My title is somewhat misleading. Although United States v. Yang, --- F.3d ---, No. 18-10341 (9th Cir. 2020), arose in the context of a warrantless search of a license plate reader database, the majority decided the case on other grounds.
The basic facts are that the defendant was caught on camera stealing mail in a rented vehicle. Turned out, he failed to return the vehicle to the rental company, and could not be located. A Postal Inspector found the defendant and the vehicle by inputting the license plate number into a license-plate location
database, which receives license plate images and the GPS
coordinates from digital cameras mounted on tow truck,
repossession company, and law enforcement vehicles. The Inspector did not have a warrant.
The defendant moved to suppress, arguing the automatic license plate
recognition technology used by the Postal Inspector without
a warrant violated his Fourth Amendment right to privacy in
the whole of his movements under Carpenter v. United
States, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018). The district court denied the motion and the Ninth Circuit affirmed.
The majority concluded the defendant "failed to establish that he has a
reasonable expectation of privacy in the historical location
information of the Yukon under the facts of this case. There
is no evidence in the record that Prestige Motors had a policy
or practice of allowing lessees to keep cars beyond the rental
period and Prestige had made affirmative attempts to
repossess the vehicle by activating the GPS unit to locate and
disable the vehicle."
Further, "[b]ecause the ALPR camera
captured the Yukon’s location information well after the
close of Prestige’s business hours, as clearly advertised on
the rental agreement, we need not determine whether a
defendant has standing to object to a “search” of a rental
vehicle’s historical location information that was captured
and uploaded to a database prior to the expiration of the
rental agreement."
Judge Bea concurred in the judgment but not the reasoning. He would have affirmed on the
grounds that the search of the database did not reveal the
whole of the defendant’s physical movements, and therefore
did not infringe on that reasonable expectation of privacy. He left open the possibility, however, that license plate reader technology could progress to the point where a warrant would be required.
