Across the country, people are collecting and sharing footage of masked law enforcement officers from both federal and local agencies deputized to do so-called immigration enforcement: arresting civilians, in some cases violently and/or warrantlessly. That footage is part of a long tradition of recording law enforcement during their operations to ensure some level of accountability if people observe misconduct and/or unconstitutional practices. However, as essential as recording police can be in proving allegations of misconduct, the footage is rendered far less useful when officers conceal their badges and/or faces. Further, lawyers, journalists, and activists cannot then identify officers in public records requests for body-worn camera footage to view the interaction from the officers’ point of view.
In response to these growing concerns, California has introduced S.B. 627 to prohibit law enforcement from covering their faces during these kinds of public encounters. This builds on legislation (in California and some other states and municipalities) that requires police, for example, “to wear a badge, nameplate, or other device which bears clearly on its face the identification number or name of the officer.” Similarly, police reform legislation passed in 2018 requires greater transparency by opening individual personnel files of law enforcement to public scrutiny when there are use of force cases or allegations of violent misconduct.
But in the case of ICE detentions in 2025, federal and federally deputized officers are not only covering up their badges—they're covering their faces as well. This bill would offer an important tool to prevent this practice, and to ensure that civilians who record the police can actually determine the identity of the officers they’re recording, in case further investigation is warranted. The legislation explicitly includes “any officer or anyone acting on behalf of a local, state, or federal law enforcement agency.”
This is a necessary move. The right to record police, and to hold government actors accountable for their actions, requires that we know who the government actors are in the first place. The new legislation seeks to cover federal officers in addition to state and local officials, protecting Californians from otherwise unaccountable law enforcement activity.
As EFF has stood up for the right to record police, we also stand up for the right to be able to identify officers in those recordings. We have submitted a letter to the state legislature to that effect. California should pass S.B. 627, and more states should follow suit to ensure that the right to record remains intact.
