As the UC system further encroaches on students’ privacy, UC Berkeley faces the choice to comply or resist: The Editorial Board urges the campus to choose the latter.
The Ellis Collective, a student-run research group, revealed that the UC system had shared data collected by automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies. This may constitute a violation of California state law, which prohibits ALPR data from being shared with out-of-state agencies and imposes a penalty of $2,500 per violation. While UC Merced and UC Riverside are the campuses directly implicated, the allegations reflect a continuation of the flagrant disregard for student safety and privacy that has become ubiquitous across all the UC campuses.
The lives of students and residents are now subjected to an expansion of the surveillance state, endangering students and engendering silence through a panoptic climate.
Further, this is not the first time the campus has acquiesced to expanding surveillance apparatuses at the expense of its community. On Sept. 4, 2025, UC Berkeley notified 160 students and faculty members that the university had shared their names with the federal government as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing antisemitism investigation. Berkeley City Council recently renewed its contract with Flock Safety, whose data the federal government has used to pursue aggressive immigration enforcement, and a recent settlement with the Brandeis Center mandates the installation of cameras in prominent locations on campus, with little explanation regarding how this footage will be used.
While blanket surveillance disproportionately affects the communities most vulnerable to federal oversight due to factors such as immigration status, visa status or involvement in activism, it equally threatens every student’s right to speak, protest and organize. The blatant invasion of privacy stifles speech, discouraging students from being politically engaged and visible in the public space.
Whether UC Berkeley refuses to participate in this surveillance regime has become a litmus test for the campus’s purported commitment to protecting student rights. UC Berkeley has not been shown to have shared ALPR data with federal immigration agencies. However, this is not an excuse for passivity from the administration, as actions of UC Merced and UC Riverside make clear that such a possibility cannot be dismissed.
As of writing, UC Berkeley has denied to The Daily Californian that any Flock data was shared outside of a set of 208 approved agencies. The Editorial Board understands the campus’s legal obligations to protect certain private information, yet it cannot use prudence as a justification for opacity.
And regardless of whether UC Berkeley is found to have shared such data, their alleged mishandling of public records requests is inexcusable. Specifically, Daniel Negrete, director of the Ellis Collective, has threatened legal action against UC Berkeley after filing suit against the UC Regents over UC Riverside improperly responding to public records requests — a process that allows people to obtain records from public agencies. Disclosure of certain records is mandated by both state laws and the federal Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, and is essential to maintain the transparency required for democratic governance.
So, if UC Berkeley is to expose student data to the federal government, it would continue the pattern of capitulation it has, unfortunately, become known for. However, it is still possible to correct course, protecting students and living up to the virtues it proclaims.
To accomplish this, the Editorial Board demands that UC Berkeley’s administration take tangible steps to ensure that ALPR and other sensitive student data are not shared with any organization outside of the approved 208 agencies and to comply with any FOIA requests in a timely manner.
The combination of campus and the national political atmosphere has eroded trust in public institutions, and for good reason: UC Berkeley’s student body has seen little backbone from its administration regarding the protection of their rights. Responding to FOIA requests is the first step in regaining that trust. Before upcoming litigation, such as Negrete’s potential lawsuit, forces disclosure, UC Berkeley should be amicable in its communication and transparent with the press, students and the general public, detailing which agencies have access to collected data and what safeguards exist to prevent such data from reaching federal immigration authorities.
Most importantly, UC Berkeley should not comply with any request for data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
As UC Berkeley has continually targeted students for exercising their right to freedom of speech, it becomes easy to believe that silence is the ultimate protection against such flagrant breaches of privacy. After all, the individuals whose names were shared were outspoken against university policies and investments.
However, the findings of the Ellis Collective showcase that the UC system is indiscriminate in its violation of students’ privacy. By handing ALPR data over to the federal government and allegedly refusing to disclose public records, the UC system has made it clear that its operations are contingent on the desires of the federal administration and the private companies it contracts with, rather than the beliefs or actions of students themselves.
In light of this, the Editorial Board affirms that sharing student-sensitive data with unaccountable outside parties is never acceptable. We call upon Chancellor Rich Lyons and the UC Board of Regents to act decisively to address this issue and end these legally dubious and immoral violations of student privacy.