A report released in January by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital civil liberties organization, found that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department improperly accessed databases with sensitive personal information thousands of times in 2023.
According to annual reports submitted by the department to the California Department of Justice (DOJ), deputies flouted a rule against accessing the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System database, known as CLETS, to run background checks for concealed carry permits. California law enforcement officers use the CLETS database daily for investigations, traffic stops, and checking for restraining orders for calls involving domestic disputes. It gives police access to a trove of personal information, including records housed with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). The NCIC, run by the FBI, tracks and shares crime-related information with police, including parole records and a person’s immigration status.
In a statement, the sheriff’s department said its employees were “unknowingly” accessing CLETS for background checks related to concealed carry permits and blamed their system’s outdated programming. “Once this issue was discovered, immediate corrective action was taken to mitigate unintended access.” According to the statement, the department has since updated the programming and instituted warnings to prevent the access issues from happening again…