JOEL ANDERSON
SENATOR, THIRTY-EIGHTH DISTRICT
___________________________________________________________

SB 712: Vehicles: license plate covers.
[For information, contact Craig.Wilson@sen.ca.gov, or 916-651-4038]

SUMMARY
Current law allows automobile owners to cover their
parked vehicle to protect it from the weather and the
elements so long as peace officers or parking
enforcement officials are able to temporarily remove
so much of the cover as is necessary to inspect any
license plate, tab, or indicia of registration on that
vehicle. The bill would allow individuals to cover
their license plates on the same conditions: 1) only
when parked and 2) if an officer can easily reveal
the plate manually.
BACKGROUND
As the Atlantic wrote earlier this year, private
license plate reader firms present an “unprecedented
threat to privacy.” A number of private companies
are collecting billions of license plate scans through
a system of private contractors who drive through
neighborhoods with high-speed cameras.
For the most part, these cameras are mobile (i.e.
mounted to private vehicles) and therefore can
collect hundreds of license plates from parked cars
just by driving loops through a parking lot or around
a city block.
These immense datasets are then made available to a
variety of private actors, including financial lenders,
insurance companies, and debt collectors. There is
nothing precluding a company from making these
datasets publicly available or widely available for
purchase.
These dataset systems can invade personal privacy
by revealing your travel patterns, such as where
your children go to school, where you sleep at night,
what doctors you visit, and where you worship.
DRN even claims it can identify the people you
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associate with by matching cars often seen in similar
locations.
In addition, these systems are insecure. One of these
data collection companies, for example, recently
acknowledged in federal court that several
subcontractors had installed splitters on the cameras
systems, thereby siphoning off data for external
purposes.
Under California law, a driver is forbidden from
obscuring their license plates from ALPR capture—
with a few exceptions. A driver may employ “a
cover over a lawfully parked vehicle to protect it
from the weather and the elements,” provided a law
enforcement officer may easily lift the cover to see
the plate. A driver may also obscure the license plate
with a wheelchair mount.
THE PROBLEM
Private collection of license plate date through
ALPR poses a grave threat to privacy. Currently, the
only thing keeping this information from going
public is the companies themselves. Unlike law
enforcement ALPR, these companies maintain the
data indefinitely with no public accountability. In
the event a company decides to make this data
available to the general public, or a company suffers
a serious data breach, many people will be put at
risk. Among those most at risk are law enforcement
officers, their family, their sources, victims, and
witness, as well as judges and prosecutors. The
massive amount of ALPR data out there can
potentially reveal sensitive information, such as
where you live, your travel routine, where you
worship, where you go for medical treatment, where
you drop your kids off at school. The data can also
predict where you might on a certain day and

 JOEL ANDERSON
SENATOR, THIRTY-EIGHTH DISTRICT
___________________________________________________________

SB 712: Vehicles: license plate covers.
[For information, contact Craig.Wilson@sen.ca.gov, or 916-651-4038]

identify known associates (such as your family)
based on vehicles regularly in the same vicinity.
In addition, some companies running private ALPR
may be engaged in unfair debt collection and
insurance programs by making this available to the
financial and insurance companies.
THE SOLUTION
The current vehicle code prevents drivers from
doing anything to their plates to impede ALPR.
However, there is one big exception: individuals can
put on a full car cover to protect their vehicle from
the elements on two conditions: if the car is parked
and an officer can easily lift a flap to view the plate.
There are several benefits to this, especially for law
enforcement. Obviously, it would allow officers to
protect their families with these plates. But also this
proposal does not create any new burden for law
enforcement: no new paperwork, no new processes.
It would not impede law enforcement from using
ALPR as a tool for identifying moving vehicles.
There may be a question about whether this would
make it more difficult for law enforcement
investigations. However, criminals seeking to hide
their vehicles already have the ability to cover their
entire vehicles. Under this proposal, law
enforcement would still be able to see the color,
make, and model of a vehicle, as well as physically
inspect a suspect vehicle.

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