Millions in lottery winnings go unclaimed each year

from page 8 of the winner's handbook available at the official California Lottery website:

"California Lottery is subject to public disclosure laws that allow access to certain governmental records. Your full name, the name and location of the retailer who sold the winning ticket, the date you won, and the amount of your winnings, including your gross and net installment payments, are matters of public record and are subject to disclo- sure. The Lottery will not disclose any other personal or identifying informa- tion without your permission unless legally mandated to do so."

What is in the winner's handbook are only partial to the larger governing rules of the CA Lottery.

At the time the CA lottery published the image with the media, they had no winner who had filed a claim with them, and there is no violation of your citation of page 8 of the CA lottery winners's Handbook. They had no name or verified provable image of the winner.

The person that bought a winning lottery ticket may not always be the actual or final winner(s). In fact recently on these posts, there was an article of a Best Buy employee who won a Mega Millions Jackpot somewhere in the East coast. Buit it was not him that bought the wining ticket. His sister did, as he was at work.  If the lottery had published her picture from the store camera, the lottery had broken no laws in regard to their privacy rules. She was not a winner before or after the winning in the eyes of the lottery.

In addition, virtually not all group players who have ever won in the past that march themselves all as a group, into the store to have bought that winning ticket

The store security camera may be subject to the lottery rules as a retail store. Remember one thing, the lottery retailer is an agent of the lottery which is part of the government and the use of the tapes from the camera may be inherited or acquired by Court Order. You just don't know. However you can ask the CA lottery under what authority they acquired the tape and my guess is that they will be glad  to provide you with taht information. Should you get this information, I hope that you will share with us here at this forum

I beleive tthat what the CA lottery did was correct. It help the winner not to loose their winnings. It helped the lottery in its objective to be transparent to the public on the money that it is collecting from people in the name of a game.

If the store had a court order, the Store would have had no choice, but to turn over the security tape, unless it has a ton of  money that it can expect to loose and hired Lawyers to have fought the CA Courts and their weapons loaded sheriffs or Marshalls.

Besides, the store may be under a contract to turn over the tape as part of the lottery security arrangements it had with the CA lottery.

I suspect that both the Store and the Lottery were all in compliance with the

Store lottery retailers, and all of us out there give up a lot of rights every time you deal with the government, enter a government building or premises or conduct business with a government property or computer. The lottery machine is a government property

If what you say is true there would be no need for handbooks or rules. People can make it up as they go along.
Its a known or perhaps unknown fact that there are but a handful of states that allow their residents to claim their prizes anonymously. What if they decided that you can remain anonymously however they are going to print your name as the winner. Would you say that is acceptable?
This jackpot was less than 45 days unclaimed and they posting his picture? In California you have up to a YEAR to claim you prize, whats the rush.  Anyway you slice it- it was wrong.

If we make our "I agree" sign BIGGER, does it mean we agree more 

........ In a very big way............

We don't need no stinkin rules........

No rule is a good rule.

That explains everything.