The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office is pushing to install roughly 50 automatic license plate readers in several unincorporated communities across the region, marking the first time the cameras would be put up in the backcountry. The plan calls for automatic license plate readers in Alpine, Borrego Springs, Campo, Fallbrook, Julian, Lakeside, Ramona, Spring Valley, 4S Ranch, and Valley Center. Some could be in place by the end of the year. The new cameras would continue a trend in the region, with several cities throughout the county opting to install fixed license plate readers, including San Diego, which is putting up about 500 across the city. Surveillance tools have been the subject of debate. Supporters of license plate readers hail their potential to help solve crimes, and law enforcement agencies using them are often quick to point to their successes, including the arrest of a suspect in a San Diego homicide in recent weeks. Opponents often cite concerns that surveillance tools invade privacy and have grappled with public officials over safeguards. In San Diego, pushback over a different tool — video cameras installed on streetlights — led the city to create an ordinance governing the use of all surveillance technology. The backcountry communities slated for the newest round of cameras are under the purview of the county Board of Supervisors, which is expected to take a look at the proposal later this month, sheriff’s Capt. Chris Lawrence said. The board has to review the proposal before it can move forward — state law requires a public hearing before automated license plate readers can be installed. Additionally, the sheriff’s office has held several meetings over the last few months to introduce the proposal in the affected communities. An exact list of locations for the cameras was not available. Lawrence called the mounted plate readers “a force multiplier,” a tool that “gives us the ability to provide precision law enforcement to the areas that we serve.” “We’re just able to find information and track down our suspects, missing persons, abducted children quicker with that information,” he said. The cameras will cover two lanes of traffic at a range of 65 feet, can catch images from cars traveling at up to 70 mph, and are solar-powered but operate in all weather conditions. The proposed readers will not be used to issue citations such as traffic or speeding tickets and do not record video. The data they collect — a still photo of the vehicle, direction of travel, date, time and location — is stored for 30 days, then disappears, unless it is downloaded to be used in a misdemeanor or felony criminal investigation. This is not the first foray by the sheriff’s office into using license plate readers. In 2010, the department put plate readers in patrol vehicles — as opposed to on fixed poles — but as the costs rose and equipment aged, many plate readers fell into disuse and were not replaced. Less than five remain. The sheriff’s office already uses fixed plate readers, but on a smaller scale. That’s because several cities in the region have a contract with the agency to provide law enforcement services, and at the suggestion of the sheriff’s office, a few of those cities — Del Mar, Encinitas, Poway and Solana Beach — have had plate readers recently installed. San Marcos is still getting the final few in place. When presenting the idea of installing the readers to the San Marcos City Council in May, Lawrence told officials that in the first six months after Encinitas installed seven plate readers, the number of cases sheriff’s detectives solved in the city rose by 5% — an increase Lawrence said was in direct correlation to using the plate readers. State law prevents the department from sharing the data with any federal agencies. The state does not expressly limit sharing with other California policing agencies, but Lawrence said Sheriff Kelly Martinez has decided as a matter of policy that the department will not share the information and instead will limit access to the data to internal department use.  Only staffers who have been specially trained are allowed to access the data, and only for official law enforcement purposes, Lawrence said. Lawrence said it will cost roughly $150,000 a year to operate the readers sheriff’s officials want to install. The money would come from the sheriff’s office technology fund. The sheriff’s office proposes contracting to use readers from Flock Safety, the vendor that  provides the readers in the city of San Diego and several other local cities, including those that contract with the sheriff’s office for policing services.