License Plate Data Can Be Disclosed, Calif. Supreme Court Rules
The decision is a victory for civil liberties groups who say they are trying to expose the pervasiveness of automatic license plate readers as a surveillance tool.
August 31, 2017 at 03:04 PM
8 minute read
SAN FRANCISCO — Civil liberties advocates scored a win at the California Supreme Court on Thursday with a unanimous ruling that data gathered by police license plate readers are not generally exempt from public disclosure under state law.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and various news organizations have sought data collected by automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to raise awareness about how much data is collected by police on innocent civilians. ALPRs record the license plates of passing vehicles and check them against a criminal “hot list” for hits.
Some authorities have cooperated with such records requests. The Oakland Police Department, for example, in 2014 handed over data containing tens of thousands of license plates that had been snapped by its cameras—revealing disproportionate license-plate monitoring in Latino and African-American communities, according to an EFF report.
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