By Crescenzo Vellucci
Vanguard Sacramento Bureau Chief
SACRAMENTO, CA – The City of Sacramento Police Dept. and Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office (SSO) are both breaking state law, and violating the privacy of Sacramento County motorists, charged the Sacramento County Grand Jury last week in a report entitled, “Warning: Keep Your Eyes Off My Privacy.”
Those seeking an abortion in California from anti-abortion states are particularly vulnerable, the report said.
“Sacramento County drivers are likely unaware that, as they travel on county streets and highways, their vehicles are being tracked by an intricate network of stationary and mobile cameras,” the grand jury said in its summary.
The GJ noted, “Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)” are operated by the ”Sacramento Sheriff’s Office and the city police departments within the county,” scanning “license plates and can capture a digital file of each vehicle’s image with the location, date, and time.”
However, the law enforcement agencies use of the network of cameras is breaking the law, the grand jury maintains, finding the system is out of control, and the privacy of the average citizen—not breaking laws—is at risk.
The investigation found some mobile ALPR cameras can “capture up to 1,800 plates per minute. The SSO reportedly scanned 1.7 million plates in one week. These images are stored in either an LEA’s [Law Enforcement Agency’s] database or an ALPR vendor’s cloud for a specific period. The SSO, for instance, retains images for two years from the date of capture,” explained the GJ.
The “extensive network of cameras can pinpoint a person’s exact whereabouts and track their movement patterns…not only captur(ing) moving vehicles, but parked cars…Over time, LEAs can piece together details about where individuals live, work, worship, shop, and participate in other daily activities,” warned the grand jury in its report.
“We found the ALPR system couldn’t distinguish between cars used in criminal activities and those operated legally,” said Steve Caruso, foreperson of the 2023-24 Grand Jury, citing a seven-month GJ investigation.
“And we subsequently learned that both the Sheriff’s Office and Sacramento Police Department have been lax in following state law regarding how ALPR data is shared with other law enforcement entities,” Caruso added.
The grand jury said it was “concerned the stored data could be used to track individuals based on immigration status, place of worship, employment locations, or visits to places such as gun stores or hospitals. Particularly troubling was the potential sharing of ALPR data with other states whose citizens travel to California to seek an abortion, which has been banned or severely restricted in their home states.”
The GJ noted, “California Legislature approved in 2015 a measure – Senate Bill 34 (SB 34) – that set “stringent requirements for California law enforcement agencies (LEAs) who utilize the ALPR system.
“SB 34 mandated detailed usage and privacy policies to describe the system’s purpose, who may use it, how the agency will share, store, and protect the data, and how the system will be monitored,” explained the grand jury.
Caruso noted the law “strictly prohibited sharing data with any out-of-state LEA, as well as any federal law enforcement agencies.”
But that prohibition has been ignored by years by Sacramento County law enforcement agencies, the grand jury said.
“The Grand Jury was surprised to learn that both the Sheriff’s Office and Sacramento Police Department were violating SB 34,” Caruso said.
Caruso said after meeting with the SSO, the agency claims it will stop sharing data with out-of-state LEAs, but Sacramento city police refuse to follow the law, and “continues to share ALPR data with Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona LEAs.”
But the GJ said its probe found SSO has other problems—and an “internal audit revealed a major flaw in its ALPR procedures. Users of the system at the Sheriff’s Office are able to extract data from ALPR by entering random characters that are not related to a specific case number.”
“The Grand Jury believes that the residents of Sacramento County have a right to understand who is collecting the data; how it is shared and stored, and whether local LEAs are following state privacy laws,” Caruso said.
As a result, the grand jury report said the SSO is “noncompliant” with state law and its sharing ALPR information with out-of-state entities “unreasonably risked the aiding of potential prosecution by the home-state of women who traveled to California to seek or receive healthcare services (and) puts ALPR information at risk for unauthorized access, (risks) misuse and abuse of the data.”
“The increased use of ALPR surveillance has raised civil liberties and privacy concerns,” the GJ report stated, citing investigation that revealed “the SSO and the Sacramento Police Department (SPD) were sharing ALPR data with anti-abortion states and unauthorized entities.
“Organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California and ACLU of Northern California were among the first to voice privacy concerns,” that led to a state audit in 2020 that “raised serious concerns about protecting individual privacy, and recommended these agencies immediately safeguard individuals’ privacy by ensuring their policies align with state law.”
Law enforcement agencies, noted the GJ in its report, were “directed to take necessary steps to ensure their use of ALPR systems did not infringe on individual privacy rights did not always follow practices which would protect the individual’s privacy in their handling of the ALPR data.”
But the Sacramento County Grand Jury said it discovered the SSO shared its ALPR images with more than “1,000 entities within California and across the United States. The audit revealed no evidence that the SSO consistently determined whether these entities had a right and need to access the images or if they were public agencies.”
The grand jury made a series of recommendations on how the Sacramento County and city law enforcement could “better ensure the public’s privacy while using this valuable investigative tool,” including making their policies more public and posted “conspicuously on the agencies’ websites no later than January 1, 2025.”
“Maintaining the effective use of technology while ensuring public safety and statutory compliance is increasingly complex,” Caruso said. “Law enforcement agencies must take this responsibility seriously. And the public must be equally vigilant in our oversight of these agencies to ensure our rights are not eroded.”
