As reported by Gizmodo: Do
you drive a car in the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area? According
to the L.A. Police Department and L.A. Sheriff's Department, your car
is part of a vast criminal investigation.
The agencies took a novel approach in the briefs they filed in EFF and the ACLU of Southern California's California Public Records Act lawsuit seeking a week's worth of Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) data. They have argued that "All [license plate] data is investigatory." The fact that it may never be associated with a specific crime doesn't matter.
This
argument is completely counter to our criminal justice system, in which
we assume law enforcement will not conduct an investigation unless there
are some indicia of criminal activity. In fact, the Fourth Amendment
was added to the U.S. Constitution exactly to prevent law enforcement
from conducting mass, suspicion-less investigations under "general
warrants" that targeted no specific person or place and never expired.
ALPR
systems operate in just this way. The cameras are not triggered by any
suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; instead, they automatically and
indiscriminately photograph all license plates (and cars) that come into
view. This happens without an officer targeting a specific vehicle and
without any level of criminal suspicion. The ALPR system immediately
extracts the key data from the image—the plate number and time, date and
location where it was captured—and runs that data against various
hotlists. At the instant the plate is photographed not even the computer
system itself—let alone the officer in the squad car—knows whether the
plate is linked to criminal activity.
Taken to an
extreme, the agencies' arguments would allow law enforcement to conduct
around-the-clock surveillance on every aspect of our lives and store
those records indefinitely on the off-chance they may aid in solving a
crime at some previously undetermined date in the future. If the court
accepts their arguments, the agencies would then be able to hide all
this data from the public.
However, as we argued in the Reply brief
we filed in the case last Friday, the accumulation of information
merely because it might be useful in some unspecified case in the future
certainly is not an "investigation" within any reasonable meaning of
the word.
LAPD and LASD Recognize Privacy Interest in License Plate Data
In another
interesting turn in the case, both agencies fully acknowledged the
privacy issues implicated by the collection of license plate data. LAPD stated in its brief:
"[T]he privacy implications of disclosure [of license plate data] are substantial. Members of the public would be justifiably concerned about LAPD releasing information regarding the specific locations of their vehicles on specific dates and times. . . . LAPD is not only asserting vehicle owners' privacy interests. It is recognizing that those interests are grounded in federal and state law, particularly the California Constitution. Maintaining the confidentiality of ALPR data is critical . . . in relation to protecting individual citizens' privacy interests"
The
sheriff's department recognized that ALPR data tracked "individuals'
movement over time" and that, with only a license plate number, someone
could learn "personal identifying information" about the vehicle owner
(such as the owner's home address) by looking up the license plate
number in a database with "reverse lookup capabilities such as
LexisNexis and Westlaw."
The
agencies use the fact that ALPR data collection impacts privacy to argue
that—although they should still be allowed to collect this information
and store it for years—they should not have to disclose any of it to the
public. However, the fact that the technology can be so privacy
invasive suggests that we need more information on where and how it is being collected, not less. This sales video from Vigilant Solutions
shows just how much the government can learn about where you've been
and how many times you've been there when Vigilant runs their analytics
tools on historical ALPR data. We can only understand how LA police are
really using their ALPR systems through access to the narrow slice of
the data we've requested in this case.
We will be arguing these points and others at the hearing on our petition for writ of mandate in Los Angeles Superior Court, Stanley Mosk Courthouse, this coming Friday at 9:30 AM.
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