Automated license plate readers have been a nightmare for privateness rights activists for over a decade, however final yr’s Supreme Court docket Dobbs resolution created an excellent darker imaginative and prescient: the potential of pro-choice states aiding anti-abortion states searching for to prosecute folks searching for medical care.
The Digital Frontier Basis launched a report that discovered 71 legislation enforcement businesses in 22 California counties shared ALPR knowledge with legislation enforcement in locations like Texas, Idaho, Oklahoma and different states the place not solely is abortion unlawful, however leaving the state to hunt abortion care generally is a crime. ALPRs can seize hundreds of license plates an hour monitoring in all places a driver goes. These cameras will even seize photographs of your automobile parked in non-public driveways. In case your automobile is seen to others, the cops can hint it.
Whereas police and the EFF each say they aren’t conscious of any case the place license plate knowledge from California was utilized in prosecution for anti-choice legislation violations, you in all probability shouldn’t wait for somebody’s rights to be violated when you possibly can act proper now. Certainly, the information sharing appears already to be in opposition to California’s personal legal guidelines defending privateness, based on the Sacramento Bee (by the use of Yahoo! Information). Police, together with the Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper, had a completely cheap response to the reporting: posting by means of it.
“Regulation enforcement businesses generally use data from License Plate Readers (LPRs) to research critical crimes, reminiscent of murder, youngster kidnappings, human trafficking, and drug trafficking throughout state borders,” the twitter account mentioned.
It’s unclear who despatched the tweets from the official account.
It went on to say that organizations like EFF “have lied that legislation enforcement sharing this data is an try and violate folks’s authorized rights. These false claims are intentional and a part of a broader agenda to advertise lawlessness and forestall criminals from being held accountable.”
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Workplace didn’t reply to The Bee’s request for remark by deadline. On Wednesday, after this story revealed, Cooper took to Twitter to accuse the EFF of “defending youngster molesters, fentanyl traffickers, rapists and murderers.”
Sharing ALRP knowledge throughout state strains is such an important instrument of legislation enforcement that lower than half of California’s 58 counties have interaction within the apply. One California legislation enforcement company even ended its sharing with businesses throughout state strains after it was named within the EFF report. And nobody is saying they need drug sellers and murders to run free, simply that the police of California comply with the eight-year-old legislation defending folks’s privateness.
There nonetheless aren’t strong protections round knowledge gathering and its use in many of the nation. California is forward of the sport, with a number of legal guidelines defending citizen’s rights, together with the 2019 California Shopper Privateness Act.
