Maui Council panel advances license plate reader bill, delays facial recognition technology measure

Maui County Council members voted 7-1 in committee Thursday to put safeguards on how local law enforcement uses automated license plate reader technology, but they deferred action on a second bill addressing facial recognition technology that is not yet deployed by the Maui Police Department.

The action by the Disaster Recovery, International Affairs and Planning Committee, chaired by Council Member Tamara Paltin, came a day after dozens of Maui residents urged council members to ban or sharply restrict police use of facial recognition and license plate reader technology, maintaining that two bills meant to regulate the tools don’t go far enough and that unregulated camera networks are already watching island residents.

The committee’s vote came with a single dissent from Council Member Gabe Johnson. Council Member Yuki Lei Sugimura was absent and excused.

On Wednesday, the committee spent two-and-a-half hours hearing public testimony on Bill 112 and Bill 113 before recessing without taking action. Of the dozen people who testified, nearly all opposed the bills as written, with several calling for the county to ban the technologies outright rather than regulate their use.

Council Member Keani Rawlins-Fernandez said she doesn’t support Bill 112, especially since facial recognition technology is not being used in Maui County. She said she would prefer a measure prohibiting Maui County’s use of that technology, “disallowing it just so it’s clear what our position is.”

She said that, with all the public concerns about the bill, it would be better to “super pump the brakes on it and just say ‘no.’ “

Bills’ intent

Bill 112 would require Maui County law enforcement officers to use facial recognition technology only in connection with a documented criminal investigation, with limited access to designated and trained personnel. The bill would mandate that any match the technology produces be treated only as an investigative lead rather than proof of identity. The bill would also bar use of the technology for immigration enforcement, civil traffic infractions or to monitor people regarding their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or those engaged in lawful protest, worship or other First Amendment-protected activity.

The bill allows facial recognition technology’s use without prior documentation in cases where there’s an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to a person. Afterward, required documentation needs to be completed within 24 hours of its use.

Bill 113 would prohibit the sale of automated license plate reader data and require that county contracts for the camera systems bar vendors from using the data for purposes outside the contract.

Paltin introduced both bills and told the committee she worked with the Maui Police Department to amend her original drafts. She said the measures were rushed onto the agenda ahead of the South Maui Community Plan discussion and that a third, related bill on data retention still needs work before it can be introduced.

Police: No facial recognition in use, no sale of data

Lt. Taylor Kamakawiwoʻole of the Maui Police Department told the committee the department does not currently use facial recognition technology.

Under Bill 112, he said, any future use would require a documented case number before a data search could run, and a match generated by the software could never by itself establish probable cause or serve as grounds for an arrest.

“A trained person has to confirm the identity, and an independent investigation has to corroborate before it means anything,” Kamakawiwoʻole said. “The national failure cases all came from investigations treating a lead as proof. That is what this bill prevents.”

On automated license plate readers, Kamakawiwoʻole said the cameras only capture plate characters, a vehicle image and the time and location—they do not identify drivers. Alerts are generated only when a plate matches a “hot list” of stolen vehicles or vehicles connected to Amber Alerts or custodial-interference cases, he said, and every query requires a case number and a written reason logged before the search.

“We do not sell any of the data, and we never will,” he said, noting Bill 113 would make that a flat prohibition with no business exception. 

Officer Aaron Mark added that the system’s optical character recognition can misread plates and that officers treat every alert as a lead requiring in-person verification, not an automatic stop.

Managing Director Josiah Nishita told the committee the county has no contracts with Flock Safety, the private camera vendor whose devices have drawn national scrutiny, though he said he could not rule out that the company operates under another name.

“To our knowledge and understanding, none of those camera systems or technology are being in use by any of the departments,” Nishita said.

On Thursday, Maui police reported no pending surveillance technology contracts. However, Lt. Christina Bonacorsi told council members the county already executed a contract with Motorola in 2025 for 400 radios for the command central aware program that came with 27 license plate reader cameras. Police said there are a few other cameras left over from a pilot program, bringing the total currently in use to 32.

A subscription licensing fee is about $150 to $200 per camera per year, she said. The county doesn’t and wouldn’t use Flock cameras because the system isn’t a secured government server, Bonacorsi said.

Kamakawiwoʻole said the license plate reader cameras are posted at major, highly traveled intersections and information is stored on SD cards. The technology is used for public safety, he said. Information gathered from the camera can tell officers where and when a possibly stolen vehicle was last seen and in what direction it was headed.

“The way we look at [automated license plate reader] cameras is, instead of posting officers on the corners of every street looking out for these vehicles that are traveling you know we have tools, another set of eyes and that will alleviate and save a lot of manpower,” he said, adding that it’s difficult to fill vacant positions in the department, which is an ongoing problem for “every police department, every sheriff’s department” nationally.

Recently, in Monroe County, Michigan, commissioners voted to end the county sheriff’s use of 40 Flock Safety license plate reading cameras, according to a story posted online by WXYZ TV, an ABC news affiliate. Residents had concerns over system accuracy and complained of “unconstitutional surveillance.”

Residents describe a bigger surveillance buildout

Much of the public testimony went beyond the two bills to describe what several testifiers called a broader, already-underway surveillance buildout on Maui that the county has not fully disclosed.

Sheila Walker of Maui Meadows told the committee she opposes installing surveillance cameras owned or operated by private companies. “There is a difference between investigating a crime and routinely tracking people who are simply living their lives,” she said.

Jake Carton, testifying on behalf of Maui Indivisible, argued the bills regulate only a fraction of a larger system.

“We can’t save the forest by talking about two trees,” he said. “We can’t fix a messed-up development by regulating two hammers,” he said, adding that the group has obtained records showing a nondisclosure agreement between the county and a Motorola subsidiary that installs camera equipment.

“These two bills are trying to do an impossible thing, make it look like we have protections against police and county spy abuse, but still not undermine the spy project that council funded,” Carton said.

Heather Hirchson expressed skepticism about the government’s ability to regulate surveillance of citizens.

“We know that regulating only two spy tools will not bring sanity or real guardrails to Maui County’s mass spy project,” she said. “That’s why scores of counties and cities and towns across the US have shut these projects down in the past year. They’re not just regulating a few tools; they’re abandoning and banning the tech. It’s also not just happening in liberal and progressive places. It’s happening in conservative, MAGA-heavy areas.”

Robert Bence said he’s opposed to both bills as written. He called for Bill 113 to be amended to prohibit the acquisition, operation and expansion of license plate reading systems by county agencies and to require the decommissioning of existing systems. He asked for a similar ban on facial recognition technology in Bill 112.

Bence said the committee was hearing from one side, law enforcement, which is making a case for use of the tools; and that the bills are framed as reining in facial recognition and license plate readers when, in fact, the legislation authorizes and legitimizes their use.

“It’s pretty much Orwellian, if anybody hasn’t read his book,” he said, referring to George Orwell’s 1949 novel “1984,” which depicts a totalitarian state led by an all-seeing “Big Brother.”

Stacey Alapai, testifying on both bills, said she supports the underlying intent but doesn’t support “escalating mass surveillance on our island or using surveillance tech for community policing.”

“My preference would be to stop funding these cameras and take them down,” she said.

Alapai also told the committee that a check of a public camera-mapping website turned up 37 cameras identified as Flock Safety or Motorola devices on Maui, mostly along state highways, and asked how the Police Department was receiving suspected stolen vehicle hot-list photos if the county has no vendor contract—a discrepancy the committee did not resolve Wednesday.

Martin Hamilton cited an American Civil Liberties Union study finding facial recognition error rates below 1% for white men but nearly 35% for women with darker skin, and asked the department to clarify how any future database would be built.

“How is the database being used?” he asked. “Like, how would it know what my face is? Is it pulled from another database? . . . How would you get data on people’s faces?”

Livit Callentine, a longtime Wailuku resident, connected the spending to Maui’s wildfire recovery and called expanding an “unvetted islandwide tracking grid without ironclad binding regulations a direct threat to the privacy and safety of our community.”

“As Maui navigates a painful, historic disaster recovery process, spending $1.7 million on an invasive mass surveillance network is a stark misallocation of resources,” she said, also citing a Washington Post investigation that found dozens of law enforcement officers nationally had misused license plate camera networks to track and stalk former partners. “These taxpayer dollars must be prioritized for urgent local infrastructure, emergency evacuation routes and housing, not for turning Maui County into a corporate monitored and surveillance state.”

Legal concerns and proposed fixes

Prosecuting Attorney Andrew Martin told the committee his office supports the bills’ intent but cautioned against language in Bill 112 that he said could improperly limit how courts interpret probable cause and reasonable suspicion—constitutional standards he said are for judicial, not legislative, determination.

Martin also recommended replacing a provision allowing delayed documentation during an “imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury” with the broader legal term “exigent circumstances,” a change that would apply to both bills.

“That’s a term that more broadly I think encompasses all possible circumstances and tracks what is widely used by the court as the term that defines that particular exception to the warrant requirement,” he said.

The committee later amended Bill 113 to include Martin’s suggested change.

“Exigent circumstances” is a legal term referring to situations urgent enough that law enforcement can act without first getting a warrant, because waiting to get one would create a real risk of harm to someone, destruction of evidence or a suspect escaping.

Is the squeeze worth the juice?

Johnson, who voted against the cameras bill, said he’d prefer an outright ban or moratorium on camera and artificial intelligence use in traffic enforcement or public spaces, telling the committee, “I don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze.”

Johnson credited Maui police with achieving a 14% reduction in crime and doing an “excellent job,” but he said “I live on Lānaʻi and I know a thing or two about heavy handed uses of power, and I’m a proponent of a light touch instead of a heavy hand.”

“I know the department can be capable of keeping people safe, as well as respecting privacy rights, and there is a balance that I would hope we all would achieve,” he said.

What’s next?

Bill 113 moves on to the full Council for first reading, while Bill 112 remains on hold indefinitely.

However, council members agreed that more information and public education is necessary.

“There are cameras everywhere, whether they belong to us or not; everybody has one in their back pocket,” Council Member Nohelani Uʻu-Hodgins said. “I have cameras in my house. You cannot come to my house without me knowing that you came to my house.”

She said she appreciates the willingness of the Maui Police Department to work with the Council on the issue.

“I would like a little bit more time to understand how this really applies to us all,” she said.

Council Chair Alice Lee said the Council has a busy schedule through the rest of this year, and she suggested taking up the facial recognition measure next year.

Paltin said she spoke to Maui Police Chief John Pelletier, who said he “doesn’t want people who aren’t police to overtake what the police capabilities are.”

“Time and education are worthwhile for not just us but the county as a whole, including our residents,” she said, adding that it’s necessary to strike a balance.

“We don’t want criminals to have access to more information than our police have access to, but we also want to make sure our police are held accountable,” Paltin said.