California law already fortunately — in theory — limits the ability of police to share photo-captured vehicle license plate data with out-of-state public agencies.
Such as ICE.
But considering the several regulations already in place, this aspect of the ship of state is a very leaky boat indeed, as new investigations show that 11 California law enforcement agencies broke this law last month alone, with 10 of those agencies being from Southern California counties.
“The Los Angeles Police Department and sheriff’s departments in San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties searched license plate readings on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, according to a database of queries obtained by anti-surveillance group Oakland Privacy and provided to CalMatters,” the statewide nonprofit news site, as reported by Khari Johnson and Mohamed Al Elew.
The legislation prohibiting this, Senate Bill 34, is now a decade old. And the outrageous flouting of it by police agencies around the state is 10 years old as well. In 2023, fully 71 local agencies broke the law, civil liberties groups have proved. That huge number of violations led Attorney General Rob Banta to issue a special advisory because “the majority of California law enforcement agencies collect and use images captured by ALPR (automated license plate recognition) cameras, but few have appropriate usage and privacy policies in place.”
Bonta back then reminded the operators of license plate readers that they must state the purpose of their use every time they access the information.
That’s not being done.
Instead, law enforcement all too often illegally uses the vaguest of possible terms as their reason for sharing license plate data, an investigation by Oakland Privacy shows. Its executive director, Tracy Rosenburg, especially cites the many times police clouded the real reasons for their searches by using generic terms like “investigation” or “criminal justice.” By CalMatters’ count, this happened more than 64,000 times out of the 491,000 queries in the database of searches from April 28 to May 30.
Californians should be outraged at such fragrant violations of the law, and of Californians’ right to privacy, by police agencies.
“I’ve always been told all of this is carefully logged and tracked and they know why these logs are being accessed,” Rosenberg said. “But now that I’m in this log it’s obvious that they don’t, and the reasons are completely obscured.”
“This is a big deal, it’s part of the problem, and we need the attorney general’s office to start litigating,” says Brian Hofer, chair of the privacy commission for the city of Oakland.
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, at least, acknowledged there could be a problem, saying in a statement: “This matter requires further internal review. If any of our personnel are found in violation of our policies, we will take the appropriate action.”
Others in apparent violation decided to just clam up: “The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. The Los Angeles Police Department declined to respond to questions from CalMatters about the search records. Bonta’s office did not respond to a request for comment.”
Law enforcement agencies are themselves governed by laws. When they repeatedly break them, with impunity, our society teeters on the brink of authoritarianism.
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