 Senator Anderson, I invite you to come forward and present your bill. This is on four members, SB 712. Senator, you have the floor. Excellent, I have some witnesses working their way up. Mr. Chair, members, existing law allows any driver to fully cover their car under two conditions. First, that it's legally parked. And second, law enforcement officers can physically lift the cover to observe the license and registration. SB 712 quite simply allows motorists to cover their license plates only under the same conditions, legally parked and accessible to law enforcement. With the advancements of technology, this legislative body has for decades sought to protect in an alienable right in our state constitution that is privacy. Quote, the right to be left alone is fundamental in compelling interest. It protects our homes, our families, our thoughts, our emotions, our expressions, our personalities, our freedom of communion, and our freedom to associate with people we choose. It prevents government and business interests from collecting and stockpiling unnecessary information about us from misusing information gathered for the purpose in order to serve other purposes or to embarrass us. Unquote. So said the ballot argument of Proposition 11 in 1972, approved by California voters and specifically designed to protect Californians from computerized mass surveillance. You'll hear opposition today that will turn it on its ear that an individual's privacy concerns should not outweigh public safety. What they won't tell you is that billions of sensitive data points on Californians that are collected and compiled into a mass of searchable database are done so that it doesn't absent any suspicion of a crime. And the only connection to public safety is the sale to law enforcement. In fact, I'm less concerned about law enforcement's own use of this technology on moving vehicles. But a private for-profit business, who can and does sell it to anyone? What could go wrong? The presence of this data in the wrong hands is a greater threat to public safety than it could ever benefit. I could have gone in two directions with this bill, a heavy handed regulatory scheme for the data collection industry with complicated cans and cans, civil and criminal penalties for violations, further mandates on law enforcement, or simple and straightforward self-help measure for Californians to defend their privacy when their car is legally parked. And just as with the full cover of their car, completely accessible to law enforcement officials. Today with me, I think it's very important that we protect ordinary Californians. This is a simple fix. If you're rich enough, you can put your car into a parking garage or a parking structure. But if you live in a community that doesn't have a lot of land and you are forced to park out in the streets, you have no way to defend your privacy. So with me today, I have Dave Moss, an investigative researcher for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the bill sponsor, and Becca Kramer from the ACLU of California. Thank you. I'm interested and go ahead, sir. You have the floor. Thank you. Mr. Chair and members, my name is Dave Moss, and I represent the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a sponsor of SB 712. EFF is a non-profit organization that defends civil liberties as the world becomes a more digital place. I am a researcher who investigates police technology. My previous work has resulted in agencies fixing insecure surveillance cameras, a federal fraud investigation into child safety software, and increased disclosure of misuse of police databases. Since November, not a week has gone by when I haven't been asked the same questions. How do we protect our communities from being targeted? More chillingly, they sometimes ask, do we need to start building a new underground railroad? I immediately think about the massive amount of data being collected by automated license plate readers operated by private companies. Billions and billions of data points mapping out our travel patterns. Most companies rent this data to law enforcement, but they also sell it to the private sector. Lenders examine travel patterns before approving a loan. Insurance insurers look at travel patterns before quoting a rate. Collections agencies use it to hunt down debtors. A user could easily key in the address of a mosque, an immigration law clinic, an LGBT health center to reveal whole networks of vulnerable communities. The user could program the system to identify associates and get real time alerts about a driver's whereabouts. The California Constitution is supposed to protect us from these invasions of our privacy. In 1972, voters agreed that we have an inalienable right to pursue and obtain privacy. Your predecessors in the legislature explicitly stated this amendment would protect us from computerized mass surveillance by police and private companies. SB 712 allows Californians to cover our plates when our vehicles are lawfully parked. This is a balanced approach that would not affect how police use ALPR technology to monitor moving vehicles. Today you are voting on whether we can exercise our constitutional right to privacy against advanced surveillance systems logging our travel patterns. Thank you for this opportunity, and I respectfully ask for your aye vote. Thank you, other witnesses please, thank you. I'm Rebecca Kramer, ACLU of California, also in support. But to me, this bill is almost absurd that it needs to be brought. It seems logical that if we can cover our car in its entirety, that we could cover part of our car. And so I see this as more of a clarifying bill. The only difference, which is pointed out in the analysis, is that there's a clause saying that you can cover your full car to protect it from the elements. But surely our privacy is more, it's worth so much more in such greater value than just the cost of our cars. As my colleague Dave was mentioning, travel patterns are what is obtained through ALPR data, not just your license plate. As he pointed out, you can key in a certain location, whether it be a mosque, a planned parenthood, a certain religious community, anything, a 12 step program to find out who frequents there. And you can also then look at the data for those license plates to see where they're parked every night. And easily go back and see who, for example, might be an officer and both their home addresses or an abortion provider in their home address. So it's not just the license plate, but the data that is revealed by your travel patterns that are so incredibly sensitive. Also, this is an economic justice issue. As the author mentioned, if you are rich enough to have a garage where you can park your car, then you get afforded the privacy that folks who live in apartment complexes do not get. This is not just a hypothetical privacy. We know that these private companies will often encourage their folks to go and routinely patrol around apartment complexes to pick up license plate data. Our private data and travel patterns shouldn't be protected only when we have money or only when it's bad weather. This is an appropriate and scaled approach to ensure that our privacy is protected when we are lawfully parking our car and going about our daily lives. For this reason, we support. Thank you. Other witnesses in favor of the bill? Witnesses in favor? Okay, we'll have witnesses opposing the bill, please. Witnesses opposing, come forward, please. Okay, you guys. Mr. Chair and members, Matthew Saverling, on behalf of- No, you can come up here, go ahead. The witnesses, how many of them are coming up? Two, okay, why don't you have a seat, you can stay there. There you go, okay, go ahead. Chair and members, Jonathan Thumb with the California Police Chiefs Association. Just sprinted over from an executive board meeting across the street, but my executive leadership decided that it was more important for me to be here to testify in opposition to this bill, then sit through the rest of our exact board meeting. Our main problem with the bill is I catch my breath. This is going to help out those that want to avoid detection, kidnappers, car thieves. It's not going to be used as prevalently for those, for privacy reasons. It's going to help out people that want to avoid detection. I don't know of any citizen that's going to want to use one of these for any other reason. It's going to hinder our investigations. We find missing people with this information. We find stolen cars with this information. I know that there was an example, a comparison used between this technology and covering a car with a tarp or one of the car covers that's fundamentally different, that has a different purpose. The purpose of this is only to avoid detection and make those investigations more difficult. Makes finding missing persons more difficult, kidnapped victims more difficult, and stolen cars more difficult, and for that reason we are opposed. Thank you. Thank you. Witnesses, please. Mr. Chair and members, Matthew Saverling on behalf of the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs on Los Angeles Police Protective League. And for different reasons than Mr. Feldman just outlined, also the California Public Parking Association, uses this incredibly useful tool to accelerate and improve parking enforcement as well. Also echoing Mr. Feldman's comments on behalf of my other law enforcement clients. This allows people to hide in plain sight, to basically throw a tarp over a stolen car and force police officers and deputy sheriffs to actually go and lift the tarp rather than potentially catch that information off a license plate from an ALPR. For those reasons we are opposed, regrettably. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Other witnesses, any other speakers opposing? I see none. Okay, questions from our committee members? Senator Anderson. With the opposition of the police chiefs and the obvious concern about public safety, it makes it very difficult for a lot of the, I think myself at least, to support the bill. And I'd like to ask you a question. Sure. Are there any other options? I'd be happy to respond to- Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Have a good discussion here. So I have Dave Moss, who's a researcher to go through this. But I want to make just two quick points, and if I may I defer my time to Dave. But the data that we're talking about is not collected by the sheriffs. It's collected by a private company. They've taken no oath. They have no allegiance to protecting that data as the police department or the sheriff's department does. And if you use that logic of thought, perhaps we all should be issued bar codes. Because if we all had bar codes, then they could scan where we go, what we do, and we could collect probably 100% of the criminals, but we live in a free society. And that free society comes with some cost. Dave, if you could respond, I'd appreciate it. I'm kind of like Senator, okay, I'll use an example. What about like there's like an amber alert or something like that and you're trying to find a kidnapper. And the kidnapper puts a cover on his license plate. So that's a public safety thing. So I would like to know how you would respond to the balancing of the public safety versus your privacy issues. So I've had many conversations of law enforcement agencies about license plate readers for a while. Now the biggest utility as I understand it from law enforcement are stationary license plate reader cameras that collect moving vehicles. So you would have say a license plate camera installed at every entrance and exit from a freeway passing through a city. In the event that there was an amber alert and somebody is trying to speed out of the city, they would be caught. They couldn't have a plate cover that would protect them without violating the law. I would also add that if we're talking about what criminals are doing and we create a Venn diagram, what are criminals doing now? They are stealing people's plates and putting it over their car. They are using tarps. They are parking in garages. What the opposition would suggest is that somehow there's a group of criminals who are too dumb to cover their vehicle, too dumb to steal a plate, and too dumb to park inside but are somehow smart enough to go buy a license plate cover and use it. One of the things that the police chief said is that nobody is going to use this except people who want to avoid detection. If this passes, I am going to recommend to everybody who's going to a health clinic or a doctor's office, any kind of personal location related to medicine, cover their plate when they're in their doctor's parking lot. If you are going to go see your lawyer, put a cover over your license plate. If you are going to visit your union hall, if you are going to go to a political gathering with your Democratic or Republic colleagues, cover your plate. This stuff is stuff that can be sold to political opposition groups. It can be sold to anybody. One day maybe it'll breached and the Russians will have it. I'm just saying that it will not just be people who want to evade detection. It is anybody involved in any kind of significant activity involving organization, First Amendment rights, and their privacy. And if I may jump in, current law allows folks to cover their entire vehicle. And so this is simply allowing people who are privacy minded to cover just portions of their vehicle, but there's already existing law on this. Other questions from members? Okay, Senator, you may close. All right, Maril was pointing, I don't know if Senator- Senator Maril? Just a quick one to the opposition. Do you have any empirical data on what you have caught so far as you talk about the license plates and everything in the state of California? Any numbers, any empirical data on that? I'm sure that we could get some for you. We don't have any off hand right now. The bill was gutted and amended, so we haven't had time to really dive into it and develop that yet. But I know thousands of hits come out every single day. The information goes to DOJ that runs it off their database that checks it against stolen cars and plates that they're looking for, stolen plates. And we do use it every single day, absolutely. And sure there are other purposes besides someone concealing a plate from malicious purposes. I mean, those are the people that I really want to think look for this. That's our perspective and we stand by that. Through the chair, Senator Anderson. Mr. Moss has some data to share. So what I don't have is data. I've been, sorry, what I don't have is data. I've been trying to get data. All that there is out there are random positive anecdotal explanations of how ALPR is amazing and the most amazing technology ever. And then you actually start pulling the contracts for agencies in California and elsewhere who have contracted with these companies. You start seeing that there are non-disclosure agreements and non-dysparagement agreements. The terms of service actually prohibit law enforcement agencies about talking about license plate readers to the press without the company's explicit permission first. So I don't even know how to have a very informed debate about the data and the efficacy of it because law enforcement is often not allowed to speak openly and candidly and critically about it. Okay, Senator Gaines. I want to thank Senator Anderson for bringing this bill forward. And I am concerned about our Fourth Amendment rights in terms of privacy. I am sensitive to public safety and their issues. But it seems to me they're still an opportunity. So if you have a covered plate and you're public safety, you have an opportunity to uncover it. Read the plate and find out if that is a perpetrator or what. But the other side of it is that you have a right to privacy. And so I think given this day and age with technology, I'm very concerned about all the breaches that we're seeing every day in terms of our privacy. And so I support your legislation and I'll make a motion if that's necessary. Sir Gaines, you've made a motion. Any other comments from questions? Senator Weiner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think this is a really close call, honestly, and I think there are really pretty good arguments on both sides. I do have concerns about the proliferation of this photography and the geotagging. Even though there are controls on government, there are few, if any, on the private sector. And if anyone has alternative bills of how we limit private sector use of this information, I'm all ears. I think this bill is probably going to have a hard road, but I'll support it today. Thank you. Other questions? Okay, Senator Anderson, you may close, please. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Unlike public safety officers, these private companies take no oath. They have no allegiance, and they may sell this data to them ever they can sell it to. It could be an insurance company tracking your health. It could be your religious affiliation. So you're at your parish or your church or your mosque, and they're collecting this data. Look, I believe that a person should have a right to trade their privacy for convenience, but it shouldn't be taken away from you, and certainly not without you agreeing to it. So if you care about the Constitution as much as I do, I would ask that you vote for this. This simply allows ordinary citizens the ability to protect themselves. If we continue to allow fully covered cars, and I would agree with the public safety's argument if they said we want to eliminate all fully covered cars. But they're not saying that, they're just saying partially covered. And I think that if anybody was a criminal, they would fully cover their car, or perhaps park in a garage, or steal a car to commit to crime. So I don't feel that that is a strong enough argument to waive my Fourth Amendment rights to privacy. And I think that this bill reaches out to those middle class and lower class folks who don't necessarily live in high end homes that can't afford a garage and they're forced to park in the streets. I think that poor people have an equal right to a constitution as much as rich people do. And this bill levels that playing field, allowing everybody protections under the Fourth Amendment. So with that, I would ask for your aye vote to allow partially covered cars to exist. Thank you. Call the roll please. Senate Bill 712 by Senator Anderson, the motion is do pass. Senator Isabel? No. No, Cannella? Aye. Cannella, aye. Allen? Atkins? Bates? Gaines? Gaines, aye. McGuire? Mendoza? Morrell? Morrell, aye. Roth? Skinner? Wieckowski? Wiener? Wiener, aye. We have four in favor and one opposed. We'll leave the roll open for absent members, okay?