A bill being sent to Governor Jerry Brown would allow a pilot program for some vehicles to have electronic license plates.
Senate Bill 806 was passed on Sept. 4 and will allow the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to establish a program where no more than 0.5 percent of vehicles could voluntarily display electronic information that would normally be written on conventional tags.
The products used for the electronic tags would need to be approved by the Department of the California Highway Patrol and "shall not receive or retain any information generated during the pilot program regarding the movement, location or use of a vehicle participating in the pilot program," the bill states.
Despite this wording, there are still some privacy concerns. The Electronic Frontier Foundation told Ars Technica that "We are worried about any kind of location tracking issue" and that it was "expecting to continue to monitor this."
