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Or as Thomas stated elsewhere in this thread, they can follow Illinois and just exempt ALPRs from FOIA reach. ALPR FOIAs have the potential problem of abuse by

by mc32 11mo ago

Or as Thomas stated elsewhere in this thread, they can follow Illinois and just exempt ALPRs from FOIA reach. ALPR FOIAs have the potential problem of abuse by stalkers and others wanting to track someone (imagine “Hollywood” personæs.) It’d be a bad precedent to follow, but they could. I wonder what Tiburon will be doing. They’ve had ALPRs since forever as they only have one road in and one road out, so it’s easy for them to do.

tptacek 11mo ago
Just raw footage and identifying information from cars, if I remember right. You can still make FOIA requests of data the PD keeps on hand from Flock searches. There is an interesting thing happening in FOIA law here in WA (you'd never notice it from this spammy article, though). A pretty common FOIA exemption is for data not managed by a public body, but via some commercial vendor. FOIA generally only allows you to demand production of (1) actual documents that (2) the public body has (3) on hand (or are generally deemed to have on hand, such as email records). So it's pretty legally dubious that you can use FOIA to compel production from Flock (you can probably compel, from the public body, any number of reports Flock can generate --- we've done that here for our Flock network and sharing configurations, for instance). Here it sounds like a WA judge might be saying that some corpus of data Flock maintains is effectively public data. If that's the case, that's a novel interpretation.
- trollbridge 11mo ago
  If their data is 100% sourced from public data, its public data.
  - tptacek 11mo ago
    That is not remotely how it works in Illinois. It's not even how public data held by public bodies works: you can generally only compel production of specific documents that already exist.
- _DeadFred_ 11mo ago
  Wouldn't this only be true if the camera's are primarily used by non-government entities? Once their income/use is primarily from the government they become an agent of the state and relevant laws apply, no? Wasn't this how they were able to FOIA 'private' parole officers in the south a couple of years back? Or they could 'constructively' construed as being a public entity? Private parole officer, private care providers, etc have all been ruled to in fact be constructively agents of the state and the rules (not necessarily FOIA in each instance, but even tougher constraints that would easily apply as precedent for FOIA) applied to them.
  - tptacek 11mo ago
    No, that's not how it works. So far as I know, FOIA basically never compels private entities to do anything. It can compel usage by the public body, in many (but not all) cases. But FOIA isn't going to let you crack open an Atlassian (or Flock) database, unless something truly novel happens in FOIA jurisprudence. We might be talking past each other, because this stuff is subtle. But basically: whoever's doing the actual document production under FOIA, it's got to be a public body. If you're a commercial SAAS serving a public body, and you've got data that FOIA says needs to be produced, that's the public body's problem, not yours.
pavel_lishin 11mo ago
> ALPR FOIAs have the potential problem of abuse by stalkers and others wanting to track someone (imagine “Hollywood” personæs.) Not potential problems, actual existing problems: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-texas-cop-used-83000-cameras-track-her-down https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-te...
- tptacek 11mo ago
  Worth being specific here: the problem this page is discussing isn't ALPRs per se, but automatic ALPR data sharing.
8note 11mo ago
> ALPR FOIAs have the potential problem of abuse by stalkers and others wanting to track someone (imagine “Hollywood” personæs.) the stalker is gonna be a cop with full access to that data though. if its good enough to be in cops hands, who are utterly unaccountable to anyone, its safe enough to be in the general public's too.

by mc32 11mo ago

tptacek 11mo ago

Just raw footage and identifying information from cars, if I remember right. You can still make FOIA requests of data the PD keeps on hand from Flock searches. There is an interesting thing happening in FOIA law here in WA (you'd never notice it from this spammy article, though). A pretty common FOIA exemption is for data not managed by a public body, but via some commercial vendor. FOIA generally only allows you to demand production of (1) actual documents that (2) the public body has (3) on hand (or are generally deemed to have on hand, such as email records). So it's pretty legally dubious that you can use FOIA to compel production from Flock (you can probably compel, from the public body, any number of reports Flock can generate --- we've done that here for our Flock network and sharing configurations, for instance). Here it sounds like a WA judge might be saying that some corpus of data Flock maintains is effectively public data. If that's the case, that's a novel interpretation.

trollbridge 11mo ago
If their data is 100% sourced from public data, its public data.
- tptacek 11mo ago
  That is not remotely how it works in Illinois. It's not even how public data held by public bodies works: you can generally only compel production of specific documents that already exist.
_DeadFred_ 11mo ago
Wouldn't this only be true if the camera's are primarily used by non-government entities? Once their income/use is primarily from the government they become an agent of the state and relevant laws apply, no? Wasn't this how they were able to FOIA 'private' parole officers in the south a couple of years back? Or they could 'constructively' construed as being a public entity? Private parole officer, private care providers, etc have all been ruled to in fact be constructively agents of the state and the rules (not necessarily FOIA in each instance, but even tougher constraints that would easily apply as precedent for FOIA) applied to them.
- tptacek 11mo ago
  No, that's not how it works. So far as I know, FOIA basically never compels private entities to do anything. It can compel usage by the public body, in many (but not all) cases. But FOIA isn't going to let you crack open an Atlassian (or Flock) database, unless something truly novel happens in FOIA jurisprudence. We might be talking past each other, because this stuff is subtle. But basically: whoever's doing the actual document production under FOIA, it's got to be a public body. If you're a commercial SAAS serving a public body, and you've got data that FOIA says needs to be produced, that's the public body's problem, not yours.

pavel_lishin 11mo ago

> ALPR FOIAs have the potential problem of abuse by stalkers and others wanting to track someone (imagine “Hollywood” personæs.) Not potential problems, actual existing problems: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-texas-cop-used-83000-cameras-track-her-down https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-te...

tptacek 11mo ago
Worth being specific here: the problem this page is discussing isn't ALPRs per se, but automatic ALPR data sharing.

8note 11mo ago

> ALPR FOIAs have the potential problem of abuse by stalkers and others wanting to track someone (imagine “Hollywood” personæs.) the stalker is gonna be a cop with full access to that data though. if its good enough to be in cops hands, who are utterly unaccountable to anyone, its safe enough to be in the general public's too.