Police officers in California improperly accessed a state database of private information more than 7,000 times in 2023, according to a new report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights and privacy advocacy group.
Two researchers from the EFF discovered through public records requests that California police departments reported 7,275 misuses of the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, or CLETS, to the state Department of Justice in 2023. The vast majority of those offenses were committed by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department (LASD), which was responsible for 6,789 of the violations.
The LASD committed thousands of abuses by violating a specific rule against using CLETS data to run background checks for concealed carry firearm permits. According to meeting notes obtained by the EFF, the LASD unit responsible for the searches was retrained, "and no further incidents of misuse have been identified since."
