15.2 Confidential Communications (CCR 2069)

Confidential Communications (CCR 2069)

Quick Answer: 10 CCR 2069 is a one-sentence leak rule. A bail licensee shall not disclose or reveal any information coming into the licensee's possession or knowledge concerning an impending arrest or detention of a person by a law enforcing agency, except in accordance with the lawful inquiry of a law enforcement or judicial officer, unless that information is a matter of public record or knowledge.

Title 10, California Code of Regulations, section 2069 sits in Subarticle 4, Conduct of Bail Licensees. The Commissioner issued it under CIC 1812. It is not IIPPA, not GLBA, and not a general keep-client-secrets slogan. It is a specific ban on tipping anyone — the defendant, the family, the indemnitor, the press, another agent, or a social-media audience — that law enforcement is about to arrest or detain someone, unless a listed exception applies.

Read the verbs. Disclose or reveal. Any information coming into the bail licensee's possession or to the bail licensee's knowledge. The source of the leak does not matter. A deputy mentions a dawn raid while the agent is at the jail window. A court clerk whispers that a bench warrant will be served tonight. Two officers are overheard in the hallway. 2069 attaches the moment the information is in the licensee's possession or knowledge.

Read the subject matter. The regulation is about an impending arrest or detention of a person by a law enforcing agency. It is not a rewrite of CIC 791.13 for every fact in the file. Premium amounts, collateral addresses, and Social Security numbers are protected by IIPPA, GLBA, and fiduciary duty. 2069 is the operational-security rule: a licensee does not blow a law-enforcement arrest before it happens.

The two exceptions

The sentence has two exits.

First: except in accordance with the lawful inquiry of a law enforcement or judicial officer. If a detective, a deputy, a prosecutor, or a judge lawfully asks what the licensee knows about where the person will be at 6 a.m., the licensee may answer that inquiry. The same facts are not to be volunteered to the person's brother in the lobby. Lawful inquiry is not any government employee who asks. A city parks employee is not a law enforcement or judicial officer. An immigration contractor asking for a home address so the contractor can make a civil immigration arrest is not a 2069 exception; section 15.3 and PC 1299.07(g) independently forbid handing bail-fugitive personally identifiable information over for immigration enforcement without a valid judicial warrant or court order.

Second: unless such information is a matter of public record or knowledge. A minute order forfeiting bail and issuing a bench warrant, once it is a public court record, is public. The fact that a defendant failed to appear, if it is on the public docket, is public. The fact that a task force is stacking on the house at 5:00 a.m. from the alley is not public merely because a warrant exists. Public record is the recorded fact. It is not the tactical overlay.

Who is not an exception

Premium payment is not an exception. The indemnitor who wired $3,500 an hour ago has a contract relationship. That contract does not include a right to law-enforcement operational details. CIC Chapter 7 and Title 10 give indemnitors copies of their agreements, itemized statements, and collateral receipts. They do not give them a copy of the raid plan.

The arrestee's lawyer is not a 2069 officer. If counsel asks whether the agent has heard about a rearrest, the question is still measured against 2069. Counsel is not a law enforcement or judicial officer. If the information is not public, it is not revealed. Counsel can ask the court or the prosecutor.

Another licensed bail agent is not an exception. Professional-courtesy calls that a competitor's defendant is about to be picked up are 2069 disclosures. They are also a gift of non-public information that can move a transaction — a rival might try to rewrite the bond, warn the family, or beat the original agent to a surrender.

The defendant is not an exception. Calling the client to remind him to stay home tonight when a team is en route is a reveal. So is a coded text to the girlfriend.

San Bernardino scenario. The agent posted a $35,000 bond three weeks ago. A sheriff's sergeant, known from the jail window, tells the agent the defendant has a new local warrant and that deputies will pick him up at the warehouse job at shift change. The indemnitor — the defendant's sister — calls in a panic and asks whether she should keep him home. 2069 answer: do not confirm, deny, or hint. The agent may tell her what is already on the public docket if a warrant has issued and is public. The agent may tell her to have the defendant contact his attorney. The agent may not tell her about shift change at the warehouse.

Bakersfield scenario. A reporter from a local station asks whether the office has been told of a gang sweep tonight that might scoop up several clients. Unless the sweep is already a matter of public record or knowledge, 2069 forbids revealing what came into the licensee's possession from law enforcement. No comment is a complete answer. Not that I've heard is still a statement about the licensee's knowledge. The safer path is to refuse to discuss non-public impending arrests.

Orange County scenario. A jail records clerk, off-hand, says a hold from another county will land on Inmate R at 3 a.m. Inmate R's mother is sitting in the lobby with a cashier's check, waiting to post. Telling her to post fast because they are about to add a hold reveals impending detention information that is not a public record. The mother is not a law enforcement or judicial officer. 2069 does not contain a help-my-paying-customer clause.

How 2069 sits next to the rest of the privacy stack

Do not collapse four different rules into one slogan.

• 10 CCR 2069 — impending arrest or detention; leak ban with two exceptions.
• CIC 791.13 — personal or privileged information from an insurance transaction; closed list of permitted disclosures.
• PC 11105.6(d) — aliases, booking photographs, violent-felony flags, and booking-and-property records obtained after warrant or forfeiture are confidential; redisclosure except for the purpose acquired is a misdemeanor.
• PC 1299.07(g) — do not give a bail fugitive's personally identifiable information for immigration enforcement without a valid judicial warrant or court order.

A single careless conversation can violate more than one. Telling a reporter the 5 a.m. raid time is 2069. Telling that reporter the indemnitor's bank account is 791.13. Texting the booking photo obtained under 11105.6 to a group chat is 11105.6(d). Emailing the fugitive's date of birth to an immigration contractor is 1299.07(g).

2069 also does not authorize lying to a lawful law-enforcement inquiry. The exception is that the licensee may disclose in accordance with that inquiry. Refusing a detective's lawful question about a pending arrest the agent was told about is not required by 2069. Inventing a story to protect the client is not required by 2069 and may be a separate crime.

Traps the exam likes

Trap: it was already a warrant, so everything about it is public. A public warrant is public. The hour, the door, the informant, and the fact that the agent was the one who was told are not automatically public.

Trap: I did not name the agency, so it is not a disclosure. 2069 covers any information concerning the impending arrest or detention. Stay off the street tonight, said to a person known to be the target, is a reveal of the fact of an impending arrest.

Trap: I only told my unlicensed receptionist. The licensee is the licensee. Information in the licensee's possession that an employee then relays is still a disclosure of information that came into the licensee's possession. Title 10's unlicensed-person rules (10 CCR 2068, Chapter 4) do not create a privacy safe harbor inside the office.

Trap: 2069 means I can never talk to police. The opposite. The first exception is the lawful inquiry of a law enforcement or judicial officer. 2069 is a leak rule, not a non-cooperation rule.

Trap: the family will find out anyway. 2069 is not a harmlessness test. It is a conduct rule. CDI disciplines the disclosure, not the counterfactual.

Worked contrast. A Los Angeles agent is in the clerk's office when a forfeiture is declared on the record and a bench warrant is ordered. Repeating that the court just forfeited and issued a warrant to the indemnitor standing next to the agent is repeating public courtroom knowledge. Cell-phoning the defendant in the parking garage to say do not go home, they are coming, is revealing impending arrest information. The first is not a 2069 violation. The second is.

Keep 2069 in the same mental drawer as 10 CCR 2074 through 2080 (jail and court solicitation) and 2078 (gifts to public officials). Those rules, taught in Chapter 4, keep a licensee from buying access. 2069 keeps a licensee from spending the access already held by leaking an operation. Together they describe a professional who can stand in a jail, hold a CDI identification card, transact a bond, and still not become an unofficial spokesperson for either the family or the task force.

Modesto scenario. A deputy asks, lawfully, whether the agent knows a second address for a person with an impending arrest, because the agent posted the last bond and took an indemnity with that address. 2069's first exception allows the agent to answer that lawful inquiry. The same afternoon, the indemnitor calls and asks whether anything is going down tonight. The first conversation is permitted. The second is not. The statute turns on who is asking and whether the fact is already public, not on whether the agent is tired of the file.