Deputy Dog Shurtleff's License Plate Scanner Authorization Bill - Granite Grok

Deputy Dog Shurtleff’s License Plate Scanner Authorization Bill

Close-Up-View-of-LPRDemocrat House Rep Stephen Shurtleff might best be known to you as the guy who tried to repeal stand your ground in the Granite State (Just search him on the Grok and bathe in the cool refreshing cascade of link love heaped upon the man).  Seems he had another bill we did not talk about, that got kicked around and is now coming up for air in a full committee work session tomorrow (yes, 9/11) in L.O.B room 204.

The full Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee will meet to discuss HB 675, a bill to authorize license plate scanning cameras in New Hampshire.

What is remarkable about the bill, and what it attempts to allow, is that just a few years ago in 2007 the majority Democrat House and Senate, and then Democrat governor Lynch, passed and signed into law, a bill prohibiting the use of these very things.

Back in 2007 a bill to correct issues relating to information law enforcement can capture clarified that while  EZ PASS cameras can image plates to verify that transponders are being used on the correct vehicles there was no other legitimate purpose for the capture and retention of such data using any imaging device.  HB 675 (2013) would permit their use but in true Shurtleff style, it’s something of a train wreck when it comes to your rights as a citizen.

From the NHCLU…

HB 675 as introduced raised a number of specific concerns including:


Section (2)(VI) of the bill conflicts with fundamental Fourth Amendment protections that require police to have a reasonable articulable suspicious or probable cause that a crime is occurring or has occurred.

The bill’s list of purposes for which LPR devices can be used is overbroad and at times vague (section (2)(V).

The bill fails to make clear that data collected by LPRs cannot be used for any purpose other than the limited purposes laid out in the bill.

I’m curious what motivation the majority Democrat NH House, for example, might have in reversing course on an issue they were overwhelmingly against just a few years ago?  Current leadership is not much different now from then.

We would advise you to reach out to the Committee with your concerns before the hearing.  Note: NH Democrat Laura “we are all forced to sit through this” Pantelakos is the committee chair who snapped like a dry twig at a hearing of Deputy Dawg Shurtleff”s HB 135, the effort to repeal Stand Your Ground.

H/T Keith Michael / Facebook

 Note: corrected typo: I wrote EX pass and it was meant to be EZ PASS.

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