San Diego, SDPD sued over automated license plate readers
SAN DIEGO (CNS) - A lawsuit was filed this week against the city of San Diego and the San Diego Police Department that seeks to halt the city's use of automated license plate readers.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in San Diego Superior Court, alleges that through its network of at least 500 ALPR cameras across the city, San Diego is violating the California Constitution by infringing on citizens' privacy rights.
The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties on behalf of Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, a nonprofit that advocates for refugees. It seeks to have a court order the cessation of the city's use of ALPR technology, to uninstall all street-light cameras and associated hardware, and to delete all data collected by ALPRs and street-light cameras.
An SDPD spokesperson said the department could not comment on pending litigation. A request for comment from San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria's office was not immediately returned.
Along with privacy concerns from what the lawsuit describes as the fifth-densest network of ALPR cameras of any city in the nation, the lawsuit says police departments' access to such data is rife for abuse, citing recent allegations against police officers around the country who are accused of using
their departments' ALPR data to stalk current and former romantic partners, among other offenses.
The lawsuit also challenges the efficacy of the technology, which recently came under fire in San Diego after two men were wrongfully arrested based on an ALPR hit despite being five miles away from the scene of an alleged crime.
The city of San Diego and the San Diego Police Department's ALPR system is an invasive, around-the-clock mass surveillance technology that can reveal intimate details of a person's life,'' said Samantha Itazawa, advancing justice staff attorney at the ACLUF-SDIC.This information can demonstrate travel patterns of individuals as they go to work, drop their children off at school, or attend a house of worship, doctor's office or protest. This widespread collection of ALPR information poses serious threats to communities 'privacy and freedom of movement.''
Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans said immigrant communities are particularly vulnerable from misuse of the technology due to the increasing immigration enforcement crackdowns by federal law enforcement agencies.
As San Diego faces unprecedented kidnappings by ICE, and our ability to protest gets stifled day-by-day, we must recognize that flawed surveillance technologies like ALPRs put us all at risk,'' said Homayra Yusufi, senior policy strategist at PANA.The communities we serve at PANA know all too well that mass surveillance can be used against us and often unfairly targets us. When vulnerable communities are afraid to practice their religion, protest or move freely because their sensitive information is being recorded and shared, we have to question the constitutionality of such technologies.''
The San Diego City Council voted 5-3 in December to continue using ALPR technology.
Councilman Sean Elo-Rivera, who was among the council members who opposed using the technology, said in a statement, ``For years, San Diegans asked the city to invest in community instead of spending millions on creepy surveillance. The mayor and a majority of the council ignored us. Across the country and here at home, those concerns have been proven right -- improper data sharing, misuse of the technology, and false arrests.''
