As Federal Court Rules ALPRs are Mass Surveillance, EFF Gets Disappointing Ruling

In a disappointing ruling, a California trial court dismissed SIREN v. San Jose, a case that challenged the city of San Jose's warrantless searches of its extensive Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) data. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU of Northern California are representing SIREN and CAIR California, two non-profits that serve San Jose residents.

The ruling disregards the significance of landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the invasiveness of aggregating collected data on an individual over time. Additionally, it downplays the harm caused by ALPRs, both in San Jose and across the nation. San Jose's ALPR surveillance system is pervasive, featuring nearly five hundred cameras that continuously photograph passing cars and retain the data for a month or longer.

In their briefs, EFF and the ACLU argued that law enforcement officers who warrantlessly search the resulting ALPR database are violating the California Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches and its guarantee of privacy. However, the court disagreed, stating that individuals do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy while driving on public roads based on a single California appeals court case involving individual streetlight cameras.

Despite this setback, there are indications that the tide is turning against ALPRs in the courts. A federal district court in Oklahoma, just a day before the ruling in the SIREN case, referred to ALPRs as "a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance" and ruled that a warrantless search of ALPR data by a law enforcement officer violated the Fourth Amendment.

The officer had observed a woman driving a car with California plates and followed her "for no apparent reason" other than her out-of-state plates. The court's decision highlights the stark contrast between societal expectations of privacy and the capabilities of ALPRs, which enable law enforcement to gather vast amounts of personal information about vehicles and their drivers with minimal effort.

The federal court's ruling sets a precedent that will likely pave the way for future challenges against ALPRs in the United States.