Vehicles move along Interstate 5 north of downtown San Diego, Jan. 4, 2022. License plate readers are used to track vehicles throughout San Diego County. (Zoë Meyers/inewsource)

In response to an inewsource investigation published last month, all five police departments that were breaking the law by sharing drivers’ location data with other agencies across the country have decided to stop the illegal practice — at least for now. 

Police in Escondido and La Mesa have joined Carlsbad, Coronado and Oceanside in only sharing data collected from automated license plate readers with other agencies in the state of California, as required by Senate Bill 34. 

But La Mesa decided only to “suspend” the illegal practice effective Feb. 1, and Escondido officials said last week they will hit “pause” to review department procedures. Both agencies said they will let residents know if they decide to resume sharing data out of state.

The inewsource investigation revealed that half of the county’s 10 local law enforcement agencies had been illegally sharing license plate data with other agencies across the United States. Small police departments in states as far away as Florida, New York and Connecticut have been given access to location data from drivers in San Diego County.

Eight police departments are collecting the data from at least 300 cameras scattered throughout the county. The cameras capture every license plate that comes into view, including the time, date, location and sometimes a partial image of the vehicle. The data is automatically stored in a searchable database and shared with select agencies, and is supposed to be kept for only one year.

The cameras, and data they collect, offer law enforcement a powerful tool in identifying people who commit crime. 

But when pieced together, the data can give the government an unrestricted view into the daily routines of drivers in San Diego County — from where they go to who they spend their time with.

That’s why state lawmakers in 2015 strengthened privacy protections for drivers and established strict rules for how police can use the technology, which includes keeping this private information inside the state of California.

It all comes down to an agreement these agencies have with a private company named Vigilant Solutions — the contractor most police agencies across the state use to collect and share the license plate data. As part of their agreement with Vigilant, agencies select who else can have access to the information collected by their cameras. They can choose to share data with every public safety agency that participates in the network, or on an agency-by-agency basis.

However, in response to a public records request, Escondido officials said the department does not maintain records of those audits. 

It’s alarming that neither agency had any records of audits conducted on surveillance technology, said Geneviéve Jones-Wright, a prominent criminal justice reform advocate and executive director of Community Advocates for Just and Moral Governance. Without those records, the public can never be sure the police are holding themselves to high standards.

“There has to be a way for us to understand if the government and these law enforcement programs actually work,” she said.

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