In a ruling that will harm the public's ability to engage in an informed debate over the use of automated license plate readers (ALPR) in California, a judge late last week rejected EFF and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California's argument that the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department should hand over a week's worth of license plate data.
But the ruling isn't what you might think-the court didn't decide that location information is too private and too sensitive to release to the public. Instead, the court held that the ALPR data qualifies as the kind of investigative record police can keep secret and that the harm to law enforcement investigations from disclosing data outweighs the value to the public of seeing what data police collect on them. If you think that sounds like a big, blank check to California police to build surveillance programs outside of public scrutiny, you're right.