Two California nonprofits are appealing a court decision allowing two law enforcement agencies to withhold data from license plate readers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California have sued the Los Angeles police and sheriff’s department for the data to find out more about how law enforcement agencies are using surveillance technology. The departments claim the records are part of investigations and exempt under the California Public Records Act. (Ars Technica, June 16, 2015, by Cyrus Farivar)
EFF and the ACLU objected to the ruling in May by the California Second District Court of Appeal that held that the records were part of official investigations. The nonprofits hold that the data is gathered randomly and are not part of specific investigations. The Court reasoned that the data quest grew from specific “hot lists” of license plate numbers that were then matched to plates gathered through license late scans. (AllGov, May 8, 2015, by Ken Broder)