Los Angeles Police Department Claims EVERY License Plate Is Part Of An Investigation

from the the-words-'relevant'-and-'all'-are-apparently-synonymous dept

Mon, Mar 24th 2014 10:00am — Tim Cushing

The ongoing battle between the EFF and law enforcement agencies over the use, control and disposal of automatic license plate reader data has produced some seriously strange responses from law enforcement officials.

One person's request for anonymized data from the LAPD's database resulted in this bizarre response last year.

When one citizen requested anonymized ALPR data from the LA County Sheriff earlier this month via a public records request, his request was denied primarily on confidentiality grounds. Again, he wanted anonymous data, but was denied based on confidentiality.

So, even anonymized data is confidential. That in itself is a strange assertion (or would be, if obfuscation wasn't the normal state of affairs in citizen-law enforcement interactions). Supporters of ALPRs claim the data is not "personal," being that it only tracks a vehicle and not a person, but, somehow, it still can't be released without sacrificing "confidentiality."

The EFF (along with the ACLU) is attempting to pry some license plate data free from this same police department. The LAPD recently filed a brief stating its reasons for denying the group's FOIA request and made another surprising argument.

The agencies took a novel approach in the briefs they filed in EFF and the ACLU of Southern California’s California Public Records Act lawsuit seeking a week’s worth of Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) data. They have argued that “All [license plate] data is investigatory.” The fact that it may never be associated with a specific crime doesn’t matter.

The LAPD uses the "investigative records" exemption to justify withholding the data. Here's where it first explains its reasoning…

The ALPR data sought in this case- electronic records consisting of vehicles' license plates, and the date, time and location those license plates were captured by the Department's ALPR cameras constitute "records of. . .investigations conducted by ... any local police agency" which fall squarely under this statutory exemption.

And here's where it flat out tells the court that all license plate data is "under investigation."

Releasing the subject ALPR data held by the Department would likewise "expose to the public the very sensitive investigative stages of determining whether a crime has been committed." All ALPR data is investigatory - regardless of whether a license plate scan results in an immediate "hit" because, for instance, the vehicle may be stolen, the subject of an "Amber Alert," or operated by an individual with an outstanding arrest warrant... The very process of checking license plates against various law enforcement lists, whether done manually by the officer or automatically through ALPR technology, is intrinsically investigatory - to determine whether a crime may have been committed. The mere fact that ALPR data is routinely gathered and may not --initially or ever-- be associated with a specific crime is not determinative of its investigative nature.

There it is, Los Angeles drivers. Simply by driving, you are "under investigation." You may not even need to drive. You could never leave your house and still be "under investigation." As the EFF points out, this isn't how the law is supposed to work.

This argument is completely counter to our criminal justice system, in which we assume law enforcement will not conduct an investigation unless there are some indicia of criminal activity. In fact, the Fourth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution exactly to prevent law enforcement from conducting mass, suspicionless investigations under “general warrants” that targeted no specific person or place and never expired...

[A]s we argued in the Reply brief we filed in the case last Friday, the accumulation of information merely because it might be useful in some unspecified case in the future certainly is not an “investigation” within any reasonable meaning of the word.

This is the prevailing law enforcement mentality on display: take publicly available data (as they argue in favor of ALPRs, license plate/location data has no expectation of privacy), lock it up, hold onto it for as long as possible, and when the public wants a peek behind the curtain, claim doing so would compromise investigations and harm the public.

This argument gives us little hope that law enforcement agencies are going to be in any hurry to install tough data disposal guidelines. As far as both the LAPD and LA Sheriff's Department are concerned, this data has investigative uses that preclude timely disposal or, indeed, any disposal at all. If you start eliminating "non-hit" data, you might toss out some plates that might aid in some theoretical investigation in the future.

These assertions are made even as the agencies acknowledge the privacy implications of ALPRs.

In another interesting turn in the case, both agencies fully acknowledged the privacy issues implicated by the collection of license plate data.

LAPD stated in its brief:

[T]he privacy implications of disclosure [of license plate data] are substantial. Members of the public would be justifiably concerned about LAPD releasing information regarding the specific locations of their vehicles on specific dates and times. . . . LAPD is not only asserting vehicle owners’ privacy interests. It is recognizing that those interests are grounded in federal and state law, particularly the California Constitution. Maintaining the confidentiality of ALPR data is critical . . . in relation to protecting individual citizens’ privacy interests”

But when these agencies say "privacy," they're only using it as an angle to prevent the public from seeing the collected data. Confidentiality is again cited as a reason to keep the public from looking at ostensibly public records. They're not concerned with any drivers' privacy, only in keeping the wall propped up between the public and law enforcement.

The LASD even admits that other law enforcement tools can be used to connect "anonymous" license plates with people, and use the combined info to track people as they move around Los Angeles. But this bit of clarity isn't accompanied by any push for better privacy protections.

The agencies use the fact that ALPR data collection impacts privacy to argue that—although they should still be allowed to collect this information and store it for years—they should not have to disclose any of it to the public.

There's nothing in this for citizens. If license plate data has "no expectation of privacy," the police should have no problem with turning over anonymized data, much less records pertaining directly to the requester. But the law enforcement community continues to use a double-standard that allows it to circumvent the annoyance of limiting itself to pertinent data while maintaining a wall of opacity to further distance the public from all the data it's gathering on them.

20140224lapd P as in Opp to Petition (PDF)20140224lapd P as in Opp to Petition (Text)

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Filed Under: investigation, license plates, los angeles, privacy

20 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2014 @ 10:25am

This is just another of the bad side affects of the NSA being allowed to get away with their twisting of the law to claim that warrantless collection of untargeted data isn't a "search" until they look at it and therefore is legal. Other law enforcement agencies start believing that they can get away with using that excuse as well. We need a clear ruling from the courts telling them NO and people need to be held accountable for these sorts of things and we need that NOW.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2014 @ 10:30am

The Definition of a Police State
When every citizen is under suspicion by default and laws are written giving exemptions to law enforcement officials.
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Andrew Norton (profile), 24 Mar 2014 @ 10:39am

Er, you forgot the exemption

every license plate captured is part of an investigation unless it might implicate a Law Enforcement Officer, in which case it has already been deleted

Come on, we all know cops don't investigate cops, unless someone has run out of vacation time.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2014 @ 10:41am

Someone needs to turn the tables...
Someone needs to develop a system where by the location of police cars (not just generic reports of A police car but the identifying markings of each specific police car) are reported and updated with timestamps such that the public can find where any given police car is on the street at any given time then make that information publicly available and see how they like it.
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Oblate (profile), 24 Mar 2014 @ 11:04am

Metadata coming back to bite them?
At first I was surprised they didn't just release the list with the license plate data 'redacted', i.e. just a list of time and location data. Then I realized that it's probably the time and location data that they're trying to hide, not the license plate data. That info will tell where they have been driving the cars with the ALPRs installed. If they've been circling one neighborhood repeatedly, and/or completely ignoring other areas, that might raise questions they don't want to answer. Any misuse of the system would possibly be revealed. These excuses of 'confidentiality' and 'under investigation' are just typical CYA BS.
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ThatFatMan (profile), 24 Mar 2014 @ 11:08am

Find/Replace All
Is it just me, or if you took this article and did a quick Find/Replace all and replaced "LAPD" with "NSA", "Driver" with "Citizen" and "ALPR" with "Call Records" you'd have exactly the same story we've been seeing with regards to the Snowden leaks?

You have to admire how every level of government works together to feed us all the same line of non-sense. So I have to wonder how much the NSA has an interest in the LAPD winning in the courts on this. Even though this is a State issue and any ruling would likely be at that level, I have to imagine a win here would have the NSA a little concerned about a similar outcome in some of their pending litigation in the federal courts. Their argument is essentially the same, that they need all this data because it might be relevant someday, maybe. Oh, and we can't talk about it because privacy is important and stuff. And Terrorism.
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any moose cow word, 24 Mar 2014 @ 11:19am

People were warned that allowing such lax interpretations of the law for the sake of the "war on terror" was a slippery slope--that once governments get a taste of authoritarianism, they won't stop. Now that they've crafted a strategic system of loopholes, they're dropping the pretense that it had anything to do with fighting terrorism.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2014 @ 11:24am

If the data is private, then they are violating the Fourth Amendment by gathering it. If the data is not private, then they are violating FOIA laws by not releasing it.

You can make a coherent argument for either of those - but not both at the same time.
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Mike d, 24 Mar 2014 @ 11:37am

This sets a bad precedent. And it's an obvious abuse of power.

On an unrelated note, why do you hate law enforcement so much, Tim?
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That One Guy (profile), 24 Mar 2014 @ 12:55pm

Re: Someone needs to turn the tables...
We couldn't do that, that would violate their privacy! /s

Yeah, such a system would be great, turn that 'publicly available information' argument back around against them, and then watch 'em squirm, at least until they got a sufficiently corrupt judge to rule that when the police do it there's no problem, but it's illegal for the public to do the same.
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PRMan, 24 Mar 2014 @ 1:19pm

Re:
He doesn't. He hates bad cops. He was the one that highlighted the good cop in Canada.
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jimb (profile), 24 Mar 2014 @ 3:50pm

What we are seeing is the criminalization of existence, with innocence no longer presumed until proven otherwise... the opposite is the default for all police agencies, and governments at the city, county, state, and federal levels are all in on it. If you haven't yet been proven to have broken a law, some law, we will watch and record you so that when (not if, but when) you do we can go back and prove you were planning it all along. The small step from here to assigning guilt and then inventing the 'supporting evidence' is already being taken in the invented terrorist plots used to support and justify the budgets of 'terrorist fighting' agencies like the BATF, FBI, and NSA. We will slip gradually into an absolute police state while our smile-faced politicians promise they can make us safe if only we give up a little freedom for security.
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BeeAitch (profile), 24 Mar 2014 @ 5:49pm

Re:
This sets a bad precedent. And it's an obvious abuse of power.

On an unrelated note, why do you hate law enforcement so much,Tim?

Cognitive dissonance much?
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BeeAitch (profile), 24 Mar 2014 @ 5:53pm

We will slip gradually into an absolute police state while our smile-faced politicians promise they can make us safe if only we give up a little freedom for security.

My main problem is with "We will slip gradually into an absolute police state."

It may not be "absolute", but I believe we are already there.
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BeeAitch (profile), 24 Mar 2014 @ 5:54pm

Re:
This was supposed to be a reply to jimb @ 3:50pm.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2014 @ 6:05pm

Info Practices Act
From - visit california privacy - website:

Commission Privacy Policy
Pursuant to Government Code Section 11019.9, all departments and agencies of the State of California shall enact and maintain a permanent privacy policy, in adherence with the Information Practices Act of 1977 (Civil Code Section 1798 et seq.), that includes, but not necessarily limited to, the following principles:
(a) Personally identifiable information may only be obtained through lawful means.
(b) The purposes for which personally identifiable data are collected shall be specified at or prior to the time of collection, and any subsequent use of the data shall be limited to and consistent with the fulfillment of those purposes previously specified.
(c) Personal data may not be disclosed, made available, or otherwise used for a purpose other than those specified, except with the consent of the subject of the data, or as required by law or regulation.
(d) Personal data collected shall be relevant to the purpose for which it is needed.
(e) The general means by which personal data is protected against loss, unauthorized access, use, modification, or disclosure shall be posted, unless the disclosure of those general means would compromise legitimate agency objectives or law enforcement purposes.
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Tom Stone, 24 Mar 2014 @ 6:58pm

LAPD
I thought that Bulimics were the only exception to the rule that "You can't have your cake and eat it too".
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2014 @ 7:01pm

License plate owners, have no expectation of privacy, yet the thug department refuses to release one weeks worth of anonymized license plate data, citing privacy concerns.

This is the full blown logic of police state maximalists, who break the laws in our Constitution, on a daily basis.

Lawless thugs, that's all they are. I blame the judicial branch for letting them off their leash.
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DogBreath, 25 Mar 2014 @ 9:35am

Re:
Along with these folks:

Lawmakers Issued License Plates That Make Them 'Invisible' To Traffic Cams And Parking Tickets
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Car Plates
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