QuickTake:

The legislation, developed with help from state Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, has passed the Senate and is now in the House. Privacy advocates are proposing an amendment.

Under a bill in the Oregon Legislature, license-plate recognition technology would face more oversight if law enforcement agencies opted to use the automated crime-fighting systems. 

Senate Bill 1516A marks a potential starting point in Oregon’s efforts to use license-plate readers to solve crimes while balancing privacy and data-security concerns.

The House Rules Committee heard testimony Monday, March 2, on the bill, which would restrict law enforcement use of the technology and seeks to hold vendors accountable if they misuse data or improperly share it. The bill has passed the Senate and faces a vote in the House.

The technology raised fears last year in Eugene and Springfield over privacy and the potential misuse of data by vendors, including possible targeting of immigrants and other vulnerable communities. The Eugene City Council voted in October 2025 to pause the city’s use of its license-plate reader cameras, which had been installed earlier that year. And the police department in December announced the end of its agreement with Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company that was providing the Eugene system.

At the same time, automated license-plate readers, also known as ALPR, have helped police crack cases. When the cameras were up in Eugene, they played a role in solving a high-profile case when police arrested seven men linked to a burglary ring targeting Asian American households. 

The bill would require law enforcement agencies to adopt policies for vendors and limit the sharing of license-plate data with law enforcement agencies outside Oregon. The bill also would prohibit vendors from accessing, selling or disclosing the license-plate data. 

“With great power comes great responsibility, and some members of our government have shown that they cannot be fully trusted with this power or responsibility,” Jensina Hawkins, law enforcement liaison for the Asian American Council of Oregon and former chair of the Eugene Police Commission, told lawmakers. “That being said, ALPR contributed heavily to the arrest of seven members of an organized crime ring targeting the residences of the Asian business owners in Eugene.”

State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, a Democrat from Eugene who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, worked on the bill with a group that included law enforcement and privacy advocates. In the hearing, Prozanski said the group has been meeting since December and its work is a good starting point for a bill that can move forward for a vote this session.

Law enforcement officials praised the bill.

“We believe it strikes a strong balance between protecting privacy rights and also allowing this important tool to be used,” said Kevin Campbell, a lobbyist with Oregon Association Chiefs of Police.

But citizen advocates — including those with Eyes Off Eugene, which lobbied for the cameras’ removal in Eugene — said the bill does not go far enough. They said the bill needs a one-line amendment stating that end-to-end encryption of data must assure that only the law enforcement agency — not the vendor — has the ability to decrypt, access or grant access to the data. That amendment isn’t in the version the Senate passed.

“We have caught them in countless lies over the past year about how their product works and what they are doing,” said Ky Fireside, referring to system vendors. Fireside is a co-organizer of Eyes Off Eugene and now does statewide privacy advocacy. “The only way to keep this data safe from those who should not access it is through end-to-end encryption, but there needs to be a definition in law. We wrote that definition very carefully with subject matter experts. We know exactly what these vendors will do without that definition.”

Fireside said that without a definition, vendors can still access data.

“The definition was the one thing that was really providing any means of protection for the data,” Fireside said. “The rest of the bill is audit requirements and data retention lengths. Those things are nice, but they mean nothing without enforcing end-to-end encryption.”

Pretrial release provision 

The bill also would give judges more discretion and leeway to consider flight risk when setting bail conditions for defendants. Under the bill, magistrate judges could consider primary and secondary release criteria, including community safety and the defendant’s likelihood of fleeing. They would have that authority and are not limited by the conditions set in standing pretrial release orders.

Hawkins said the pretrial release portion of the bill is needed, as it would give peace of mind to victims of crimes in which the suspects have a high likelihood of fleeing. 

Jenny Jonak, a board member of the Asian American Council of Oregon, said in submitted testimony the bill “gives victims a fighting chance to protect themselves and their homes. Without it, we waste enormous law enforcement resources, lose accountability, and undermine faith in our justice system — especially in communities who already struggle to trust it.”

Her daughter, 15-year-old Lucy Bragg, a sophomore at South Eugene High School, addressed lawmakers in the committee hearing room in Salem. 

“A lot of Asian American families already worry about speaking up, because they don’t know if they’ll be taken seriously or if reporting will make things worse,” said Bragg, a Korean-American. “When someone can just leave and avoid facing what they did, it makes it feel pointless to report at all. It feels like the system doesn’t really care what happens to us. SB 1516 makes sense to me.”

Time limits meant not everyone could testify, including her friend, 13-year-old Celeste Schwartz, a Chinese American and eighth-grader at Roosevelt Middle School in Eugene.

Schwartz submitted written testimony just the same, telling a Lookout reporter in the state Capitol that the justice system needs to work to keep people and businesses in the community safe.

“SB 1516A is not about punishment,” her letter said. “It is about ensuring that defendants actually appear for a just trial. It is about the restoration of confidence in our system and the hope that things can improve when all voices are heard and weighed equally.”

The committee didn’t take any action on the bill, which still needs a vote in the House. 

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Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.