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 Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU of Southern California’s (ACLU SoCal) 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, suspicionless 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.

UPDATE

This hearing has been postponed until April.
Briefs:
- ACLU SoCal & EFF Reply in Support of Petition for Writ of Mandate (ALPR Case)
- LAPD Opposition to Petition for Writ of Mandate (ALPR Case)
- LAPD Gaw Declaration (ALPR Case)
- LASD Opposition to Petition for Writ of Mandate (ALPR Case)
- ACLU SoCal & EFF — License Plate Readers - Opening Brief
- ACLU SoCal & EFF — License Plate Readers - Declaration
- Petition for Writ of Mandate - ACLU SoCal & EFF v. LAPD & LASD
Jennifer Lynch is senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Tonight at 7 p.m, the ACLU of Southern California will host its Women’s Rights Forum at the Hollywood United Methodist Church. The forum will feature a diverse panel of issue experts working to solve gender inequality. Speakers will include Patty Bellasalma, president of California NOW; Laphonza Butler, president of SEIU ULTCW; and Sandra Fluke, attorney and advocate. 
Below is "Not only women: Part 3 of the State of Women's Rights" with Sandra Fluke, attorney and social justice advocate, interviewed by Cathren Cohen, media relations intern at ACLU SoCal. 
ACLU of Southern California: Most people don’t know that you have a professional background in advocating for the rights of those who have experienced domestic violence and human trafficking. How are women in the United States affected by both today?
Sandra Fluke: There are a lot of women who are impacted by domestic violence in the U.S., but it's not only women. We know that men underreport the violence they experience, and we see domestic violence in LGBTQ communities as well as in heterosexual couples. We see domestic violence that’s far too high. I think a lot of folks see this as an issue that we’ve already solved and that all of the laws are already in place. That’s just not the case.
In terms of human trafficking, this is actually an important issue for Los Angeles specifically, we’re one of the top five cities [in the world] in terms of entry of human trafficking—one of the top five destination cities—and that's because of a couple of different things: We are, clearly, an entertainment capital and there are a lot of vulnerable folks who are told that they can be brought to Hollywood, made a star, become a model, become an actress or have a career as a singer or musician and ultimately, end up being trafficked and exploited in terms of either sex trafficking or labor trafficking. We have, unfortunately, a thriving pornography industry, that some folks end up in. We are also surrounded by a fabulous agriculture industry, and that means we see labor trafficking in the area.
We are also a gateway to Asia and in close proximity to Mexico. So those are a few reasons that Los Angeles in particular has a significant human trafficking problem. There’s also, among gangs in Los Angeles, this discovery that you can sell drugs only once, but you can sell young girls over and over again. We have a very serious concern, and a lot of us are working hard to change our laws and change our enforcement, too.
ACLU SoCal: Are there any figures on how many people are trafficked in LA in a year?
SF: It’s very hard to know. We don’t have very good estimates because it’s such a hidden phenomena; it’s so hard to find victims as there are so many still enslaved. There are some estimates for the country as a whole and the world, but even those are sort of hard to rely on. But for some place as specific as Los Angeles, it’s difficult to get that level of detail. We do know that California has, I believe, the highest number of calls to the national human trafficking hotline, and we know that of the identified cases in California, about 45 percent come from Los Angeles. That’s as of a couple of years ago. I would have to look at the most current stats, but it gives you a sense of things.
ACLU SoCal: After you had been working for Sanctuary for Families in New York City, what prompted you to decide to go to law school and change your career path?
SF: Well, I think I wasn’t really on a different career path. I just felt that it was very important prior to doing legislative or policy work to have some work that was close to the folks I was serving and really getting to know survivors of violence and those facing those challenges personally—getting to hear from them directly.
ACLU SoCal: You have been a vocal proponent of having women in government. What do you think are the biggest obstacles preventing women from obtaining public office or entering the career of law in general?
SF: I think the legal field is different than elected office. In terms of going to law school, women are going to law school. But we don’t have policies in our largest firms and private firms that have the kind of workplace family flexibility that a lot of women require. And that’s not a concern that’s unique to women, it’s just that now women are still doing the majority of caretaking in most families, so they tend to be the ones who end up on the "mommy track" and don’t necessarily end up as partners. That’s a problem in the legal world.
In terms of elected office, I think we need to grapple with who we imagine leaders being, what a leader looks like. We have to start getting young girls to imagine themselves in those positions; really trying to work not only with young women but also with folks of color, LGBT folks, immigrant families; make sure that everyone can see themselves being an elected official in our democracy because that is what our government is supposed to look like. It’s supposed to look like our community, and right now it doesn't.
ACLU SoCal: You have recently supported the raising of the Federal minimum wage. Have you ever worked a minimum wage job, and why do you think that it is important?
SF: You know, I don’t think I did work a minimum wage job. I had summer jobs and things like that but I’m not sure, I might have been minimum wage, it was a while ago. What I know for sure is that I was never trying to support a family on it. That’s a really different situation.
I think the minimum wage needs to be higher just from the fact that it hasn’t been raised in a while and inflation has increased, so it’s out of date. I think it's good economic policy to put money in the pockets of folks who will spend it in our communities and our businesses and help recharge and reenergize our local economy. And I believe that it is patently wrong that we have huge employers like fast food chains and Walmart and places like that, paying their employees so little that they are forced to rely on public assistance programs for health insurance and for being able to actually take care of their families. That is essentially taxpayers subsidizing corporate profit, when those corporations have enormous profits but are still paying their workers that little.
The minimum wage question is very much a women’s issue because the majority of minimum wage workers are women. I also think we have to think about our educational system and whether or not we are encouraging enough women and girls to go into science-related industries and technology fields because that’s where the really good jobs are. And that puts them at a disadvantage if we’re not preparing them for those kinds of jobs.
ACLU SoCal: What inspires you to do the work you do?
SF: I am really inspired by the folks I’ve represented, by the survivors of violence who have kept going when their personal life was so arduous or when there was no safe place, when going home wasn’t the way you took a break but a way you faced attack. And they keep going in order to keep their kids safe and fight to keep themselves safe. They are incredibly strong people.
Follow Sandra Fluke on Twitter, and meet her and other women advocates tonight at the ACLU SoCal Women's Rights Forum at the Hollywood United Methodist Church. RSVP for free tickets.