Class Action Lawsuit Claims Motorola Solutions License Plate Readers Violate California Privacy Laws

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A proposed class action lawsuit alleges that Motorola Solutions has violated California law by allowing its automatic license plate reader (ALPR) systems to share identifiable vehicle and location data with the federal government and out-of-state agencies without notice or drivers’ consent.

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The 21-page complaint says that the driver data indiscriminately captured by the Motorola Solutions ALPR systems is used to amass profiles on vehicles that pass by or park near ALPR cameras, allowing end-users to search for and review location histories and potentially determine where a driver might be in the future. The lawsuit stresses that ALPR systems can be used for “nefarious purposes, such as to track and locate protestors, people attending religious events or persons with a particular immigration status.”

The complaint says that Motorola supplements these records with artificial intelligence tools capable of analyzing intel against more than 17 years-worth of data stored in its database to “flag a vehicle of interest.”

Although Motorola Solutions uses data from its ALPR system for its own commercial purposes, the filing relays, the defendant also makes the system available to law enforcement and commercial customers, despite “newsworthy” security lapses that, in one January 2025 instance, allowed video and data streams from the ALPR cameras to be viewed without any login credentials.

According to the lawsuit, Motorola’s high-speed ALPR cameras can capture a wide range of identifiable vehicle information, such as make, model, license plate numbers, images of riders within a vehicle, and the GPS coordinates paired with precise dates and times. Per the suit, the cameras can work at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour and in the dark, and the ALPR operates indiscriminately, capturing images of any vehicle that passes by its cameras.

Related Reading: Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Home Depot Parking Lot Cameras Secretly Transmit Driver Data to Law Enforcement

The case relays that the California Civil Code imposes strict regulations on both system operators and end-users—or those granted access to the ALPR database—to protect consumers’ privacy rights. Among other responsibilities, ALPR system operators and end-users must maintain reasonable security procedures and publish online privacy policies that clearly describe how data is collected, the parties with access to it, and how long it is retained, the suit describes.

The class action lawsuit argues that Motorola, as an operator and end-user, has failed to comply with these requirements as it does not maintain a legally sufficient privacy policy that is conspicuously available to the public.

The complaint points to multiple instances that demonstrate Motorola’s alleged failure to follow the California ALPR law. In June 2024, the suit says, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency issued an advisory over vulnerabilities in Motorola’s systems that “could allow an attacker to tamper with the device” and access collected data. The suit also alleges that an independent security researcher discovered in January 2025 that it was possible for unauthorized parties to view real-time data from Motorola’s ALPR systems on the open internet.

The lawsuit takes specific issue with the ALPR system deployed near the entrance of the University of California, Merced, which allegedly records vehicular data of both cars entering the campus and cars that merely drive by or park near the system’s cameras.

Recently, it was revealed in April 2026 that the UC Merced Police Department had been sharing ALPR data with several federal agencies, including Customs and Border Patrol, IRS Criminal Investigation, and the United States Secret Service, the class action lawsuit states.

The Motorola Solutions ALPR class action lawsuit seeks to represent all individuals in the United States whose license plate number or other identifying information was captured by Motorola through its California ALPR cameras during the applicable statute of limitations period.

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