel—even though more than 99% of those recorded are innocent. ACLU privacy lawyer Catherine Crump calls the cameras "the most pervasive system of location tracking that people haven't heard of," per NBC News. Despite the massive amounts of data, authorities rarely record a "hit," according to an ACLU review of 600 local and state police departments. Maryland, for instance, collected data on 85 million plates last year, but only one in 500 matched with a criminal offense, and 97% of those were for minor violations (say, an emissions test violation). Just 47 per million were potentially serious crimes. But "those are 47 cases that may not otherwise have every been resolved," says an International Association of Chiefs of Police spokesperson. "If you can make 47 apprehensions, keep those 47 dangerous people off the street, that has real value." The ACLU doesn't see it that way. "We just think innocent people shouldn't end up in a database," says Crump. The Post notes that some departments wipe the records after a few weeks or months; some never purge them.