# DPPA (Driver's Privacy Protection Act) The **Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994**, codified at **18 U.S.C. §§ 2721–2725** (Title 18, Part I, Chapter 123 — "Prohibition on Release and Use of Certain Personal Information from State Motor Vehicle Records"). The DPPA prohibits a State department of motor vehicles, and its officers, employees, and contractors, from knowingly disclosing personal information obtained from a motor-vehicle record, except for enumerated permissible uses (chiefly law-enforcement, court, and government-agency functions). It supplies a federal civil cause of action (§ 2724) and criminal penalties (§ 2723). Its constitutionality was upheld against a Tenth Amendment challenge in *Reno v. Condon*, 528 U.S. 141 (2000). The full chapter text is archived at (primary public record, [18 U.S.C. Chapter 123 — DPPA](../../web%20archive/2026-05-22/govinfo.gov/usc-18-chap123-dppa.md)). ## How it appears in the corpus The DPPA enters the corpus as a **withholding rationale**, not as a procurement or operational fact. In its `PD-2026-477` supplemental response, Conway PD's custodian invoked "the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2721 et seq." in support of withholding ALPR network-sharing, federal-search, hot-list, and audit-log records ([[Custodian Response Letter]]). The link runs through Arkansas's own ALPR statute: the [[Arkansas Automatic License Plate Reader System Act]] at § 12-12-1808 frames captured plate data against the federal motor-vehicle-record privacy regime, and Conway PD's custodian cited the DPPA alongside the Arkansas FOIA exemptions (§ 25-19-105(b)(6)/(11)/(13)) and the ALPR Act's own confidentiality sections (§§ 12-12-1802, 12-12-1808) as the composite basis for withholding-in-full. The DPPA's appearance is therefore part of the **disclosure-posture question**, not a claim about what Conway PD procured or how. Whether the DPPA actually reaches ALPR *captured plate data* — as distinct from the "personal information from State motor vehicle records" the statute names — is a contestable construction, because an ALPR read is a photograph of a plate in public view, not a disclosure pulled from a DMV database. That construction question is part of why the withholding is analytically live; see [[The Disclosure-Posture Reversal at Conway PD]], which examines the segregability mandate of Ark. Code § 25-19-105(f) against Conway PD's prior production of the same record types in `PD-2026-354`. ## Stakeholders - **State departments of motor vehicles** — the regulated disclosers under § 2721(a); in Arkansas, the Office of Motor Vehicle within the Department of Finance and Administration. - **Law-enforcement agencies** — beneficiaries of the § 2721(b) permissible-use carve-out for "use by any government agency … in carrying out its functions," and (in the corpus) invokers of the DPPA as a non-disclosure rationale. - **Vehicle owners / data subjects** — the protected class; holders of the § 2724 civil cause of action. - **U.S. Department of Justice** — federal enforcement authority for the DPPA's criminal provisions. ## Timeline - **1994** — DPPA enacted (Pub. L. 103-322, Title XXX). - **2000** — *Reno v. Condon*, 528 U.S. 141, unanimously upholds the DPPA against a Tenth Amendment / commandeering challenge. - **2024** — Chapter 123 as published in the United States Code, 2024 edition (the archived text). - **2026-05-22** — Cited by Conway PD's custodian in the `PD-2026-477` withholding response ([[Custodian Response Letter]]). ## Notes - **Tier-2 anchor.** Full statutory text: (primary public record, [18 U.S.C. Chapter 123 — DPPA](../../web%20archive/2026-05-22/govinfo.gov/usc-18-chap123-dppa.md)), the GPO-published United States Code, 2024 edition. - The DPPA is a *federal* statute; it contextualizes the Arkansas-agency withholding but does not itself establish what any Arkansas agency did. Per the source-tier hierarchy, the DPPA's role here is to explain a cited legal basis, not to supply a corpus fact. - The open construction question — whether an ALPR plate-read is "personal information from a State motor vehicle record" within § 2725(3)–(4) — is not resolved by the corpus and would turn on a court's or the Arkansas Attorney General's reading. The City of Conway's pending AG-opinion request (per the `PD-2026-477` appeal response) may reach it.