Retired school teacher Michael Moore’s daily drives around San Francisco to drop off his children and go to shops are not suspicious and would not be interesting to watch. Yet because of the city’s system of license plate readers, his law-abiding movements are being tracked by an unconstitutional and “Orwellian” surveillance network, he claims in a lawsuit.
Moore’s complaint, filed Monday in San Francisco’s federal court, is the first of its kind challenging the city’s use of license plate reading cameras manufactured and operated by Flock Safety.
The lawsuit claims that the use of Flock cameras constitutes an illegal search and violates his 4th Amendment right to privacy and association. The city has also broken California law barring out-of-state law enforcement from using such data, Moore’s lawsuit alleges.
“A big part of this story is these have been rolled out quickly, and it’s kinda like the wild, wild West between crime and safety and civil liberties,” Moore’s attorney Ramzi Abadou said.
The lawsuit seeks to force the city to stop using the technology.
Flock’s cameras (opens in new tab) were installed along major roads in San Francisco in March 2024. The Atlanta-based company’s surveillance technology records the license plates and provides a description of passing vehicles. That data is stored for use by state law enforcement.
The department says the license plate readers have helped fight crime, (opens in new tab) but it’s unclear how many cases have been aided by Flock specifically. But San Francisco’s data has been accessed by out-of-state law enforcement and federal immigration authorities, which violates the SFPD’s rules against cooperation with immigration enforcement.
The Standard found that SFPD data was accessed by out-of-state agencies from at least August 2024 to February 2025. Once a police department allows an outside agency to access its data, that agency is able to run searches without explicit additional approval until its permissions are revoked.
The SFPD says the cameras have reduced crime. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard
The SFPD does not comment on pending lawsuits but has previously acknowledged that outside agencies searched its Flock data over a limited period. The department has since revealed in a portal (opens in new tab) which agencies have access to its data and has pledged to bar searches from outside the state.
“San Francisco has taken steps to ensure law enforcement agencies outside of California are not able to access SFPD’s Flock Automated License Plate Reader data. We take privacy very seriously and will review the complaint once we are served,” a spokesperson for City Attorney David Chiu said.
Chiu’s office confirmed that this is the first lawsuit filed against the city over use of the cameras.
Moore’s lawyer says the SFPD’s guarantees are not reassuring, because the department, intentionally or accidentally, violated its own rules regarding cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
The lawsuit says the SFPD’s “surveillance dragnet” creates a record of the travels of each and every San Francisco driver that can be seen by anyone with access to Flock.
The suit claims that the SFPD is “violating the longstanding societal expectation that people’s movements and associations over an extended period are private. And because Defendants have engaged in this surveillance without a warrant — instead letting individual SFPD officers decide for themselves when and how to access an unprecedented catalogue of every person’s movements throughout San Francisco and beyond — its searches are unreasonable.”
Every licensed driver in San Francisco may be eligible to be part of the class action lawsuit if it is certified by a federal judge.
Police have long been allowed to access license plate data to ascertain a vehicle’s ownership and the driver’s history and home address.
The Oakland Police Department was sued on similar grounds this year for its use of Flock cameras. San Jose was also sued (opens in new tab) in state court for allegedly violating privacy rights by using Flock.