License plate reading cameras are about to become more common along Silicon Valley roadways.
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved an expansion of license plate reading cameras, adding coverage of unincorporated county areas that have not been annexed into neighboring cities. The expansion was approved without funding, which the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office needs to seek out. Supervisors also approved making it easier for the sheriff’s office to share license plate data with other law enforcement agencies.
“We currently have a closed system where there is no access to the system by any other public agency, and any request (for data) would have to go through us,” Sheriff Cpt. Ricardo Urena said at the meeting.
The expansion, which is capped at two years from the time the program is funded, will allow other agencies more open access to the data. But those agencies will need a case number to obtain the information, and the sheriff’s office needs to know who is accessing the information, Urena said.