Surveillance technology like automated license plate readers has become commonplace in policing. Federal data shows that most large departments use the systems, which record images of traffic 24 hours a day wherever the cameras are stationed.

They've made it easier to locate stolen vehicles and track suspects, but they've also raised concerns about civil liberties. A recent investigation by Cardinal News, a Virginia nonprofit, found that 81 of 100 agencies in the southern part of the state use some kind of public-facing surveillance tech.

Cardinal News Executive Editor Jeff Schwaner took a 300-mile drive through the state to see how often his car would be recorded. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Schwaner about his experience and issues related to privacy and who has access to the data.

The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Jeff Schwaner: Martinsville has quite a few cameras. They only captured me once. Staunton captured me at two different points, exit points and entrance points, to the city. Lynchburg captured me once near Liberty University. Roanoke captured me a couple times from a couple different places, which is when you're first getting into the city off [Interstate 581]. However, you know, another use for these cameras is to kind of blanket them around the neighborhood where you think there's going to be a lot of crime occurring. And of course, that creates civil rights questions and stuff like that. I didn't purposely go and try to look for, to, like, drive through those neighborhoods where I thought they might be.

Meghan McCarty Carino: Was it more often or less often than you expected?

Schwaner: You know, in some ways it was less often because in Roanoke, I did drive around the city. That's like the one place where I went, you know, across a couple of different roads and into some neighborhoods. Well, depending on the time of day, and maybe even if there was, you know, sunlight facing the camera, there might be times where you passed a camera but it didn't get a clear shot. I guess the thing that surprised me most was just looking at four or five of these images and realizing that if somebody really did want to follow me around or figure out my habits — I always leave when I go down to Roanoke to visit reporters and or to go further south — I always leave at the same time. I always leave the same route. I always come back the same route. And just like that, you could figure that out by looking at 30 days’ worth of footage in just, like, four or five pictures. That gave me a little thought.

McCarty Carino: Yeah, I would imagine, if I were to sort of steelman the argument for this, it would be, well, you know, it doesn't matter if your data exists if, you know, you're not committing crimes. Then no one is going to bother with it, it's not going to be consequential. What are the concerns here?

Schwaner: There's a long history in this country and in pretty much every other country that collecting innocuous information about somebody can lead to inadvertent threats to their safety or the safety of their family. “We know you're not home at this time of day. It was nice seeing your wife out in the front yard.” And then anytime you have this much data that's collected, and the public, you know, does not have access to how this data is being used, it creates all this information that can be combined with its various parts and give you individual information that's not just aggregated information about the flow of traffic or about something like that, but that can be used in a way that is preinvestigative. And this type of surveillance creates the impression to me that we're in this sea change where the government starts to view you as the sum total of the data they collect about you, and that is a different person, in many ways, than the person that you are going about your daily business.

McCarty Carino: Is there any oversight or regulation about, you know, what happens to this data, how it's stored, how long it's stored?

Schwaner: As we speak, no. There is a bill before the governor that would create some regulation by collecting the audits of all the searches done by police agencies using this type of license plate reading technology. Their first attempt at that was not incredibly successful because we checked our own data that we collected against the state's data that came out just a few months ago, and we found out that some of the agencies which told the state that they didn't have license plate reading technology, in fact, had sent us their contracts with Flock Safety and so they did have LPR tech. So this new bill, if it's signed into law, will create something that's a little more formalized about that. One of the other things it will do is it will take this data and put it beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.

McCarty Carino: What were the biggest kind of questions that arose for you and the team, you know, doing this series? And what kind of conclusions were you left with about these programs?

Schwaner: So you know, at first the biggest question was, how many law enforcement agencies have this, and we've seen just a huge increase in the number of agencies that have this sort of very high-tech capability. Other questions were, how does a police agency with one full-time law enforcement officer afford this type of technology? And we're looking into that, and we'll have a report coming out, probably the end of this month, beginning of May. There are a few surprises there in how this type of technology is paid for. And another, you know, is simply [about] these kind of privacy questions. Is this data public? Should it be public? Should it not be public? If it's not public, should there be a group that comes between law enforcement officers and their ability to just check this for any given reason? You know, that's the question that is as yet unanswered.

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A bit more context on the legal situation. Earlier this year, a federal district court cleared the path for a constitutional lawsuit against the city of Norfolk, Virginia, over its use of automated license plate readers.

And that new law Jeff Schwaner mentioned, which was passed by Virginia's legislature, would regulate the use of those cameras. It's currently sitting on Gov. Glenn Youngkin's desk for his signature or veto.

In San Francisco, meanwhile, police are crediting a new surveillance hub for a 20% drop in crime since the start of the year, including 42% fewer car thefts.

The police department's Real Time Investigation Center has 24/7 monitoring of surveillance feeds, license plate readers and drone footage to guide police. The crime abatement also coincides with the enactment of a statewide ballot measure that increased penalties for certain crimes.