Senate Bill 210 passed the California Senate Judiciary Committee on March 23 by a 9-1 vote.
A bill has been introduced in the CA State Legislature to refocus California’s ubiquitous automated license plate readers from tracking the movements of every driver in California in a mass surveillance exercise. The bill is sponsored by Media Alliance, Oakland Privacy and EFF.
Senate Bill 210 from Senator Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco) would require operators of license plate reader systems to quickly purge any scans that do not match hot lists of vehicles of interest.
This defines the program as one of finding the location of vehicles of interest, not surveilling every driver in the State. SB 210 also requires annual audits to ensure compliance.
Spurred by a 2019 California state audit which determined that license plate reader databases were poorly controlled and recent scandals that included accidental sharing of scans with ICE by two Southern California police departments and reports from MA that Pips/Neology readers misreported the date and time of scans after power interruptions, Senate Bill 210 is innovative legislation that rethinks a primary surveillance tool to eliminate documented inadequacies.
Press Release from the Office of State Senator Scott Weiner
Katz-Lacabe public records request from the City of Fremont Regarding Opposition to SB 210.