ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties Sues the City of San Diego and San Diego Police Department to End Unconstitutional ALPR Mass Surveillance Program

SAN DIEGO - Today, in response to the City of San Diego expending taxpayer funds on an unconstitutional Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) mass surveillance program, the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA), represented by the ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties (ACLUF-SDIC), is suing the City of San Diego and the San Diego Police Department (SDPD).

The SDPD collects ALPR information on millions of San Diego residents and drivers and retains this deeply invasive location and identifying information for 30 days. This massive quantity of location and identifying data allows the SDPD to piece together, track, and surveil the private habits, movements, and associations of drivers. SDPD conducted nearly a quarter million retrospective searches of their ALPR database last year.

The city’s use of ALPR violates the California Constitution, which guarantees the people’s inalienable right to privacy. San Diego’s ALPR program expends taxpayer funds and violates constitutional rights.

“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.”

“Governments have long used surveillance—ranging from wiretaps to social media monitoring—to target individuals from marginalized groups and supposed opposition groups. ALPR systems are no exception to this history,” said Frederick Carroll, legal director at the ACLUF-SDIC. “We live in a country where families are being ripped apart by masked agents, immigrants and trans folks are being villainized by the federal government, and people are being prosecuted for simply seeking health care. The city’s ALPR system is a dangerous tool which can aid this harmful agenda, and we will not concede our constitutional right to privacy, now or ever.”

“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. The communities we serve at PANA know all too well that mass surveillance can be used against us and often unfairly targets us,” said Homayra Yusufi, senior policy strategist at PANA. “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 Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA), represented by the ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties, is suing the City of San Diego, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to end their unconstitutional mass surveillance of San Diego residents and drivers. This lawsuit demands that the city must cease its use of ALPR technologies, uninstall all Flock and other ALPR cameras, and delete all data collected by these cameras.

Case 26CU051879C