San Jose and its police department routinely violate the California Constitution by conducting warrantless searches of the stored records of millions of drivers’ private habits, movements and associations, a lawsuit filed this month has charged.
The lawsuit, filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC) on behalf of the Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations – California (CAIR-CA), challenges San Jose police officers’ practice of searching for location information collected by automated license plate readers (ALPRs) without first getting a warrant.
ALPRs are high-speed, computer-controlled cameras that automatically capture images of the license plates of every driver that passes by. The cameras, the ACLU suit alleges, represent “invasive mass-surveillance technology…without any suspicion that the driver has broken the law.”
“A person who regularly drives through an area subject to ALPR surveillance can have their location information captured multiple times per day,” the lawsuit says. “This information can reveal travel patterns and provide an intimate window into a person’s life as they travel from home to work, drop off their children at school, or park at a house of worship, a doctor’s office, or a protest. It could also reveal whether a person crossed state lines to seek health care in California.”
The San Jose Police Department has blanketed the city streets with nearly 500 ALPRs – collecting millions of records per month about people’s movements – and keeps this data for an entire year.
The department permits its officers and other law enforcement officials from across the state to search this ALPR database to instantly reconstruct people’s locations over time – without first getting a warrant.
“This is an unchecked police power to scrutinize the movements of San Jose’s residents and visitors as they lawfully travel to work, to the doctor, or to a protest,” the lawsuit said.
San Jose’s ALPR surveillance program goes beyond the norm in most California police departments. Few California law enforcement agencies retain ALPR data for an entire year, and few have deployed nearly 500 cameras.
The lawsuit, which names the city, Police Chief Paul Joseph and Mayor Matt Mahan as defendants, asks the court to stop the city and its police from searching ALPR data without first obtaining a warrant. Location information reflecting people’s physical movements, even in public spaces, is protected under the Fourth Amendment according to U.S. Supreme Court case law, the lawsuit continued. “The California Constitution is even more protective of location privacy, at both Article I, Section 13 (the ban on unreasonable searches) and Article I, Section 1 (the guarantee of privacy),” according to the suit. “The SJPD’s widespread collection and searches of ALPR information poses serious threats to communities’ privacy and freedom of movement.”
“This is not just about data or technology — it’s about power, accountability, and our right to move freely without being watched,” said CAIR-San Francisco Bay Area Executive Director Zahra Billoo. “For Muslim communities, and for anyone who has experienced profiling, the knowledge that police can track your every move without cause is chilling. San Jose’s mass surveillance program violates the California Constitution and undermines the privacy rights of every person who drives through the city. We’re going to court to make sure those protections still mean something.”
“The right to privacy is one of the strongest protections that our immigrant communities have in the face of these acts of violence and terrorism from the federal government,” said SIREN Executive Director Huy Tran. “This case does not raise the question of whether these cameras should be used. What we need to guard against is a surveillance state, particularly when we have seen other cities or counties violate laws that prohibit collaborating with ICE. We can protect the privacy rights of our residents with one simple rule: Access to the data should only happen once approved under a judicial warrant.”
For the complaint: https://www.eff.org/files/2025/11/18/siren_v._san_jose_-_filed_complaint.pdf
For more about ALPRs: https://sls.eff.org/technologies/automated-license-plate-readers-alprs
Homeland Security complaint filed
The ACLU also has filed a Freedom of Information request, seeking disclosure of records that reveal that immigration agents in California “have threatened, brandished guns, and arrested those who record their raids.”
Following a troubling wave of retaliations against journalists, advocates, and bystanders recording immigration enforcement activity in public view, the ACLU and ACLU of Northern California filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seeking transparency about DHS’s policies and practices related to people filming immigration and law enforcement activity.
The FOIA requests filed come after multiple incidents of aggressive hostility towards those who record immigration and law enforcement activity in public.
For example, in June, immigration agents threw to the ground and arrested a U.S. citizen filming immigration agents detaining workers at a Home Depot parking lot in Hollywood.The requests also seek answers about agency targeting of individuals or organizations that record and share documentation regarding immigration raids and arrests.
“If the Department of Homeland Security needs a reminder: the right to record immigration and law enforcement activity is squarely protected by the First Amendment” said Byul Yoon, legal fellow at the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project. “We are concerned that activists, journalists, and concerned bystanders are at risk of assault and arrest, simply for sharing information about public safety in their communities. We demand transparency into this unconstitutional practice, and we must ensure that the government is held accountable for these egregious violations.”
“This is part of a broader Trump administration strategy to intimidate and silence people who document immigration enforcement or criticize government actions” said Jake Snow, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “The First Amendment robustly protects expressions of disapproval, advocacy for reform, and demand for governmental accountability. This speech is protected even when the criticism is severe or politically charged.”
The requests were filed with DHS as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The federal government has 20 business days to respond to the request.
The FOIA request can be found here.