The license plates on your car already pass through a blanket of automated license plate readers on CA roadways. For even more surveillance, new digital license plates becoming available from the CA DMV were planned to have embedded GPS tracking.…
Yet another city is contemplating a dive into mass surveillance via automated license plate readers. St. Helena, CA, mostly known for wineries and upscale restaurants, is considering adding the devices to the town’s streets. As usual, the item has been…
Update: AB 2192 was held in the Assembly Privacy committee and is dead. Oakland Privacy and the Electronic Frontier Foundation provided witness testimony on the bill in both the Assembly Transportation and Assembly Privacy committees. A bill proposed by Assembly…
There are 32 agencies that submit license plate reader data to the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC), the regional fusion center for Northern California. However, many more agencies are able to access that data once it has been sent…
BART has filed their annual surveillance report on the 7 surveillance technologies in use on the Bay Area Rapid Transit System.
San Ramon, a small city in Contra Costa County with a very low crime rate, approved spending more than $1.2 million to blanket the city in automated license plate readers (ALPRs) and surveillance cameras at its April 28, 2020, meeting.…
by Mike Katz-Lacabe According to a $60,000 grant the Novato Police Department recently received from the Bay Area Urban Areas Security Initiative, new automated license plate readers (ALPRs) will be installed on Highway 37 to track terrorists. However, no suspected…
by Mike Katz-Lacabe The Vallejo Police Department cited ferry terrorism as part of its $30,000 grant application for license plate readers, calling the ferry “a viable threat for a terrorist act.” According to the grant application, the “Grant Funds will…
A state audit of license plate reader use by CA law enforcement agencies requested by State Senator Scott Weiner concluded that existing policies were largely not compliant with existing state law and that laws needed to be strengthened. The CA…
Update: November 12th is the day Berkeley’s automated license plate reader policy hits the council. Berkeleyside: Berkeley Is Being Bamboozled Update: On September 4, 2019, Berkeley’s Police Review Commission, which is empowered by the surveillance ordinance to provide recommendations regarding…