Three of California's largest law enforcement associations have put forward a joint policy framework to govern how automated license plate reader systems are accessed and used. The California Police Chiefs Association (CPCA), the Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC), and the California State Sheriffs' Association (CSSA) are the co-authors. The proposal is notable for its specificity: rather than broad principles, it sets out concrete operational requirements covering credentialing, training content, audit mechanisms, data-sharing limits, and criminal accountability.
PORAC President Brian Marvel said the framework aims to provide clear standards that protect the public while allowing officers to perform their duties effectively. That framing reflects a tension the proposal tries to resolve directly — not by limiting ALPR use broadly, but by tightening the conditions under which any individual officer can access a system.
Certification, Training, and Individual Accountability
The framework's most operationally immediate requirement is a certification mandate. Under the proposal, any officer seeking ALPR access would first need to obtain a unique certification number. That number would be issued only after the officer completes POST-approved training. Certifications would not be permanent. Annual renewal is required, meaning agencies would need to track and enforce ongoing compliance across their rosters.
The proposal explicitly prohibits shared group accounts. Each certification number must remain individual. That restriction closes a common gap in access-control systems, where a single login shared across a shift or unit makes it impossible to attribute a specific query to a specific officer.
The training curricula the framework recommends are broad in scope. According to the proposal, coursework must cover authorized and prohibited uses, privacy, ethics, applicable law, and data-sharing restrictions. That combination — legal, ethical, and operational — signals that the associations want officers to understand not just what they are permitted to do, but why certain uses are off-limits.
Audits, Penalties, and Vendor Accountability
Compliance with the framework would not be self-reported. The proposal calls for regular audits by the California Department of Justice. Agencies would be required to maintain complete logs of all ALPR system access and queries, giving auditors a full record to examine. That logging requirement creates a durable paper trail — every search, every access event, every query is recorded and available for review.
For willful violations, the framework goes further than administrative sanction. It recommends establishing criminal penalties for the intentional misuse of ALPR systems. The inclusion of criminal liability marks a meaningful escalation from the typical policy-violation or employment-discipline framework that governs most technology misuse in law enforcement settings.
The proposal also turns accountability outward, toward the vendors who build and maintain ALPR infrastructure. The framework emphasizes holding vendors entrusted with law enforcement data accountable for their security practices. It recommends encryption and security controls to protect sensitive law enforcement data. By naming vendors explicitly as parties with accountability obligations, the associations signal that departmental compliance alone is insufficient if the underlying systems are not secure.
Data-Sharing Restrictions and the Federal Gap
Some of the framework's most consequential provisions address data sharing. The proposal prohibits default national lookups, silent statewide sharing, and automatic federal or out-of-state query access. Those three restrictions target specific architectural features that can allow ALPR queries to propagate far beyond a local agency's intent — a plate search conducted by a city officer does not, under this framework, automatically reach federal or out-of-state databases.
That restriction sits against a backdrop of near-total federal inaction. There is currently no specific federal legislative framework governing the use of ALPRs by law enforcement. As of August 2026, crowdsourced mapping data indicated there were over 137,000 ALPR cameras mapped across the United States. That infrastructure operates without a uniform national standard.
Some federal legislation has been introduced. H.R. 9800 would potentially prohibit federal agencies from contracting with specific surveillance vendors. H.R. 9716 would require the Attorney General to maintain a comprehensive list of surveillance technologies used by state and local agencies, and would establish that federal law enforcement agencies could not access state or local ALPR data without a warrant from a federal judge. Neither bill has become law. California's proposal does not wait for federal action — it builds state-level controls that would operate regardless of what Congress does or does not pass.
The data-sharing restrictions in the California framework are particularly significant given H.R. 9716's warrant requirement. If enacted federally, that bill would formalize at the federal level a version of what California's associations are already proposing at the state level: a barrier between local ALPR data and federal access. The two approaches, if both advanced, would reinforce each other. For now, the California framework stands on its own as the more concrete and immediate set of requirements facing agencies in the state.
