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Subject Please keep license plate readers out of Biddeford

Dear Mayor and Councilors,

I'm a Biddeford resident and I'm asking you to keep automated license plate readers out of this city.

These systems photograph every car that passes, store the images in a searchable database, and share them with agencies far outside Biddeford. Ordinary driving should not become a searchable government record simply because a vehicle passed a camera.

Please support an ordinance that (1) prohibits the City from buying, installing, or sharing data with license plate recognition systems, and (2) requires a public hearing and a Council vote before the City buys any surveillance technology.

Thank you for your time.

— [your name]

Subject No surveillance technology without a public hearing and a Council vote

Dear Mayor and Councilors,

My concern is not only cameras — it is who decides, and whether it happens in public.

Surveillance equipment is often acquired through grants, vendor pilots and department purchases that never reach the Council floor. Auburn's cameras went up without a Council vote.

Please require a public hearing and a recorded Council vote before the City acquires any surveillance technology — cameras, drones, or whatever comes next — and prohibit license plate readers outright.

Thank you for taking this seriously.

— [your name]

Subject Decide the surveillance question before a purchase, not after

Dear Mayor and Councilors,

Biddeford hasn't bought plate readers. That is exactly why this is the right moment to decide the question.

Writing the rule now costs a Council vote. Undoing a contract, a data-sharing agreement and installed hardware later costs staff time, legal review and public trust — South Portland spent about a year on it.

Please pass an ordinance prohibiting license plate readers, and requiring a public hearing and a Council vote before any surveillance technology purchase.

Thank you.

— [your name]

Subject Plate readers build a warrantless location record — please prohibit them

Dear Mayor and Councilors,

A license plate reader network does not investigate a suspect. It records the movements of everyone who drives past, keeps that record, and makes it searchable later — a retroactive location history across every camera on the network, assembled without a warrant and without anyone's consent.

In Milwaukee, an officer used his authorized access 179 times to check the locations of two people for personal reasons. Every search was labeled "investigation." One of the people being tracked found it in public audit logs before the department did.

Three things make that worse than it first sounds. Retention: even a short retention period creates a searchable location record of people who were never suspected of anything. Sharing: these networks are built to query across jurisdictions, so a Biddeford camera answers to agencies in states whose laws we have no say in. Mission creep: a system installed for stolen cars is available for anything a future administration decides to look for, including lawful activity — who attends a meeting, a clinic, a place of worship.

The remedy is not a better policy on top of the hardware. Policies can change quietly; the capability remains in place. The remedy is not acquiring it.

Please support an ordinance that (1) prohibits the City from buying, installing, or sharing data with automated license plate recognition systems, and (2) requires a public hearing and a recorded Council vote, with annual public reporting, before the City acquires any surveillance technology.

I would rather Biddeford be the city that decided this in advance.

— [your name]

Subject A resident asking you to say no to plate readers

Dear Mayor and Councilors,

I drive to work, to school pickup, to the grocery store, and to my mother's house. I do not think a database needs a record of those ordinary parts of my life.

Nothing about my daily driving should be searchable by an agency I've never heard of, in a state I've never been to.

Please prohibit license plate readers in Biddeford, and require a public hearing and a Council vote before the City buys any surveillance technology.

Thank you.

— [your name]

Subject A Biddeford business owner on license plate readers

Dear Mayor and Councilors,

I run a business in Biddeford. My customers park on these streets, and I don't want their movements logged and shared as a condition of shopping here.

Downtown works because it feels like a place people can come and go freely. Blanket plate surveillance changes that, and it isn't a trade I want made on my behalf.

Please prohibit license plate readers, and require a public hearing and a Council vote before the City acquires surveillance technology.

Thank you.

— [your name]

Subject Biddeford would be the outlier on plate readers

Dear Mayor and Councilors,

Portland, Saco, Kittery, Ogunquit and Sanford do not use license plate readers. South Portland removed its cameras. Auburn's council refused to fund them.

Declining this technology is the normal position in southern Maine, not the fringe one. Biddeford adopting it would make us the outlier among our own neighbors.

Please prohibit license plate readers, and require a public hearing and a Council vote before any surveillance technology purchase.

Thank you.

— [your name]