# Class Action Takes On City’s 450+ License Plate Reading Cameras
# Steve Lehto — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwPqLWGmjpI

Welcome once again to Lato's Law. Here's
Steve Lato. I've talked about the
surveillance state that appears to be
coming to us. That is uh
cameras, license plate readers, all
kinds of stuff everywhere to where when
you leave your house, you might be being
observed and recorded uh the entire time
uh at least the way things are going.
And so interestingly, a lawsuit's been
filed, a federal class action lawsuit
about San Jose and their nearly 500
license plate reading cameras. Okay? So
the Institute for Justice sent this to
me because of course they're involved in
the lawsuit.
A group of three San Jose, California
residents teamed up with the Institute
for Justice to file a federal class
action lawsuit against the city of San
Jose
over its use of hundreds of automated
license plate reader cameras. Those are
ALPR cameras. I'm going to refer to them
as cameras or readers from this point
forward.
Uh the three of them and their IJ
attorneys argue the city's use of 474
readers violates the Fourth Amendment to
the United States Constitution. And of
course, the Fourth is the one that talks
about uh searches and seizures and so
on.
"San Jose's ALPR surveillance system is
one of the largest anywhere," says IJ
attorney Michael Soifer, one of the
leaders of IJ's national campaign
against ALPR abuse. "Not only does the
city have a staggering number of
cameras, it lets thousands of government
employees across California access all
of its data without a warrant.
Those government employees search San
Jose drivers' data thousands of times
every day with almost no oversight,
creating a situation that's ripe for
abuse."
ALPRs are cameras that photograph every
passing vehicle.
They use artificial intelligence to
convert the images into data
and upload the images and data to a
database. These cameras can identify the
make,
type, and color of a car, as well as
other distinctive features like bumper
stickers, roof racks, and tool boxes.
So, yes, if they wanted to, they could
say, "Hey,
show us every single car with a
particular bumper sticker on it today
that passed by one of our cameras."
And they can boom, pull it up.
So, you can imagine how that could be
misused. Police can search for a car by
entering a full or partial license plate
number, or filtering the cars with
similar features to the car they're
trying to find. They can even type in a
description of the car or upload an
image and have artificial intelligence
pull up pictures of cars that match the
description or image.
Most law enforcement agencies that
operate these networks pool data with
other jurisdictions. Some even opt into
nationwide databases. So, that means
that somebody somewhere theoretically
could say,
"I'd like a list of every single car out
there on the road that has this
particular bumper sticker on it." Again,
seems to me that that could be abused.
San Jose first entered the pilot program
with the ALPR provider Flock Safety in
2021. That involved placing four
cameras, four cameras at a single
intersection. So, I've mentioned before
that once they get their toe in the
door,
then they can expand it. So, they
started out with four. How how
how much abuse could there be with only
four cameras? Just just four cameras.
Well, now it's 400 and 74 cameras.
So, since that time,
the number of cameras has grown to 475.
San Jose initially held onto all of this
data for 365 days, but then it recently
reduced its retention period for 30
days. 30 days.
So, one of the people who filed the
lawsuit is a privacy engineer for a tech
company. Uh he spent time in China,
Japan, and Massachusetts before moving
to Silicon Valley. He is politically
active and concerned the cameras could
be used to monitor his First Amendment
protected activities, including
monitoring law enforcement around San
Jose.
His familiarity with China's
surveillance state made him especially
concerned about this system when he
began learning about it. So, this guy's
lived in a place that had a a a
surveillance state. As an engineer
specializing in privacy, I know how
important it is to protect people's
data. And now, even just a few points of
location history can reveal profound and
sensitive insights about a person's
life.
Having spent time in China, I know what
an authoritarian surveillance state
looks like, and I worry about the
proliferation
of similar mass surveillance
technologies across the US.
I want to ensure that police state
tactics do not become commonplace here.
Um
One of the other guys is a California
native who works for a company that
sells auto parts. His father was a
long-time sheriff's deputy in Riverside
County. While he certainly values law
enforcement, he finds the mass
surveillance of people's movements
across the San Jose overbearing and
creepy. Creepy.
[laughter]
Uh and then the third guy is a San Jose
native who drives past these cameras
daily on his commute, and much like the
other two, finds the mass surveillance
unnerving.
In recent months, several local
municipalities, including Santa Clara
County, Los Altos Hills, and Mountain
View, have canceled ALPR contracts over
concerns about abuse.
Officers have reportedly used the system
to run searches on behalf of federal
immigration agents, to surveil
protesters, and to even stalk their
ex-partners. And those are the kinds of
things I remember I saw that story. I
don't think I did a video on it. But
where a police officer is accused of
stalking his, I believe, ex-girlfriend
by using the plate readers to find out
where she was.
I I I wonder what she's doing tonight.
[laughter]
Great song.
Uh this case is the first to challenge
the federal constitutionality of San
Jose's ALPR system.
So, through its Plate privacy project,
which is an ongoing thing that the
Institute for Justice is working on,
they're fighting back against the
unfettered growth of police
surveillance.
In October of 2024, IJ filed a federal
lawsuit against the city of Norfolk,
Virginia over its use of more than 170
plate readers.
That lawsuit is the first civil lawsuit
challenging their use
to make it past the government's motion
to dismiss. IJ has also helped activists
across the country fighting against
warrantless ALPR use and has worked with
lawmakers on reforms. And so, I've
mentioned before,
I understand that these things can help
fight crime.
So, let's suppose there is a crime
that's committed and somebody gets a
great description of the car and a
partial plate,
the they can call that in and they can
run through the system and find out
where the car went. Yes, yes, that's
that's that's great, okay?
But, there is also something, I don't
know, mildly creepy. I like the use of
that word, about having these cameras
everywhere.
So, when you go out in public, your
vehicle's being tracked
everywhere
and not just, uh, you know,
a dumb camera sitting there, but also
using AI and really, really high-tech
photography to get the, uh, license
plate, make, model, all that stuff, uh,
the characteristics of the car, whether
it's got a roof rack, whether it's got
any dings or dents in the body, uh, if
it has any rust, if it's in Michigan,
and, uh, if it's got any any bumper
stickers. And you might say, "Steve, why
do you keep returning to bumper
stickers?" Bumper stickers here would be
the best example of how,
uh, your free speech could become a
problem with respect to these cameras.
So, let's suppose that there were put, I
don't know, let's suppose they made
political bumper stickers.
[laughter]
It Imagine a world
where people would actually put their
opinions
on a bumper sticker. I I understand it's
hard to imagine.
And so, somebody goes, "I feel strongly
about this."
And they get a bumper sticker that says,
"I feel strongly about this."
Somebody,
if they wanted to, could go, "I want to
see every single car that was on the
roads
in our jurisdiction that's got one of
those bumper stickers on it. Make me a
list, every single one."
There you go, there's a list.
Why am I on that list now?
Uh because you've got a bumper sticker
on your car. Somebody chose to search
for that bumper sticker. Now,
is that going to happen?
I don't know.
But, the whole point is that we don't
always have to wait for bad things to
happen to say, "Oh, maybe that wasn't a
good idea."
Maybe we should take a look at something
before we widely implement it,
especially using our tax dollars.
And and ask ourselves,
"Okay, I understand the positives of it,
the good side of it. What are the
negatives? What are the downsides? What
what could possibly go wrong?" And I'm
not saying you go and look for the
craziest examples out there. However,
the police officer tracking his
ex-girlfriend.
You might say, "Steve, would a cop ever
do that?" Oh,
funny you should ask. Um so, yes, you
have to ask yourself what could go
wrong.
Okay, that's a great example right
there.
So, the other question I've got for you
is 474
of these things.
Is there any place you can go in San
Jose publicly
where your car's not being just tracked,
but photographed and all that? Any
place?
And to me, that is, in fact,
creepy.
Creepy. So, federal class action has
been filed. This will be a great test
case to see what'll happen here. But, um
as of right now, there's a pending
lawsuit. The Institute for Justice is is
working on it with three San Jose
residents who don't like the idea of
these automated license plate readers
being
everywhere. It's not just a reader, it's
a camera. It's actually photographing
and storing the information. And they
say, "We only want to keep it for 30
days." But, it does go to a database.
Um does that database clear it every 30
days?
Or how's that work out? And I always
have to mention to you as well that the
Institute for Justice is a nonprofit
organization that exists solely off of
the generosity of its supporters.
Uh so, if you'd like to support them,
please do. And if you don't know if you
should or not, visit their website,
ij.org. I'll put a link to it in the
description below this video. Bookmark
it, just follow them, and watch the
great work they do because without them,
there'd be nobody who'd be willing to
fight these cases because 99 times out
of 100, you're going to get outspent by
the government. How do you take on the
government in a case like this? So, I
salute the IJ for doing the work, and I
thank Dan King for sending this.
Federal class action lawsuit challenges
San Jose's use of nearly 500 license
plate reader cameras. Questions, your
comments, put them below. I'll just talk
to you later. Bye-bye. Thank you for
watching Lato's Law.
Nobody can predict the future. The idea
is to have a firm grasp of the present.