The Bangor Daily News was the first to report this story. What you’re reading here would likely not be made public without the efforts of professional journalists asking questions, interviewing sources and obtaining documents.
A company that sells and operates automatic license plate reading cameras failed for more than a week to fix its technology used in Brewer that was violating Maine law, emails obtained by the Bangor Daily News reveal.
Leonardo said it tried to stop its cameras from storing Maine drivers’ license plate data beyond the 21 days allowed under state law after the Brewer Police Department reported the issue earlier this month.
But technicians’ repeated attempts to install software patches did not remove the data, Field Operations Manager Bart Blair said in a Sept. 8 email to Brewer Public Safety Director Chris Martin obtained by the BDN through a Freedom of Access Act request.
“These patches seem to be successful in what they were designed to do, but data retention is still not running to purge old data,” Blair said.
The company’s failure to bring its own technology into compliance, laid out in emails between Leonardo and Martin, raises new questions about how much oversight Maine police departments actually have over surveillance systems whose data is collected, stored and managed entirely by an outside vendor.
“When they set this up, they control the info and the software and the interface,” Martin told the BDN about the Leonardo system. “We don’t have a server that I can get into and erase things.”
Leonardo has always set data retention to 21 days for Maine police departments and it has “always worked correctly and as intended,” Blair wrote in an email to Martin. The retention problems started with a bug in the software that the company unsuccessfully tried to fix, he said.
Leonardo escalated the cameras’ retention of license plate data beyond 21 days “to the very top priority,” Blair added. He could not give Martin a date for when it would be fixed.
Leonardo did not respond to a request for comment. The company, headquartered in Italy, also makes helicopters and offers cybersecurity. It was one of 10 companies awarded part of a $25 billion contract with the Department of Defense this year to rapidly develop cutting edge technology, according to The Defense Post.
The issues with Leonardo’s cameras became public last week after Martin told the Brewer City Council that the department was dropping the company as a vendor. The BDN was the first to report on the cameras, which had operated on Route 1A just east of the I-395 interchange for seven years without complaint as part of a pilot program between the Brewer Police Department and Leonardo.
Brewer police, which started the pilot program in 2019, learned that data storage was not compliant with Maine law on Aug. 31 and suspended use of the cameras within a day.
Leonardo Project Manager Timothy Coffin provided Brewer police a screenshot of the camera system that showed the Plate Hunter cameras were not operating as of 11 a.m. on Sept. 1, instead displaying only a black screen, the emails show.
Brewer cut power to the cameras on Route 1A on Thursday, Martin told Leonardo.
Leonardo may have known as early as July that its cameras were storing Maine drivers’ license plate data beyond the 21 days allowed under state law.
The Veazie Police Department reported its discovery that cameras used in the town were illegally retaining license plate data to Leonardo on July 13, Chief Mark Leonard told the BDN. The department took its cameras offline the next day.
“I do not know why Leonardo did not notify the rest of us in Maine using your products, but the company should have,” Martin wrote to Blair on Sept. 3, referring to Veazie’s earlier report. “We would have immediately ceased all use until the system was in full compliance with state law. The lack of notification of such a significant issue is very troubling.”
After learning the Leonardo cameras were violating state law, Martin alerted the Washington County and Waldo County sheriff’s offices, as well as Penobscot Nation Police, which use the same cameras.
Waldo County had Leonardo disable its cameras the same day Martin called, Chief Deputy Matthew Curtis told the BDN. Washington County has also stopped using its Leonardo cameras, Sheriff Barry Curtis said, though he did not respond when asked when they were taken offline.
Penobscot Nation Public Safety did not respond to a request for comment. The Old Town Police Department, which helps patrol Indian Island, does not use the cameras, Chief David White said at a Sept. 8 City Council meeting.
There has to be trust between a vendor and the agency, Martin said. If Leonardo had told Brewer about the issue earlier, he would have temporarily turned the cameras off and then turned them back on after the problem was fixed, he said.
Former Brewer Public Safety Director Jason Moffitt signed the contract with Leonardo in 2019 for the fixed cameras, and got a Homeland Security grant for a mobile camera in 2020, according to additional documents obtained by the BDN through the FOAA request.
Violating the law is a Class E misdemeanor, though it’s unclear if anyone will be punished. Any case would be prosecuted by a district attorney, said Danna Hayes, spokesperson for the Office of the Maine Attorney General.
Penobscot County Deputy District Attorney Chelsea Lynds did not respond to a request for comment.
Martin said he doesn’t expect any legal repercussions for Leonardo.
“I think the most likely thing is they probably won’t be doing much business in the state of Maine,” he said.