{"id":181942,"date":"2026-02-17T21:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T21:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/181942\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T21:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T21:08:09","slug":"san-jose-can-protect-immigrants-by-ending-flock-surveillance-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/181942\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose Can Protect Immigrants by Ending Flock Surveillance System"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This appeared as an op-ed published February 12, 2026 in the San Jose Spotlight<\/a>, written by Huy Tran (SIREN), Jeffrey Wang (CAIR-SFBA), and Jennifer Pinsof.)<\/p>\n

As ICE and other federal agencies continue their assault on civil liberties, local leaders are stepping up to protect their communities. This includes pushing back against automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, which are tools of mass surveillance that can be weaponized against immigrants, political dissidents and other targets.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, Mountain View, Los Altos Hills, Santa Cruz, East Palo Alto and Santa Clara County have begun reconsidering their ALPR programs. San Jose should join them. This dangerous technology poses an unacceptable risk to the safety of immigrants and other vulnerable populations.<\/p>\n

ALPRs are marketed to promote public safety. But their utility is debatable and they come with significant drawbacks. They don\u2019t just track \u201ccriminals.\u201d They track everyone, all the time. Your vehicle\u2019s movements can reveal where you work, worship and obtain medical care. ALPR vendors like Flock Safety put the location information of millions of drivers into databases, allowing anyone with access to instantly reconstruct the public\u2019s movements.<\/p>\n

But \u201canyone with access\u201d is far broader than just local police. Some California law enforcement agencies have used ALPR networks to run searches\u00a0related to immigration enforcement<\/a>. In other situations, purported issues with the system\u2019s software have enabled federal agencies to directly access California ALPR data. This is despite the promises of ALPR vendors and clear legal prohibitions.<\/p>\n

Communities are saying enough is enough. Just last week, police in Mountain View decided to\u00a0turn off all of the city\u2019s Flock cameras<\/a>, following revelations that federal and other unauthorized agencies had\u00a0accessed their network<\/a>. The cameras will remain inactive until the City Council provides further direction.<\/p>\n

Other localities have shut off the cameras for good. In January,\u00a0Los Altos Hills terminated its contract<\/a>\u00a0with Flock following concerns about ICE.\u00a0Santa Cruz severed relations with Flock<\/a>, citing rising tensions with ICE. Most recently,\u00a0East Palo Alto<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Santa Clara County<\/a>\u00a0are reconsidering whether to continue their relationships with Flock, given heightened concern for the safety of immigrant communities.<\/p>\n

California law prohibits local police from disclosing ALPR data to out-of-state or federal agencies. But\u00a0at least 75 California police agencies<\/a>\u00a0were sharing these records out-of-state as recently as 2023. Just last year, San Francisco police allowed access to out-of-state agencies and 19 searches were\u00a0related to ICE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even without direct access, ICE can exploit local ALPR systems. One investigation found\u00a0more than 4,000 cases<\/a>\u00a0where police had made searches on behalf of federal law enforcement, including for immigration investigations.<\/p>\n

Increasing the risk is that law enforcement routinely searches these networks without first obtaining a warrant. In San Jose, police aren\u2019t required to have any\u00a0suspicion of wrongdoing before searching ALPR databases, which contain a year\u2019s worth of data representing hundreds of millions of records. In a little over a year, San Jose police logged\u00a0more than 261,000 ALPR searches<\/a>, or nearly 700 searches a day, all without a warrant.<\/p>\n

Two nonprofit organizations, SIREN and CAIR California, represented by Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Northern California, are currently suing to\u00a0stop San Jose\u2019s warrantless searches of ALPR data<\/a>. But this is only the first step. A better solution is to simply turn these cameras off.<\/p>\n

San Jose cannot afford delay. Each day these cameras remain active, they collect sensitive location data that can be misused to target immigrant families and violate fundamental freedoms. It is a risk materializing across California. City leaders must act now to shut down ALPR systems and make clear that public safety will not come at the expense of privacy, human dignity or community trust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(This appeared as an op-ed published February 12, 2026 in the San Jose Spotlight, written by Huy Tran…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":{"0":"post-181942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-san-jose","9":"tag-san-jose-headlines","10":"tag-san-jose-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}