California state law permits car owners to cover their legally parked cars to protect them against weather and incidental damage. It?d be easy to assume that, because cars can be covered in their entirety, it would also be perfectly okay for motorists to keep only their license plates covered on those same legally parked vehicles. That?s not necessarily the case: Another law prohibits obscuring the license plates of parked cars in California.
State lawmakers considered a bill to resolve ambiguities between the two laws this week. It failed in a subcommittee vote on Tuesday, May 9, but backers say a similar bill will likely resurface in the future because the broader issues aren?t going away. Superficially, this may seem like a minor quibble but the bill is symptomatic of an underlying tug between privacy rights and security. Privacy advocates want to ensure that Californians can cover their license plates and cars to prevent them from being photographed by automated license-plate readers (LPRs). That’s the thing in the photo above, the object that looks like WALL-E’s head sitting on the rear decklid of a police car. Whether mobile or stationary (typically mounted near speed-reading cameras or surveillance cameras in parking lots, as in the image below), these plate readers are operated by both law-enforcement agencies and for-profit private companies.
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?Why is it that you can cover your entire car to protect from the elements, but not just the license plate&q...