California kills bill regulating Flock cameras even as public rage grows.

Amid a growing nationwide backlash against license-plate cameras, California, for the fifth year running, failed to enact regulations on the technology.

A bill in the Legislature would have strengthened privacy protections on how license plate data is collected and shared. It also would have guarded against misuse of automated license plate readers by law enforcement officers.

But after clearing the state senate, the bill was stopped in the Assembly by majority leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry on Aug. 31.

All the bills California lawmakers have proposed since 2022 to reform or update regulations on license plate tracking by law enforcement agencies have failed to pass or become law. A similar bill passed last year but was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“It’s a really disappointing outcome at a time when there is bipartisan concern about this mass surveillance tool,” UC Berkeley Center for Law & Technology codirector Catherine Crump told CalMatters.

Lawmakers pushing for more regulation of the readers point to police misuse of the data they collect, including illegally using it to help federal immigration enforcers and stalking people.

But law enforcement agencies say many of the proposed regulations would cripple a tool they say has helped solve a wide range of crimes.

“We were concerned that this bill was going to limit the utility of ALPR data to solve crimes, find missing persons, exonerate innocent individuals, and so the fact that it did not pass, we’re glad for that,” California State Sheriff’s Association legislative director Cory Salzillo told CalMatters.

Failure to pass the bill or even bring it up for a final vote comes at a time when opposition to license plate readers is growing in and beyond California. Nationwide, more than 200 cities or law enforcement agencies ended license plate reader contracts in August, more than any other month since 2021, according to Secure Justice.

“There is bipartisan concern about this surveillance tool.”

License plate readers use cameras and artificial intelligence to log the plate numbers of passing cars. The readers are joined into networks used by law enforcement and information from them can be shared locally or nationwide. More than 230 California police or sheriff’s departments currently use license plate readers, according to bill author Senator Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside.

Cervantes’ Senate Bill 1013 would have restricted state law enforcement agencies to using license plate data only for locating criminal suspects or missing people, would have made police take privacy and cybersecurity training, would have restricted sharing with national databases by default, and would have required the attorney general’s office carry out random audits of license plate reader activity for misuse.

Had the bill come up for a vote, it still might have died, given support for the readers as tools of law and order. Nearly 40 law enforcement agencies and police unions opposed the bill.

KHARI JOHNSON covers tech at CalMatters, where this article first appeared.