Los Angeles - Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Senior Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch will argue the public has a right to know how Los Angeles police are tracking their locations with automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) at a hearing before the California Court of Appeal in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Automatic license plate readers include cameras mounted on patrol cars and at fixed locations, such as street lights, that collect the license plate numbers of every car that comes into view, along with the time, date, and location of the plate scan. In the aggregate, these data points have the potential to reveal personal information about drivers, such as where they live, where they work, what doctors they visit, and where they worship.
Since May 2013, EFF and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California have been fighting in court to obtain one week's worth of raw data collected by ALPR systems operated by the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in an effort to shine light on this privacy-invasive technology. In October 2014, EFF appealed a lower court ruling that found the police agencies did not have to release the data under the California Public Records Act.
What: Oral Arguments in American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California et al .v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County
Who: Jennifer Lynch, EFF Senior Staff Attorney
Date: Wed., March 11, 2015 Time: 1:30 pm
Where: California 2nd District Court of Appeal, Division 3
Ronald Reagan State Building
300 S. Spring Street 2nd Floor, North Tower
Los Angeles, CA 90013
EFF and ACLU were supported by amicus briefs filed by media organizations and transparency groups, including the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Californians Aware, California Newspaper Publishers Association, Los Angeles Times, and the McClatchy Company.
For EFF's appeal: https://www.eff.org/document/alpr-records-appeal-eff-aclu-v-lapd-lasd
For more information: https://www.eff.org/foia/automated-license-plate-readers
Contacts:
Jennifer Lynch
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
jlynch@eff.org
