SAN FRANCISCO — Civil liberties advocates scored a win at the California Supreme Court on Thursday with a unanimous ruling that data gathered by police license plate readers are not generally exempt from public disclosure under state law.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and various news organizations have sought data collected by automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to raise awareness about how much data is collected by police on innocent civilians. ALPRs record the license plates of passing vehicles and check them against a criminal “hot list” for hits.
