The back of your car is the only part of you LA's new speed cameras are supposed to see. And if a photo does not lead to a violation, the city's Use Policy says it must be deleted within five days.
Privacy is the first objection that comes up whenever cameras do, and in a city with this many doorbell cameras, plate readers and phones in every hand, it is a reasonable one. So here is what the rules say.
What the camera captures
A photo of the rear license plate, plus the recorded speed, the time and the location. That is the job. The cameras are designed around the rear of the vehicle, which means no photo of the driver and no facial recognition. Laura Friedman, who wrote AB 645 as an Assemblymember, put it plainly at the city's October 1 kickoff: these cameras "only capture the rear license plate, don't film the driver."
The statute is even fussier than that. Notices have to show a clear photo of the plate and the rear of the vehicle only, and they must exclude the rear window area, so nobody is squinting at who was in the back seat. Facial recognition is prohibited by name.
What about everyone else in the frame? LADOT's Impact Report says images of pedestrians, cyclists and other bystanders are destroyed. The camera is pointed at traffic lanes, not at your front porch.
Who can see it
Access is limited to authorized LADOT staff and approved contractors with a specific operational need. Law enforcement access is not allowed, according to the Use Policy, except with a court order, a subpoena or another legal requirement. LADOT's general manager, Laura Rubio-Cornejo, told reporters the data "is and will remain the sole property" of the department, as LAist reported.
The DMV information used to find a car's registered owner is confidential and is kept no longer than 120 days after a notice is finally resolved. The public gets aggregated, de-identified data, which is how the program's results will be judged.
Could police use it to look for a car?
Not by asking nicely. AB 645 bars disclosure of the data to anyone, including other state or federal agencies, except as the law requires or under a court order or subpoena. LADOT's Use Policy applies the same rule to police access. That is a meaningful difference from a camera network built for policing, and it is the line worth watching over the five years of the pilot.
You get to see what they saw
If you receive a notice, you are entitled to review the photographic and event evidence behind it. The notice has to state the recorded speed, the location and how to contest it. Due process is not usually filed under privacy, but it belongs there: a system that shows you its evidence is easier to trust than one that just sends a bill.
How long it lasts
The retention schedule is short and specific. No violation, five days. A citation, 60 days after the case is finally resolved. Supporting records like calibration logs, 120 days. The one item that lingers is the record that a particular vehicle was cited and fined, which the policy allows for up to three years, which is how a program tells a one-time mistake from a habit.
Why a homeowner should care
If one of the 125 locations lands near your house, you will hear the surveillance question from neighbors before you hear anything about property values. The short answer is that this camera knows far less about your street than the doorbell camera across the way, and unlike the doorbell camera, it operates under a written deletion schedule and a ban on sharing.
That does not make the debate silly. Programs drift, and AB 645 wrote its privacy limits into the statute itself, which tells you how seriously Sacramento took the concern. The rules are worth reading once and watching for changes. The five-year evaluation LADOT owes the Legislature is the moment to check whether the program stayed inside its lines.
For agents, the useful version of this is simple. When a buyer asks whether the camera on the corner is "watching the house," you can answer with specifics instead of a shrug. The location logic is here, and the bigger picture for homes on camera corridors is in this post.
A speed camera knows less about you than your phone does. It just has better manners about forgetting.
This is a plain-English summary of LADOT's Speed Safety System Use Policy and Impact Report as of October 2026, not legal advice. Policies can change during the pilot, so check LADOT for the current version.
