Privacy rights groups on Monday filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County's two major police departments after the agencies refused to turn over information collected by electronic license plate scanners, the suit claimed.
The Los Angeles Police Department and county Sheriff's Department have made use of the plate-reading technology for several years. Typically mounted on patrol vehicles, the small cameras continuously scan license plates and check them against criminal databases in search of stolen cars and cars registered to known fugitives.
Police and sheriff's officials have lauded the technology, saying it snares far more stolen vehicles than officers can on their own. And because the cameras record the exact time and location of a scanned car, police also see the devices as a potentially powerful tool for detectives trying to retrace the whereabouts of someone suspected of a crime -- even if it is several months or years after the car was scanned.
In filing the suit, however, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation raised concerns that the license plate information collected and stored by two departments invades people's privacy.
Peter Bibring, an attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, said his group has no objection to police using the cameras to search for stolen vehicles, but wants the LAPD and Sheriff's Department to quickly erase any data on cars and drivers not connected to any crime.
“This technology has led to police maintaining data on every resident of Los Angeles that they manage to scan ... even law-abiding residents, and that's a real concern,” Bibring said in an interview with The Times.
Read Lawsuit here... https://www.eff.org/document/aclu-sd-and-eff-v-lapd-and-lasd
Read More... http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-license-plate-lawsuit-20130506,0,578427.story
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