SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND HOUSING Senator Jim Beall, Chair 2017 - 2018 Regular Bill No: Author: Version: Urgency: Consultant: SB 712 Anderson 5/1/2017 No Mikel Shybut Hearing Date: 5/09/2017 Fiscal: No SUBJECT: Vehicles: license plate covers. DIGEST: This bill allows the use of license plate covers on lawfully parked vehicles. ANALYSIS: Existing law: 1) Requires license plates to be mounted such that they are clearly visible and legible, as specified. 2) Prohibits the use of license plate coverings except: a) Vehicle covers for use on a lawfully parked vehicle to protect it from weather and the elements b) Security license plate covers that do not obstruct recognition of the plate information, including, but not limited to, the issuing state, number, and registration tab 3) Prohibits the installation of a casing, shield, frame, border, product or other device that obstructs reading of the plate by law enforcement or an electronic device. 4) Prohibits the sale of a product meant to visually obscure the reading or recognition of a license plate with a fine of $250 per item sold. 5) Allows the California Highway Patrol (CHP) to retain data from license plate readers (LPRs) for no longer than 60 days, except as specified. 6) Requires that data collected through the use or operation of an automated license plate reader (ALPR) system must be treated as personal information for SB 712 (Anderson) Page 2 of 6 purposes of existing data breach notification laws. 7) Requires ALPR operators and end-users to maintain reasonable security procedures and practices and to implement a usage and privacy policy, which includes the purpose of, process for, and restrictions on selling or sharing the ALPR information. This bill allows the use of license plate covers on lawfully parked vehicles. COMMENTS: 1) Purpose. According to the author, private collection of license plate data through ALPRs 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 witnesses, 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 be on a certain day and 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. 2) Background. ALPR systems automatically scan any license plate within range. Some ALPR systems can scan over 1,000 plates in a minute. When used by law enforcement, each scanned license plate is checked against crime databases. If a “hit” occurs — for example, a stolen vehicle, AMBER alert, or an arrest warrant — the ALPR technology alerts the law enforcement officer. While some suggest this technology is useful for modern policing, others raise concerns over an invasion of peoples’ civil liberties. The ACLU reports a number of cities with hit rates of less than 1%, where the other 99% of data has no relation to criminal activity. In 2012, Washington, DC’s police department scanned over 204 million license plates with 22,655 resulting in hits – a hit rate of 0.01%. A six month pilot study in 2015-16 by the Bay Area Urban Areas Security Initiative in Larkspur, CA scanned nearly 4 million plates with 985 hits – a hit rate of just 0.02%. Some argue that this information has the potential to be involved in large-scale security breach issues. The use of ALPR technology SB 712 (Anderson) Page 3 of 6 is growing. According to a 2011 survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, 75% of law enforcement then used ALPRs with 85% planning to expand their use. The Police Forum estimated that within five years of the survey at least 25% of all police vehicles would be equipped with ALPR technology. 3) Privacy concerns. The collection of a license plate number, location, and time stamp over multiple time points can identify not only a person’s exact whereabouts but also their pattern of movement. This data can be collected not only by public entities but also by commercial, private companies that make their datasets available to law enforcement. One such company told The Atlantic it had over 4 billion scans as of April 2016, collecting over 120 million per month. Unlike other types of personal information that are covered by existing law, civilians are not always aware when their ALPR data is being collected. One does not even need to be driving to be subject to ALPR technology: a car parked on the side of the road can be scanned by an ALPR system. This bill allows the use of license plate covers on parked cars to prevent ALPR detection. 4) Weather or not. License plates, by law, must be clearly displayed and the use or sale of any product that would obscure a plate is illegal. Currently the only exemption that allows for a license plate to be covered is with the use of a complete car cover on a lawfully parked vehicle to protect it from weather and the elements. Given that vehicles can cost tens of thousands of dollars, a vehicle cover can be an important way for owners without a garage space to protect their investment. An officer is allowed to remove as much of the cover as necessary to inspect the license plate and registration of the vehicle. Some vehicle covers, though not required by law, contain license plate windows to allow both weather protection and easy identification of the vehicle by enforcement officers. This bill allows drivers to cover only their license plates while parked to prevent ALPR recognition of their plate. 5) ALPRs as an enforcement tool. ALPRs eliminate the need for officers to manually enter plate information, taking photographs of license plates and converting them to text. They can be found on patrol units, parking enforcement vehicles or street sweepers, fixed at common intersections or bridges, at airports, or in parking lots. They’re used to track stolen vehicles, find wanted suspects, and to enforce parking laws and toll roads. This bill only applies to parked vehicles, meaning it wouldn’t hamper efforts to track vehicles in motion: on the highway, crossing bridges or entering airports, or passing through ALPR intersections. However, it would likely make it more difficult for officers to scan plates in residential and business districts with high SB 712 (Anderson) Page 4 of 6 concentrations of parked cars. Therefore, it may have the greatest impact on parking enforcement officers, who would have to potentially exit their vehicle to reveal and scan a covered plate. It could also impede police officers who are searching for a car with stolen plates, where the make/model of the car is not known. 6) Regulating ALPRs. Prior legislation has addressed ALPRs by regulating use of the technology itself and putting restrictions on the length of time that captured data may be stored. AB 115 (Committee on Budget, Chapter 38 of 2011) set a 60 day time limit for CHP to store captured plate data, unless the plate was involved in an active investigation. Such time limits are meant to ensure that the upwards of 99% of data collected that is not connected with a crime or infraction is destroyed to prevent data leaks or privacy breaches. However, in California no such time limits are in place for private companies who collect ALPR data. SB 34 (Hill, Chapter 532 of 2015) established regulations on the privacy and usage of ALPR data and expanded the meaning of “personal information” to include information or data collected through the use or operation of an ALPR system. California is not alone in regulating ALPRs. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), at least 13 states have laws regulating the use or data retention of ALPRs. According to NCSL, Arkansas prohibits companies or individuals from using ALPRs, limiting use to law enforcement and parking enforcement and limits data storage to 150 days. Similarly, Maine limits ALPR use to public safety purposes and limits data storage to 21 days. The author may wish to consider whether regulating the ALPR technology is a more effective approach than regulating license plate visibility. 7) Are license plates personal? A 2016 Virginia court case concerning storage of ALPR data (Harrison Neal vs. Fairfax County Police Department, et al.) determined that a license plate number is not personal information. The case cites a number of supporting court cases as recent as 2007, including the U.S. v. Walraven decision (10th Circuit, 1989) where the judge determined that a license plate has no privacy interest because a license plate is in plain sight. In California, SB 34 (Hill, 2015) established that data collected through the use or operation of an ALPR system must be treated as personal information for purposes of existing data breach notification laws. These laws apply to agencies, persons, or businesses that conduct business in California and own or license computerized data including personal information. 8) Forgotten covers. This bill only allows license plates to be covered while parked. However, there would likely be a number of drivers who forget to remove the covers before driving the vehicle. In such a scenario, the driver SB 712 (Anderson) Page 5 of 6 would unintentionally be breaking the law. 9) Opposition. The California Police Chiefs Association expressed concerns regarding law enforcement evasion: “At a minimum, SB 712 would allow individuals with expired registration, stolen registration tabs, stolen license plates, or stolen vehicles to park in plainsight, undetected by law enforcement. License plate information of parked vehicles has been used to locate wanted persons, including suspected kidnappers and fugitives. SB 712 would hinder these law enforcement investigations and provide individuals avoiding detection with an additional tool to remain undetected by law enforcement authorities.” The California Public Parking Association expressed concerns about the effects on parking enforcement: “License Plate Recognition (LPR) is one of the most efficient and accurate ways to enforce parking today. LPR cameras capture plate characters with a time stamp and GPS coordinates. This not only increases enforcement accuracy, but also compliance amongst customers as well. Allowing for the legal concealing of a license plate will require a tailored--manual--approach to parking enforcement for a subset of vehicles that choose to cover the plate.” RELATED LEGISLATION: SB 34 (Hill, Chapter 532 of 2015) — established regulations on the privacy and usage of ALPR data and expanded the meaning of “personal information” to include information or data collected through the use or operation of an ALPR system AB 115 (Committee on Budget, Chapter 38 of 2011) — authorized CHP to retain data from LPR for no more than 60 days, except as specified FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: No Local: No POSITIONS: (Communicated to the committee before noon on Wednesday, May 3, 2017.) SB 712 (Anderson) Page 6 of 6 SUPPORT: Electronic Frontier Foundation (sponsor) OPPOSITION: California Police Chiefs Association California Public Parking Association League of California Cities Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs Los Angeles Police Protective League -- END --