The day the El Cajon Police Department turned on dozens of cameras that scan the license plates of passing vehicles, the new system started getting hits.
The issue exposes the ongoing challenge of bringing meaningful oversight to the technologies police say help them solve crimes. In May, civil rights organizations sent letters to more than 70 police departments, warning them that sharing the data with other states violates a 2015 state law.“El Cajon is using this system to combat vehicle related crime, and to keep our communities safer,” police Lt. Jeremiah Larson said. “We are sharing the information for those purposes as well.
“What we want California police to do is to be the data sanctuary that California law requires them to be.”License plate readers use cameras to scan the plates of passing vehicles, noting when and where they were seen, and then uses that data to create searchable databases. According to the department’s website, data collected is kept for 30 days before anything that’s not related to an active investigation is purged. Police officials must be trained to use the system before they access it for “official law enforcement business,” according to the department’s policy. Only investigators and supervisors can create their own watch lists.
“The El Cajon Police Department will continue to use every tool available to us to hold criminals accountable who victimize our community,” police Chief Mike Moulton stated in a Thursday release. “If you drive a stolen vehicle in the City of El Cajon we will locate you, arrest you, and put you in jail.”
“SB 34 places a number of limits on plate data, which California’s legislature can impose on California governments but cannot impose in the other 49 states,” said Schwartz, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “And, therefore, in order to make sure that this plate data stays subject to the privacy rules created by the California Legislature, they chose wisely to keep that data in California.”
“The Legislature would not authorize the release of such data to agencies that are out of reach of the state, its agencies and our laws and values,” Gatto said.In 2021, three Marin County residents, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, sued the Marin County Sheriff’s Department and others alleging, in part, that the department’s practice of sharing license plate reader data with other states violated SB 34.