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.
It would be nearly impossible to prosecute an out-of-state license plate reader company that likely violated Maine law, a district attorney said.
Leonardo, an international company valued at $40 billion, likely violated state law by storing license plate reads for more than the 21 days allowed, Brewer Public Safety Director Chris Martin said earlier this month.
It’s unlikely that there will be any legal ramifications for Leonardo, in large part because the alleged crime is a misdemeanor. Under Maine law, a Class E misdemeanor carries a maximum fine of $1,000. A person cannot be extradited to Maine for a misdemeanor.
“It’s really just not feasible because I don’t even know who you would charge,” Penobscot County District Attorney R. Christopher Almy told the Bangor Daily News. “I guess someone at the company, but we wouldn’t be able really to do that because they’re out of state.”
Leonardo did not respond to a request for comment.
While Maine has a law that regulates how license plate data is stored, this new insight from a Maine district attorney reveals that there is seemingly no way for it to be enforced against an out-of-state company.
Brewer stopped using the controversial cameras on Route 1A earlier this month after it learned about the storage issue. Leonardo said in emails to Brewer police that it had tried and failed to fix the software bug that started the retention issues, the BDN reported Friday.
Martin told the BDN he had no expectations of legal repercussions for Leonardo, which has 8,000 employees in the United States, according to its website. Leonardo made about $1 billion in sales in 2024.
Leonardo is based in North Carolina and the servers are stored outside of Maine. Brewer police never had access to the servers, Martin said.
Unless the state where the servers are also has a law about data retention, there really isn’t a way to enforce Maine’s law, Almy said.
“I don’t see how we could possibly prosecute a company based in North Carolina that was keeping the records in [another state],” Almy said. “For us to do anything would be near impossible.”
Maine’s law was passed in 2009 and the 21-day data retention requirement was added in 2013.
When asked if the law was created in a way that would allow feasible prosecution, Deputy District Attorney Chelsea Lynds said, “Why does the Legislature do a lot of things they do? I do not know, I wish I knew.”
There are bipartisan statewide efforts to ban such cameras. Reps. Laurel Libby and Quentin Chapman, both R-Auburn, spearheaded a petition this summer in their hometown to ban automatic license plate readers. South Portland installed Flock cameras but removed them in June after public backlash.
A Maine lawmaker introduced a bill to ban the cameras this spring, but it will not be taken up until the next legislative session in January.