CA lawmaker wants jail time for misusing license plate data

Our Take

Credit to Action News Now for flagging this: a California lawmaker wants real criminal consequences for cops or contractors who misuse license plate reader data. That's a welcome admission from inside the system that the current honor-code approach to ALPR access isn't working. Across the country, we've seen officers caught running plates for personal reasons, stalking exes, or selling access to data that was supposedly collected for "public safety." Jail time might actually make agencies think twice about who gets a login.

But let's be clear-eyed about what this bill does and doesn't fix. Criminal penalties punish misuse after the fact. They do nothing to stop the underlying problem: thousands of cameras quietly logging every car that passes, networked into a system that lets one agency peek into another state's data with a few clicks. Accountability for bad actors is necessary, but it's not the same as limiting the sheer size and reach of the surveillance net in the first place.

If you want to see how far that net already extends in your own neighborhood, check our camera map. And if you think Sacramento should be talking about scaling back ALPR deployment, not just punishing its worst abuses, head over to take action and tell your representatives.