Hotlist integration, including NCIC and missing-child lists

What it does

A hotlist is a list of plates or people a camera system compares against every read. A hit is an alert that a read matched the list. Lists can include stolen vehicles, warrants, and other entries. A missing-child list, of the kind associated with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, is one example of that kind of list. Naming that kind of list is not a statement that any Nevada agency loads it. NCIC is the federal criminal-information system a hit may be checked against. The system itself is a separate card.

Privacy watchdog concerns

• Electronic Frontier Foundation. Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR). EFF says plate-reader cameras capture plates they see, with location, date, and time, and that stored history can reveal sensitive trips. EFF says the vast majority of scans are not connected to a crime at the moment of capture. This is EFF’s claim about the device. It is not a Nevada contract and not a court holding.

Constitutional issues

Unresolved question

Fourth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, Nevada Constitution art. 1, § 18

Warrant practice not established for a Nevada agency

Hotlist integration, including NCIC and missing-child lists: A hotlist hit is not a confirmed crime, arrest, conviction, or successful investigation. No holding in this library says a hit is guilt. Carpenter does not decide the plate scan that produced the hit. A due-process question arises only if a person was stopped or accused from a hit, which is not documented here.

• United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983). Counterauthority. United States Supreme Court. Public-road beeper tracking did not violate the Fourth Amendment on the facts of Knotts. A beeper case is not a holding about a plate-reader camera.
• United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012). Analogical constitutional argument. United States Supreme Court. Jones held that attaching and using a GPS tracker was a search. Concurrences discuss long-term tracking. The mosaic theory is not a binding majority rule. Jones does not decide a plate reader.
• Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018). Does not decide this technology. United States Supreme Court. Carpenter addressed historical cell-site location information. It does not decide an ALPR scan.

Statutes attached to read, not findings.

• NRS Chapter 239. Nevada public-records law is the route to ask for contracts, policies, and logs. Citing it is not a finding that a surveillance practice is unlawful.
• Nevada Constitution art. 1, § 18. State search-and-seizure provision. This page does not quote the section. No section anchor was verified. It is listed only where a search question is actually implicated.
• 42 U.S.C. § 1983. A civil remedy for a deprivation of federal rights under color of state law. It is not a warrant statute, and it does not itself make a surveillance practice unlawful.

Nevada use

Not documented on this page. No Nevada agency’s hotlist configuration is in this build.

No Nevada hotlist configuration is in this build. NCMEC is named only as the kind of missing-child list, not as a contract.

See also: NCIC; Flock Safety ALPR

Next record

Hotlist integration, including NCIC and missing-child lists: Ask each named agency which lists it loads. Do not infer guilt from a hit, and do not infer an NCMEC contract.

All devices. A document workflow for this page is not built. The arrest correction form is not a surveillance-document inbox. Corrections and source documents for this page follow the corrections policy. Corrections policy.