San Jose's 'warrantless' license plate queries land cops in court

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC) are suing the City of San Jose and its police department over alleged abuses of automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) technology. The lawsuit [PDF], brought on behalf of the Services, Immigrant Rights and Education …

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. It's about time governments were reigned in from spying on their own citizens.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr Mayor better wipe the access logs or he's going to find himself, and his city, in trouble once the discovery phase completes, unless they've already fired every employee who used the cameras without sufficient (to the court) justification.

[MachDiamond]

Well, duh

"This, the lawsuit alleges, can "provide an intimate window into a person's life" that reveals where they work, where their children attend school, their places of worship, when and where they attend medical appointments, and whether they attend protests."

It's also handy to find and track stolen cars, place a suspects car in the area where a crime took place, etc. There does need to be safeguards in place to prevent gratuitous snooping by officers. Some data can be covered under a need for a warrant, but just identifying that a given number plate (which should be fastened to the correct vehicle) is at a specified location at a stated time generally isn't. Being able to identify the make and model of a car and correlate that with the number plate will also turn up instances where plates have been swapped. That's often something a criminal will do to mask that the vehicle is stolen. It's very common in ram 'n grab burglaries.

ANPR's are a tool and can be a very useful one. If safeguards and policies are in place, it should not be anymore intrusive than an officer punching the number in his data terminal if there's something going on that seems a bit dodgy. It's often that copper's sense that leads to finding wanted people. During a traffic stop, if the police car is equipped, it speeds up the process and can get people on their way much more quickly with more accurate information on a citation or caution/warning. Nobody wants to have an officer's sloppy handwriting require them to visit the court to clear their good name.

[IGotOut]

Re: Well, duh

But the point is no safeguards are in place.

And who decides what the safe guards are? Those who benefit most from having as few as possible.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Well, duh

"And who decides what the safe guards are? "

The State legislature and internal ethics committees. Prosecutors aren't happy if the police hand them a suspect and a case with all sorts of abuses piled on. If it doesn't out and out nullify the charges, it will be hard to try in front of a jury. A stalking case stemming from unfettered access to sensitive information doesn't look good either and could make a government agency liable. Elected and appointed officials will be out on their arse for playing fast and loose with PII that people don't have a choice to not provide.

The same sort of thing happens in other places. My mom was trying to get me a date with Heather Locklear. Her sister was having a baby at the hospital where my mother worked (was a nurse at the delivery) and Heather was there supporting her sister and my mom thought she was really cute. She would have been going too far if she pulled up the sister's contact information and gave it to me to find out Heather's number so I could ask her out. When I showed my mother the sorts of persons Heather dates/marries, that quieted those aspirations. Well, at least it was an example of what my mother was looking for in a daughter-in-law, at least outwardly. Hospitals have a strict policy on dissemination of information. Police departements, tax authorities and financial institutions should all be much the same.

At least for me, there isn't a difficult time sorting out where the line should go. It's also not hard to have an official chain of approvals up to and including where a warrant would be required to access certain information. I believe it was the "nightstalker" serial murderer case where the killer, Richard Ramirez was found out through a car he had stolen. That and some very unique shoes. An ANPR continuously scanning would find stolen cars much more quickly since if one was parked legally somewhere, it might take some time before it was noticed to be abandoned.

[anothercynic]

Re: Well, duh

The operative part of your story is "should all be much the same". But they aren't. Healthcare institutions in the US are way way more careful about data disclosure than police departments are, and tax authorities and financial institutions are... well... similar in that tax authorities like sticking their noses in people's business and financial institutions are trying to keep the snoopers out.

But yeah, the police departments have a bad rep for a reason - Coppers think they are above the law because 'we *are* the law' (despite breaking laws nonetheless), whilst healthcare institutions are terrified by the mere thought of breaking healthcare laws/regs. If police departments didn't have qualified immunity and all that jazz and actually were held accountable for their actions (which they are widely not), they'd also be more careful about digging around in data they should have warrants for *first*.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: ANPR's are a tool and can be a very useful one.

The lawsuit isn't objecting to the tool itself. It's not complaining about valid uses of ALPR.

It is objecting to the more than 200,000 warrentless searches of the database behind that tool. Without access safegaurds, it's ripe for misuse and abuse like searches for personal reasons, stalking, political or racially biased fishing trips.

[MachDiamond]

Re: ANPR's are a tool and can be a very useful one.

"It is objecting to the more than 200,000 warrentless searches of the database behind that tool. Without access safegaurds, it's ripe for misuse and abuse like searches for personal reasons, stalking, political or racially biased fishing trips."

And all of that tells lawmakers exactly where to set boundaries and at what point there must be further approvals to retrieve the information. A clerk at a shop can't refund money or void a transaction over a certain amount without a manager using their key and inputting a code to allow it. Many companies that sell phone number information have a paywall that requires a payment to see more than the incorrect bit of teaser data they show. There's all sorts of a analogs to gatekeeping that police departments should be required to implement. Those gates are also used in all sorts of other places so cries of "impossible" are false. Qualified immunity only applies to those doing their jobs within the law. Plenty of officers do get put up on charges for things they've done that are clearly over the line.

[DS999]

I'll bet a lot of that

Is surveillance of ex girlfriends/wives and "prospects". If you don't have an outside agency (not "internal affairs" but some independent citizens commission) watching over cops, they inevitably turn their corruption up to 11. Not saying all cops are crooked, but the majority who aren't doing crooked things themselves look the other way and are just as responsible as those who do the dirty deeds.

[IGotOut]

Re: I'll bet a lot of that

These days, it's less girlfriends, more like those that look a little foreign or those that look a little bit effeminate or butch (which is odd given that the current US government wear more makeup that an assistant at a Boots cosmetics counter)

[Helcat]

Re: I'll bet a lot of that

Strangely, HMRC over this side of the pond had a problem when workers were discovered to be gossiping about the tax returns of politicians and celebrities.

It had become accepted practice amongst the workers: They thought it was just part of the job. Not so much when a large number of them were fired as a result, but it started with one, and from there it spread, so the sooner it's nipped in the bud, the better.

The argument of those looking the other way being just as responsible: Yes and no. If it's part of the training that this behaviour is wrong then yes, they become complicit. If it's not in the training, then why not? It should be. Else those doing it can come up with their own excuses as to why it's okay. And without policies backed by enforcement and training: Who's to argue?

[martinusher]

..and yet they all have cellphones

The Federal government uses cameras at border checkpoints that look inside the vehicle. These aren't exotic, typical red light camera can get a good picture of both a car and its driver, but it does illustrate just how behind the curve these people are. Then there's cellphones, those handy tracking tools that we all carry.

Its possible that they're confusing ANPR cameras with the boom mounted cameras that are now widely used instead of inductive loops to detect the presence of traffic at intersections. These cameras do have quite good resolution but are not good enough to reliably read license plates (we prefer the back plate because the front is often missing or illegible).

[Kevin Johnston]

The people have a choice

There has already been reaction against these cameras in a way which killed their use. One citizen in Washington requested footage for some of the cameras and it went to court as the people managing them tried to refuse citing privacy of the subjects. This went up to the courts who pointed out the hypocrisy in this argument and stated that the images were a public record and as such must be provided on request.

The cameras have now been switched off while the powers that be rethink their data/revenue gathering approach

Link to non-firewalled report on this here ---> https://www.geekwire.com/2025/washington-state-cities-turn-off-license-plate-reader-cameras-amid-ruling-on-data-access/

[MachDiamond]

Re: The people have a choice

"One citizen in Washington requested footage for some of the cameras and it went to court as the people managing them tried to refuse citing privacy of the subjects."

That speaks more about the for-profit industries that are springing up around the technology used for law enforcement. If ANPR's are an outsourced service, it might mean that a non-governmental company has to be given access to motor vehicle records so the system works. The requirements around all of that will be a right mess.

[Greg 38]

Hmm

I gotta admit I'm torn here. The EFF usually has well reasoned arguments and fights the battles worth fighting. On the other hand, the ACLU is a bunch of twits.

I don't even see how they have legal standing to bring the case in the first place. They don't have a victim nor can they demonstrate anyone that has been harmed by the law enforcement activities.

"The lawsuit [PDF], brought on behalf of the Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations – California (CAIR-CA)," plus a few mutterings about marginalized people. My eyes just rolled so hard that my head spun around.