In ACLU v. Superior Court (County of Los Angeles), published August 31, 2017, the California Supreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part an appellate court ruling that Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department automated license plate reader data are exempt from production under the California Public Record Act. The ALPR cameras are mounted on fixed locations or patrol cars, and automatically capture images of the license plates of each vehicle that passes. The APLR system checks each plate against a "hot list" of plates associated with crimes, warrants, or Amber Alerts. When a match occurs, a police unit is notified. Only a small fraction of plates captured match the hot list. Both agencies scan over a million plates a week. The databases are restricted to law enforcement. When new investigations arise, the agencies scan the database for license plate matches. The court of appeal ruled that APLR data were exempt from the CPRA under Government Code section 6254, subdivision (f), which exempts investigatory records and investigatory files. It did not address whether the data were exempt under section 6255, subdivision (a), the "catch-all" exemption.
The Supreme Court held that the investigative record/file exemption did not apply. The scans are not conducted as part of a targeted inquiry into any particular crime or crimes. Instead, they are conducted with the expectation that the vast majority of the plates will be irrelevant to law enforcement. The investigation exemption cannot be applied to such bulk collections of data. The catch-all exemption does apply to unaltered plate scans, however, because they threaten individuals' privacy concerning specific locations of vehicles on specific dates. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the lower courts to develop the factual record as to whether it is feasible for the agencies to redact or alter the data to address these concerns.
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