Dear Honorable Councilmembers,
My name is Marinez Rosales, and I serve as the Leadership Development Manager at the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley. Myself, along with the signees below, represent ELLAs (Engaged Latina Leadership Activist) program and Chispanas, a community organizing program at LCSV . Based here in San Jose, our mission is to advocate for the civic engagement and well-being of Latinas and their families. Today, we are writing to urge the City of San Jose to permanently end its contracts with Flock Safety and to reject the expansion of mass surveillance in our neighborhoods.
We believe that true leadership requires protecting those who are most vulnerable. For our immigrant communities, the "security" promised by automated license plate readers (ALPR) is a dangerous illusion.
In reality, these systems create a digital dragnet that can be accessed by federal agencies like ICE, turning our local streets into a landscape of fear rather than a place of safety.
We are specifically concerned about the following:
● Targeting the Vulnerable: Recent audits confirm that data collected by these cameras is accessible to federal agents for unconstitutional immigration enforcement. Our neighbors should be able to drive to work, school, or the doctor without fear that their movements are being tracked and shared with agencies intent on deporting them.
● A Breach of Trust: Flock’s track record of data breaches and its inability to secure private travel data is unacceptable. If the "industry leader" cannot guarantee privacy, we cannot trust any vendor with this level of invasive technology.
● Conflicts of Interest: For our community to have faith in the democratic process, our leaders must be beyond reproach. Because Mayor Mahan’s gubernatorial campaign has received significant financial backing from Flock’s primary investors, we call for his recusal from this vote to ensure the decision is made solely in the interest of San Jose residents.
Mass surveillance is not a substitute for real public safety. Real safety comes from investing in our people and protecting our constitutional rights to privacy. We urge you to follow the lead of neighboring cities like Mountain View and Santa Cruz by ending the Flock contract and implementing strict judicial warrant requirements for any future data searches.
Our data, our movements, and our families are not for sale. We trust you will do your job to protect the privacy and safety of all San Jose residents.
Sincerely,
Marinez Rosales, Naomi Gutierrez, Joy Murrieta,
ELLA Graduate/Chispanas Participant Chispanas Participant Chispanas Participant
Elizabeth Marquez Bernardino, Johanna G. Morales Sanchez, Samantha Castillo, ELLA Graduate Chispanas Participant Chispanas Participant
Mariel Barraza Carrasco, Sandra Torres, Yesenia Campos, Chispanas Participant Chispanas Participant. Chispanas Participant
While we appreciate the Police Chief’s recommendations as a step in the right direction, we believe the proposed changes do not go far enough to protect our communities against AI mass surveillance. While no guardrail can protect us against any abuses entirely, we believe that the following motion will strengthen data privacy protections for all San Jose residents.
Our Recommended Motion
1. Direct City Manager’s Office to remove Flock as a vendor and remove Flock cameras a. Model: Santa Clara County (Feb. 24, 2026), Mountain View (Feb. 24, 2026), Los Altos Hills (Jan. 15, 2026), and Santa Cruz City (Jan. 13, 2026) removed Flock
2. Direct City Manager and City Attorney to cease operating all ALPR networks unless and until an alternate ALPR vendor can be found that meets all of the following guardrails a. Model: Feb. 24, 2026 Supervisor Duong’s Motion directed County’s Privacy Office to analyze and report on feasibility and implementation of community proposals
3. Direct City Manager's Office to secure an independent auditor that will conduct a thorough, independent audit, per the below guardrails, every 3 months to report in Focus Areas quarterly reports presented in public meetings of the City Council and PSFSS
a. Model: Feb. 24, 2026 Supervisor Duong’s Motion specified OCLEM for County audit
4. If there is any unauthorized disclosure of ALPR data, SJPD must immediately turn off the cameras and report that unauthorized disclosure to the City Council. The ALPR Data Usage Protocol must be agendized for reconsideration at the next regularly scheduled City Council meeting following discovery of the unauthorized disclosure a. Model: Feb. 24, 2026 Supervisor Duong’s Motion, Feb. 2, 2026 Mountain View Police Chief immediately turned off cameras upon finding unauthorized access to data
Proposed Guardrails
A. Require valid judicial warrants for all data searches a. Model: California Values Act (Senate Bill 54, 2017), Santa Clara County’s Policy
3.54 B. Refuse to participate in direct sharing with immigration authorities and indirect sharing of data in fusion centers
a. Model: California Values Act (Senate Bill 54, 2017), Automated License Plate Recognition Systems: Use of Data (Senate Bill 34, 2015), and Santa Clara County’s Policy 3.54
2 C. Prohibit placing ALPR cameras in positions that capture data from vehicles entering or exiting any health care services facility, any location primarily used for religious observance, schools, playgrounds, parks, areas popular for public demonstrations and use of First Amendment rights by the community, social services organizations, courthouses, diplomatic places including Mexican consulate, and other sensitive locations
a. Model: Expanded from San Jose’s March 10 Proposed ALPR Data Usage Protocol Update and Adapted from Sensitive Locations Policy
D. Retain data for no more than a few days, or even less. Require valid judicial warrant for when the City decides to retain specific data beyond initial retention period a. Model: New Hampshire law enforcement deletes non-hit ALPR data within 3 minutes
E. Prohibit all ALPR systems from integrating facial recognition software, biometric analysis software, and Generative Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) technology a. Model: Feb. 24, 2026 Santa Clara County approved Consolidated Surveillance Use Policy; City of San Jose’s Artificial Intelligence Policy
F. Implement contract and policy safeguards to ensure system transparency, protect civil liberties, and reduce cybersecurity risks, including independent auditability, strict local controls on data access, sharing and ownership
a. Model: Jan. 13, 2026 Santa Cruz City Council
If an ALPR vendor cannot guarantee our safeguards, then we need the City Council to reject that vendor.
The City of San Jose is creating a mass surveillance system in the name of “law and order.” These unblinking cameras track every driver around our City. Even if the purported reason for this is to “fight crime,” all it takes is the wrong, either misinformed or malicious, person in power, and crime becomes redefined to include anyone that person dislikes. We are living this dangerous reality right now. In a time when our neighbors are wrongfully criminalized and detained regardless of immigration status, when our Black and Brown loved ones are pulled over for the way they look, and when the federal government assaults any peaceful protestor exercising their First Amendment right to free speech, we must refuse any surveillance tool that will endangers the safety of all our communities.
Overwhelming evidence shows that local agencies across the country and Flock have grossly mishandled our personal automatic license plate reader (ALPR) data by sharing data 3 with ICE, racially profiling Black and Brown communities, stalking religious minorities, targeting people seeking reproductive and gender affirming care, and harassing individuals exercising their First Amendment rights to protest. Mass surveillance does not keep our public safe, but endangers all our residents and visitors to our beloved City of San Jose.
On this principle, we express the following concerns with the proposed ALPR Data Usage Protocol (DUP) and offer our guardrails as tangible solutions in the right direction.
I. While we appreciate the data retention period being reduced from one year to 30 days, we recommend a data retention period of a few days, or even less. A valid judicial warrant must be required for when the Police Department has an interest in retaining specific data longer than this initial retention period.
Given ALPR’s proven vulnerabilities, we recommend a stricter time limit of a few days, or even less. In the recent Rohnert Park meeting, the chief conceded that it's exceptionally rare for even 30 days back to be useful for them, as it is most useful in the precise moment of recollection. There are examples of even shorter time limits in other jurisdictions. New Hampshire state law requires law enforcement to delete non-hit Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) data within 3 minutes. If the Council is operating under the presumption of needing ALPRs and restricting time limits to data retention, we believe that a few days stands as a reasonable compromise to protect our communities against potential system vulnerabilities and violations on searching our personal data without a judicial warrant. Should SJPD need longer than the initial retention period, they must obtain a valid judicial warrant.
Additionally, SJPD estimates $147,000 total annualized savings in the reduction of the 30-day retention period compared to the one-year retention plan. By reducing the retention period to a few days, or even less, we can estimate savings on time, resources, and money by more than a tenth, effectively increasing our savings nearly tenfold to at least approximately $1.47 million in annualized savings. While the data costs may not be scaled perfectly linearly, we can expect that reducing the retention period would increase our resources and savings to prevent layoffs and to secure an independent auditor who will ensure the safety and security of our data. In a budget crisis, every single penny is valuable and must be invested into our City’s priorities of community services, such as affordable housing.
Any perceived “benefit” is vastly outweighed by Flock’s grave 4th Amendment violations and costs of collecting, retaining, and analyzing location data for every driver on our road. Per the proposed protocol, these unblinking cameras that can retain our data for a whole month establishes mass warrantless tracking, which violates our 4th Amendment right to a reasonable expectation of privacy.
4 U.S. Supreme Court Cases Carpenter v. US (2018) and US v. Jones (2012) affirmed that all residents have a constitutional right to privacy, even in public spaces. Near perfect surveillance, cellphone location data, and GPS tracking on public roads give our government a precise, comprehensive record of all aspects of our personal lives from our familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual relationships. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court applied this reasoning to ALPR technology in Commonwealth v. McCarthy (2020): "With enough cameras in enough locations, the historic location data from an ALPR system in Massachusetts would invade a reasonable expectation of privacy and would constitute a search for constitutional purposes.”
While we appreciate the intention to provide notice of “ALPR technology… at major vehicle entrances into the city and exits from the city” (pg. 4 of DUP), this notice does not protect us from the constitutional violations to our privacy nor ultimately keep our data secure.
We further express concerns about the ALPR “automatically [initiating] investigation for traffic intersection infractions” (pg. 1 of DUP) because such monitoring implies that these ALPRs are constantly surveilling our cars to collect our data and feed their database, regardless whether a crime was committed. Such automatic investigation fails to be checked and reviewed by a human who should decide on further investigation.
Mass surveillance requires a valid judicial warrant to uphold our 4th amendment constitutional right and protect us from unreasonable searches and seizures. In fact, the Supreme Court in Carpenter held that a warrant was required for a request of seven days worth of cell site data, which resulted in the government only getting two days. Additionally, while we believe that SJPD would purge our data from active and backup systems, we must also ensure the data is deleted from the Flock, or any potential ALPR vendor system, as well. Given how Flock’s lie by omission regarding their nationwide and statewide tool resulted in the concerning data violations in Mountain View, we cannot trust Flock to follow suit, so we must establish contract safeguards that requires Flock, or any ALPR vendor, to delete our personal data, or face consequences for breach of contract. Not only is there precedent for a few days, but there is also precedent to obtaining a valid judicial warrant on our personal, private data.
II. We greatly welcome the Police Chief’s inclusion of sensitive locations for “reproductive health care services facility primarily providing abortion services or any location primarily used for religious observance.” Considering how our ALPR data has been weaponized against our communities, we strongly recommend an expansion of these sensitive locations to include healthcare facilities, schools, playgrounds, parks, areas popular for public demonstrations and use of First Amendment rights by the community, social services organizations, courthouses, diplomatic places including Mexican consulate, and other sensitive locations.
5 At a time when an authoritarian government is threatening to arrest, detain and jail people for publicly speaking up against their tactics, we must not make it easier for them to access and use our data to target community members who they believe do not “belong.” We include the expansion of healthcare facilities so that all healthcare facilities are recognized as spaces of healing, trust, and privacy. Mass surveillance would increase the anxiety of our community members because it questions whether healthcare will truly be a private area to share sensitive topics of our lives. Additionally, we have seen how our data has been used to harass those seeking gender affirming care. For example, Florida Governor DeSantis required universities to share transgender patients’ health data, which violates our privacy and our trust in healthcare institutions. Adding ALPRs would only increase the government’s database on our personal data, exposing us to data privacy violations and making us vulnerable to the federal government’s onslaught of attacks. Gender affirming care brings a life changing way for transgender and nonbinary people to realize their fullest selves. To employ ALPRs to surveil and stalk these individuals would impose a dangerous threat to a place intended for healing and empowerment.
We further expand to schools to protect our children’s safety and right to privacy, and to safeguard against Flock’s systemic vulnerabilities. Investigators have found Flock portal access credentials on the dark web. Anyone with $120 can easily create a Shodan account to access 24/7 livestreams of our personal lives. One user found a livestream on a children’s playground in the Bay Area, making these cameras a prime, accessible weapon for human traffickers. We must protect our children by prohibiting any ALPR system near these locations, eliminating any way of endangering their safety to those with harmful intentions.
We appreciate that the current DUP already prohibits monitoring “activities legally allowed in the State of California and/or protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.” Instead of prohibiting the use of ALPR technology, we should explicitly mark areas popular for public demonstrations and use of First Amendment rights by the community as sensitive locations to eliminate, not “reduce,” the “risk of collecting data associated with lawful, protected activity.” Local police departments across the county have targeted people engaging in their First Amendment right to protest. More than 50 law enforcement agencies across the country have conducted searches through Flock to track protest activity, going so far as to employ the terms “No Kings” or simply “protest.” This data has given law enforcement the power to target known activist groups. For example, local law enforcement agencies have scrutinized and queried Flock 9 times related to the activists of Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), an animal-rights organization known for using civil disobedience tactics to expose conditions at factory farms.
Additionally, an October 2025 ProPublica article found nearly 130 incidents where federal immigration agents forcibly held citizens at protests or during immigration arrests of their fellow community members. This lawless federal immigration enforcement agency has 6 now resorted to physically assaulting and fatally shooting community members like Renee Nicole Good, Alex Pretti, and Keith Porter Jr. Such instances have made our communities even more cognizant and weary of revealing their faces at protests, using masks and sunglasses to conceal their identities from the cameras out of fear of government surveillance. ALPRs provide the tools for law enforcement to surveil our communities, targeting people exercising their First Amendment rights to constitutionally protected speech and undermining our nation’s principles of freedom and democracy. Not only does this recommendation align with the typical definition of sensitive locations, but it further ensures our community can protest at City Hall, for example, with peace of mind for their privacy.
Given the current political climate that has targeted our safety net services, we included social services organizations to protect the privacy of residents who seek our community care, including immigration legal services, to support themselves. Recently, surveillance footage has been used to punish and, in some cases, evict public housing residents. When the federal government has already slashed SNAP and public healthcare funding to waste billions into federal immigration enforcement, community organizations are trying to increase their services and capacity under limited funding in order to meet the moment and serve our families. The federal government’s relentless lawless attacks have left some in our communities terrified of leaving their homes to purchase groceries and go to school or work, fearing that exiting would be the last time they see their families. With the existence of ALPRs, this fear has been heightened, causing us to watch our backs among the cameras’ constant presence surveilling our neighborhoods. We must mark community organizations as sensitive locations to protect our communities, including our immigrant loved ones, from any risk of their data being weaponized to abduct them from their homes.
Lastly, we included courthouses to protect the privacy of our loved ones attending their legally required court hearings. Since May, the federal government has disappeared hundreds of people across Sacramento, the Bay Area, the Central Valley, the Central Coast, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Orange County, and San Diego as they were attending court hearings and immigration appointments. Legal representation is the backbone of a fair process and often the only way for individuals to assert their rights, remain with their families, and protect themselves from targeted abuse. We cannot jeopardize or poison the sanctity of legally required courthouses by allowing weapons of mass surveillance to abuse our personal data against us.
We understand that the Police Chief asserts that there are no existing cameras at these sensitive locations. However, based on our personal experiences driving around and our technical expertise, we disagree with this finding. This fairly conservative map (upon hitting “Execute”) of known Flock installations within 22.86 meters (or 75 feet away per Flock’s range) of a health clinic, school, courthouse, community center, library, or place of worship show 19 cameras in total. Even if we limit it to reproductive health facilities and places of worship, there 7 are still 3 cameras that we do not know its purpose, effectively refuting the Chief’s claims that there are no cameras in these areas.
We further criticize the placement of ALPR cameras in a “roaming location, such as on a police vehicle” because such inclusion would render the Police Chief’s and the community’s expanded guardrails pointless. If the ALPR camera can roam, then it would be ineffective and irrational to create a sensitive location because a police vehicle could simply drive by the location and pick up data near it anyways. Instead of risking the safety and privacy of our residents and any visitor to our City, we should prohibit cameras in these sensitive locations that have proven to target historically marginalized communities.
III. We express grave concerns with the broadband sharing to agencies external to SJPD as well as the vague storage and security protocols. Such ease of access increases the risk of unauthorized agencies seeing and exploiting our data.
We acknowledge that the Police Chief attempts to implement “additional compliance documentation from California agencies… including the reason justification, the crime type, and a case number.” We also recognize that the Police Chief will assign a “command staff officer” to assist agencies without existing access. The overall unclear storage and security protocols raise issues about who has access, why they have access, and for how long they have access. Our concerns are that by granting more agencies access to our data, we run the risk of our data being unlawfully shared and accessed.
The proposed DUP attempts to grant access to the ALPR database by California law enforcement agencies on an “agency-by-agency basis if an agreement is put into place.” This blanket, time-unlimited rule would grant access to any agency based on an unclear “agreement,” which fails to indicate any timely opportunities for updating the agreement or reviewing the agency to ensure compliance. Even if the agency were granted, how would we hold that agency accountable to any potential auditing and violations per our standards? We learned a difficult lesson when the City of Mountain View promised to share only with authorized agencies, only for Flock, the vendor, to share data with external agencies and violate the constituents’ trust. Without any clarity on the length of time that these agencies can access our data, our data becomes more vulnerable with every additional second. Therefore, we should limit the agency’s access solely to the requested search, hold the external agency accountable for any data violations, standardize the access period to our data retention period of a few days or even less, and only grant more time upon a valid judicial warrant.
While the proposed DUP offers some reassurance in the “reason justification,” it is still unclear what is considered as a justified reason to grant data. We are also wary of hot lists that offer a flimsy excuse to search the lists for “presumed crime,” or “other purpose” if no crime is relevant. Seeing how ALPR data has been abused to hunt historically marginalized communities 8 who are exercising their constitutional rights, we should require a judicial warrant to ensure our privacy is upheld. To avoid any uncertainty and to abide by existing laws, we must require a valid judicial warrant to all data searches, which is a standard, rational 4th Amendment protection to our reasonable expectation of privacy.
Additionally, we are deeply disturbed by the proposed DUP’s lack of transparency around assisting agencies without existing access and storage and security protocols. While we greatly appreciate the City for refusing to cooperate with ICE and adding a transparency notice about the California Values Act (Senate Bill 54, 2017) and SB 34, federal agencies may be able to access our data through indirect sharing. State laws, and our SJPD memo, prohibit data sharing with federal agencies and out-of-state police departments, but Flock allowed such sharing for years. At least 75 California police agencies were sharing these records out-of-state as of 2023.
In 2025, San Francisco police allowed access to out-of-state agencies and 19 searches were related to ICE. This February 2, Mountain View Police immediately turned off Flock cameras after learning that federal and other unauthorized agencies had accessed their network. On January 13, 2026, Santa Cruz became the first city in California to terminate their Flock contracts due to data sharing concerns with outside agencies, including federal law enforcement and ICE.
Two days later, on January 15, 2026, our neighboring Town of Los Altos Hills also terminated their Flock contract due to privacy concerns, cost considerations, and overall effectiveness. We must refuse all relationships with a company who violates our City’s strong noncooperation policy and will jeopardize our immigrant loved ones for the sake of a profit.
Even without direct access, ICE can access Flock data through the “side door” where local police departments conduct searches on behalf of ICE/CBP . In more than 4,000 cases, police made searches on behalf of federal law enforcement, including for immigration investigations. Also, our local police data is shared with other police departments who may use this “side door” to expose our personal data to ICE. While multi-factor authentication is a welcome addition, it still fails to prevent officers from sharing their login credentials or performing a “side door” search on behalf of another agency.
Furthermore, SJPD participates in the fusion center of Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC), which gathers and shares data, including ALPRs from other Northern Californian agencies, to national, state, and local intelligence networks. Through these fusion centers, our Flock ALPR data is exposed to local California agencies, which can inadvertently share our data with unauthorized agencies. It is difficult to see if ICE has exploited this loophole to access our data through fusion centers because there is no publicly accessible information on these centers. Federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agency personnel assigned to the NCRIC that meet the vetting criteria, agree to our policies, have a “right to know the information with a law enforcement purpose and a criminal investigative case may access the system for the purpose of making individual inquiries,” which can include searches on our Flock ALPR data. However, this lack of transparency is why we see statewide initiatives like 9 California Senate Bill 1095 to audit these fusion centers whose sole purpose is to share data across local, state, and national lines. This “side door” issue is why we are advocating for the guardrail of refusing to participate in direct sharing with immigration authorities and indirect sharing of data in fusion centers.
We further call for the removal of Flock for all the reasons in this letter and for the ways it exposes the City to potential violations of Automated License Plate Recognition Systems: Use of Data (Senate Bill 34, 2015). The “secure” Flock cameras are hackable within 30 seconds and have 51 security vulnerabilities, giving malicious actors an opportunity to wager and share our residents’ personal data. Flock has been deceptive and has not responded well to security vulnerabilities. Flock's track record on “security” places its customers in violation of SB 34's requirement that ALPR operators maintain reasonable security procedures and practices.
Multi-factor authentication presumes that Flock, who holds the de-cryption key, will secure our data, which has been proven wrong based on their security vulnerabilities. From enabling broad searches of “investigation” and “crime” to granting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) access to its systems, Flock has violated reasonable security measures and wrongfully misled their law enforcement partners. Oregon Congressional Senator Ron Wyden boldly wrote to Flock’s CEO Garrett Langley: “[A]buses of your product are not only likely but inevitable, [and] Flock is unable and uninterested in preventing them.”
The proposed DUP includes: “ALPR vendors may only use the data if authorized by the City to act on behalf of the City.” Amongst the many security and data privacy violations, Flock and mass surveillance should not use our data and act on behalf of our City, especially when their deceptive practices violate our trust and serve to increase their profits. Thus, we further uplift our contract guardrails and propose that the City implement accountability mechanisms for Flock, and any potential ALPR vendor, for breach of contract if they were to share our data without authorization. For example, the City of Richmond proposed amending the Flock contract to require a $290,000 penalty fine if there is an unauthorized breach of its license plate data. In December 2025, Flock company agreed to pay Oakland $200,000 if it violated the city’s data-sharing policies. Additionally, the community recommended the City of Mountain View to pursue a class action lawsuit against Flock for breach of contract due to the data privacy violations.
Following the leadership of Mountain View City Council and Santa Clara County, we further recommend our safeguard to amend and strengthen the City’s Incident Response Plan to immediately turn off the ALPR cameras upon discovery of any unauthorized disclosure and report that unauthorized disclosure to the City Council. The ALPR Data Usage Protocol must be agendized for reconsideration at the next regularly scheduled City Council meeting following discovery of the unauthorized disclosure, giving the public and our Council the ability to strengthen our protections.
10 IV. While the Department will conduct quarterly internal and external audits, we propose that these audits will be conducted by an independent auditor and include such findings in the quarterly reports at the public meetings of City Council and PSFSS.
To hold our ALPR system accountable, we must perform frequent audits, independent from the Deputy Chief, Executive Officer, and the SJPD. While the Police Chief explains how additional audits can be triggered by the City Council or Digital Privacy Officer, this kind of independent, external distinction should be the standard and sole option in order to promote public transparency, prioritize a trained and knowledgeable expert into this field, and strengthen our accountability protocols. In fact, Santa Clara County directed OCLEM to conduct an independent audit every 4 months. Quarterly public reports would ensure compliance with our privacy standards in a frequent transparent system that aligns with the City’s infrastructure.
We further express concerns on how audit trails of “requested and accessed information, including the purpose of the query” will be maintained by SJPD for a minimum of two years. If the proposed data retention period is limited to 30 days, and data is purged on all accounts, then how are audit trails, containing personal information, able to be maintained for two years? This lack of clarity demonstrates the need for independent audits for system transparency.
An independent audit can ensure a thorough review of our contract language. Currently, it has been difficult to obtain and review the City’s Flock contract. However, based on Flock’s standard contract, Flock has been found with major controls over constituents’ data. In Austin, TX, the APD License Plate Reader Audit found the following excerpt:
“non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free right and license… to (i) use and distribute Aggregated Data to improve and enhance the Services and for other development, diagnostic, and corrective purposes, other Flock offerings, and crime prevention efforts, and (ii) disclose the Agency Data (both inclusive of any Footage) to enable law enforcement monitoring against law enforcement hotlists as well as provide Footage search access to law enforcement for investigative purposes only”
The City’s contract with Flock Safety may leave motorists’ data open to unintended use.
Without access to our City’s contract, we are unable to verify if Flock also incorporated this broad language, but we believe that from examples of local police departments in Santa Cruz, this language is standard across Flock’s contracts.
We welcome the public comment opportunities through sanjoseca.gov/digitalprivacy via mail or email to the Digital Privacy Officer. However, the section fails to include the timeline and 11 process for a timely response that will address our concerns. In the meantime, our privacy will continue to be violated for every day that our inquiry goes unanswered.
Auditing our personal Flock data regarding ICE cooperation could produce a false negative. According to pages 4 and 10 of DHS’ data retention policies, DHS requires vendors to not leave a trail of ICE in audit logs on any ALPR, except their own. We may not see any query results about “ICE” or if ICE accessed our data because ICE purposely and systematically refuses to leave any evidence of their wrongdoing. The reason why we see searches related to immigration enforcement or ICE is due to “side door” access, but given the current political climate, we can only surmise that ICE is accessing our data to weaponize against our communities. By prohibiting sharing data in fusion centers along with our auditing capabilities, our City can protect our data against any inadvertent sharing and reduce the risk of exposure.
V. We understand that SJPD believes the ALPRs only capture license plates. However, Flock cameras are more than just ALPRs - they are AI mass surveillance cameras.
SJPD asserts that the ALPRs only read license plates. However, our issue is that Flock has proven to extend beyond this boundary. Flock will argue that they do not violate privacy because they only capture vehicle info, and not personally identifiable data. However, they sell and market themselves on their ability to track down “criminals.” The ultimate conundrum is this: how can Flock identify and capture people when they can only see the image of the license plate? Additionally, per SJPD’s Memo in “Operational Procedures” section, if the reason for an ALPR alert pertains to a wanted person associated with a vehicle, officers are instructed to “attempt to visually inspect the occupant(s) of the vehicle to determine if he/she matches the description of the wanted individual.” If the ALPR is only supposed to read license plates, then why are the officers instructed to inspect the vehicle’s occupant? How would our automated license plate readers be able to capture an image of the individual inside the car, an image clear enough for the officer to identify someone?
The answer is simple: Flock does not just read our license plates, but it also can expand to read and identify people. For example, Flock’s patents employ AI neural networks that are designed for categorizing people based on race/gender, clothing, bicycles, height/weight, and animals. As we mentioned with the Flock contract from Austin, Texas, Flock uses customer data to train new machine learning models. According to Flock, they proactively remove license plate and other identifying information, which means they have more information available to, and controlled by, them than limited license plate images. Flock’s Condor model (PTZ) is the most dangerous AI camera because it can track, pan, zoom, and tilt to capture people's movements.
Without access to the City’s contract, we do not know if San Jose employs these models, but such tools vastly expand beyond “license plate readers” and pose a threat to our public safety, constitutional rights, and civil liberties.
12 Additionally, Flock is often used for "cold plates,” which is when a plate does not match the intended vehicle. Thus, Flock requires an image of the whole vehicle to confirm that the vehicle description does not match the registration. SJPD’s memo further discloses that the ALPR camera can collect additional information visible in the image, such as “car make/model, and other distinguishing characteristics of the vehicle (e.g., bumper sticker(s), aftermarket wheels, etc.).”
Flock’s training material shows exactly what is captured by the cameras, including concessions by Flock that multiple vehicles can appear in one image. In fact, in San Francisco, one officer accessed another agency's Flock database, downloaded images displaying the full vehicle, and posted them on Instagram. Not only did this officer abuse the ALPR database for his own personal benefit to attract attention to his wife's stolen vehicle, but it is also notable that he did not trust Flock and fellow law enforcement officers to recover the vehicle. Other instances show how local law enforcement have abused ALPR data for personal reasons, including stalking their partner using the license plate reader.
We further call for a review of the “Department-approved training” for authorized users as well as training and requirements for the independent auditor. Aforementioned, with Flock contracts like Austin, Texas and training gaps disclosed in Mountain View’s staff memo, we must ensure any authorized user and auditor can thoroughly understand the operations, utilization, searching, controls, and all intricacies of the ALPR system that manages all our personal data.
However, the training requirements for who can access and control our data are still not public information, failing to give residents any opportunity to ensure our protocols align with our strict standards to protect constitutional rights to privacy. How can the public and the City Council hold the ALPR vendor system and our staff accountable when the community is excluded in the creation and review of the policies? Such training requirements should further include accountability mechanisms, such as our proposed guardrail of immediately disabling the cameras upon any unauthorized disclosure.
AI cameras are incredibly prone to mistakes and have high risks of false positives, racially profiling innocent individuals. In October 2025, an AI-powered gun detection system at Kenwood High School in Baltimore County mistook a Doritos bag in a young Black teenager’s hands as a firearm, triggering an armed police response. In another instance, a 12-year-old in New Mexico was handcuffed after an ALPR camera misread the last digit of a license plate.
Without adequate human review, AI cameras can escalate innocent matters to armed law enforcement, inflicting psychological trauma on our Black and Brown communities.
For these reasons, we strongly recommend the prohibition of all ALPR systems, such as Flock, that integrate facial recognition software, biometric analysis software, and Generative Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) technology. This guardrail would align with the SJPD’s operational procedures that require the officer to conduct thorough human review of the ALPR alert.
13 VI. We strongly refute any argument regarding the effectiveness of Flock. Mass surveillance does not keep us safe, but rather endangers the privacy of every driver on our roads.
We cannot sacrifice our 4th Amendment constitutional rights to privacy of every resident, visitor, and driver on our roads for this dangerous illusion of “security” in this one instance of “solving crime.” In the ” Analysis” section, SJPD states that only 73 arrests were made attributed to ALPR, but this is out of how many millions of searches in that same time period? How many millions of searches and millions of data points on our residents were conducted only for a fraction of a percent of those searches to lead to arrests? We were able to solve crimes before Flock existed, and crime was already trending down without it. ALPRs are not necessary, as per Mountain View’s City Staff: “other investigative methods may have ultimately produced results in some cases.” As Mountain View City Councilmember Pat Showalter proclaimed, “We don’t want to spend $100,000 on something that we shouldn’t spend it on. But what’s the real cost? [It’s] the cost to our civil liberties.” Mass surveillance is not public safety, as ALPR systems actively violate our constitutional rights to privacy and endanger the lives of our communities by risking the exposure of our data to external agencies.
VII. We urge Mayor Matt Mahan to recuse himself from voting and discussions on this policy because his gubernatorial campaign is actively benefitting from significant financial contributions by Flock investors.
Mayor Matt Mahan’s gubernatorial campaign has received $1.03 million in direct campaign contributions (Matt Mahan for Governor) and $2.7 million in independent expenditures (California Back To Basics) from Flock investors. Mayor Mahan must recuse himself because he cannot impartially vote on a data usage protocol, memorandum, license, and any other policy about Flock when he receives massive financial investments from the company Flock Safety that fuel his campaign for a higher office.
Matt Mahan for Governor (Candidate Account) received total direct donations from Flock Investors that amounted to nearly $1,030,000, while the independent expenditures received an estimated $2,770,000. Among the 15 individuals who directly donated was Michael Seibel, Managing Director of Y Combinator, who contributed $1 million in independent expenditures in February 2026 and who oversees the Y Combinator’s early-stage stake in Flock.
Seibel’s company Y Combinator provided seed funding (2017) and participated in Series C of $47 million (Nov. 2020), which has contributed to Flock’s investment. Brian Singerman (Partner, Founders Fund / Quiet Capital) donated $156,800 with his partner Noelle Moseley to the “Matt Mahan for Governor” campaign and $250,000 to Mahan’s Back to Basics. Quiet Capital and 14 Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund invested in Flock’s Series D ($150 million), Series E ($150 million), and Series F ($275 million). Peter Thiel is also the CEO of Palantir, a sophisticated data surveillance tool used by ICE and Border Patrol to target migrants. And the list of Mayor Mahan’s financial ties to Flock goes on.
Mayor Mahan must recuse himself from this vote and policy discussion for the integrity of the process.
VIII. Conclusion
For these reasons and more, we urge the Council to continue your unwavering protection of our immigrant communities and boldly stand against federal overreach and AI mass surveillance that violates the privacy and well-being of all community members. No matter how perfect the policy, the current federal government has proven that there are no bounds to their lawless terror and violent propaganda on our communities, and we can expect and witness how they will weaponize any tool and data against our people. If an ALPR camera vendor cannot guarantee our safeguards, then we must cease operating any and all ALPR networks unless and until a qualified ALPR vendor can meet all of our above criteria. Standing by our values means choosing community trust, privacy, education, and immigrant safety over unconstitutional hyper-surveillance.
Sincerely,
Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN) Race Action Leadership Coalition (REAL)
Immigrant Protection and Empowerment Network (IPEN)
Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment
Working Partnerships USA
Latinas Contra Cancer - Defensoras Patient Committee
Council on American-Islamic Relations, San Francisco Bay Area (CAIR-SFBA) Sacred Heart Community Service
San Jose Against War
Kids in Common
CSO San Jose
Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America
50501 San Jose
SURJ Santa Clara County
South Bay Progressive Alliance
Indivisible Palo Alto Plus
15 It's Blue Turn
Citizens Privacy Coalition
Ross Galarza Club CPUSA
People’s Aid SC
Get The Flock Out - Santa Cruz County
Vietnamese American Roundtable
South Bay Youth Changemakers
Afro UPRIS
Democrats for Palestinian Rights - Bay Area
San Jose Peace & Justice Center
San Jose Nikkei Resisters
16 The Honorable Matt Mahan, Mayor of San Jose
And Members of the City Council
via email,
DATE: March 10, 2026
Subject: Agenda Item 4.1, Automated License Plate Readers Data Usage Protocol Update
Dear Mayor and Councilmembers:
I write in support of continuing to improve how the Flock system is working in San Jose. It is working to protect all our families and make our City a safe place to live and work. Thanks for the efforts so far!
With 100% success rate in San Jose three years running
compared around 50% nationwide, the Flock system in San Jose is worth its weight in gold. The system has been used to very quickly apprehend people who have murdered, people who have sexually assaulted others, people who have robbed.
The Flock system keeps all of us safe. The system helps our limited police department act more efficiently, giving officers the tools to do their job of protecting us in a timely manner, crucial to keeping all of us safe.
Please continue the Flock system, with the safeguards proposed to prevent misuse of such.
Thank you,
Greg Peck
San Jose resident since 1956