Victory! Grand Jury Finds Sacramento Cops Illegally Shared Driver Data:
For the past year, EFF has been sounding the alarm about police in California illegally sharing drivers' location data with anti-abortion states, putting abortion seekers and providers at risk of prosecution. We thus applaud the Sacramento County Grand Jury for hearing this call and investigating two police agencies that had been unlawfully sharing this data out-of-state.
The grand jury, a body of 19 residents charged with overseeing local government including law enforcement, released their investigative report on Wednesday. In it, they affirmed that the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office and Sacramento Police Department violated state law and "unreasonably risked" aiding the potential prosecution of "women who traveled to California to seek or receive healthcare services."
[...] Since 2016, California law has prohibited sharing ALPR data with out-of-state or federal law enforcement agencies. Despite this, dozens of rogue California police agencies continued sharing this information with other states, even after the state's attorney general issued legal guidance in October "reminding" them to stop.
In Sacramento County, both the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office and the Sacramento Police Department have dismissed calls for them to start obeying the law. Last year, the Sheriff's Office even claimed on Twitter that EFF's concerns were part "a broader agenda to promote lawlessness and prevent criminals from being held accountable." That agency, at least, seems to have had a change of heart: The Sacramento County Grand Jury reports that, after they began investigating police practices, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office agreed to stop sharing ALPR data with out-of-state law enforcement agencies.
The Sacramento Police Department, however, has continued to share ALPR data with out-of-state agencies. In their report, the grand jury calls for the department to comply with the California Attorney General's legal guidance. The grand jury also recommends that all Sacramento law enforcement agencies make their ALPR policies available to the public in compliance with the law.
[...] For nearly a decade, EFF has been investigating and raising the alarm about the illegal mass-sharing of ALPR data by California law enforcement agencies. The grand jury's report details what is just the latest in a series of episodes in which Sacramento agencies violated the law with ALPR. In December 2018, the Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance terminated its program after public pressure resulting from EFF's revelation that the agency was accessing ALPR data in violation of the law. The next year, EFF successfully lobbied the state legislature to order an audit of four agencies, including the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, and how they use ALPR. The result was a damning report that the sheriff had fallen short of many of the basic requirements under state law.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DrkShadow on Sunday August 25 2024, @12:43PM
It would be appropriate to call this an unreasonable search. Just like geofenced warrants, that a district court recently threw out, except even more broad.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by stratified cake on Sunday August 25 2024, @02:21PM (1 child)
Some people's job is to enforce the law, others' to abide by it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DrkShadow on Sunday August 25 2024, @06:48PM
And it is the job of twelve separate people, each time, to recognize that the person before them is not a criminal despite having broken the law, because the law, in our society, was created by self-interested people and doesn't reflect the will of the people -- and is thus invalid.
Such the decision of those people is regarded as absolute, and cannot be overturned. Those people are important... please don't thrust the role solely onto your grandparents.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Sunday August 25 2024, @02:28PM (1 child)
is that crickets I hear? One solution is to sue the assholes breaking the law, these bureaucrats are pretty protective of their little piles of cash. A better solution is to fire those same bureaucrats for knowingly breaking the law. Until the penalty is more than an off the record admonishment at a cocktail party then nothing will change.
Yep, I'm still hearing crickets.
Old and busted: erectile dysfuntion. New hotness: Ballzheimers
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday August 25 2024, @04:40PM
Until there are criminal penalties for willfully defying the law, this type of practice will continue.
Any judgement obtained by suing the agencies will just be paid by taxpayers. The police chief won't suffer for this.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday August 25 2024, @05:17PM
And knowledge is power. Another thing law enforcers have been wanting for decades is facial recognition. So far, technological limitations and the sheer scale of what they want have denied them. Facial recognition can be done with small groups. But law enforcement wants the ability to scan for matches on databases of millions of photos. Gives a lot of false positives.
Police have shown they have to be kept on short leashes. When they slip the cable, often they perpetrate injustices. What do they do with a system that generates false positives? They ignore that a positive might be false. They've done that with drug tests. They have embraced junk science to win prosecutions against the falsely accused. They hate having to deal with uncertainty, and want to just skip ahead to the part many enjoy: punishment. Another thing that is so telling is the political preferences police show. Support anyone you like when you're not on the job or in uniform. But they want to show support for an authoritarian leader while in uniform. It is totally in character for them to surveil and share the info gathered, regardless of prohibitions such as the 4th Amendment one against unreasonable search, let alone the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" or having enough humanity to refrain from the harm they may cause with such tattling.
We certainly do have too many harmless things criminalized. Have treated health matters such as drug addiction and now abortions, as moral failings, to be outlawed and punished, rather than evidence of a need for help. Until the day comes that the law is not being abused to disadvantage subgroups such as people prone to drug addiction, or shelter the guilty by transferring the blame elsewhere, we need safeguards against tattling. Note that cops were not fair and balanced about this-- they don't like at all being recorded themselves.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 25 2024, @05:20PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/08/23/breonna-taylor-boyfriend-blamed-shooting-cops-cleared-judge-ruling/ [nydailynews.com]
The cops who conspired to murder Breonna Taylor in a no-knock raid are getting off.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 1, Troll) by Username on Monday August 26 2024, @02:56PM (1 child)
How many women were arrested for getting an abortion in CA?
I'm guessing zero. Fake news articles. Nobody is tracking you down for doing something legal in a state where it's legal. Not a single maga hat wearing person cares what you do in ca.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2024, @11:51PM
If they don't care, then why are they changing the laws (Texas, Georgia, Idaho, etc.) to make it possible to be arrested and charged?