San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight has learned the practice repeated elsewhere in the county.<\/p>\n
Police in Massachusetts, Georgia and other states appeared hundreds of times in a camera network audit of neighboring Los\u00a0 Altos, whose 18 cameras remain operational. The city\u2019s network logged 20 searches by out-of-state police for \u201cimmigration violation\u201d reasons in the first two months of 2025, according to records obtained by this news outlet.<\/p>\n
California law has barred police departments from sharing license plate reading camera data with out-of-state or federal agencies for any reason since 2016, under Senate Bill 34. The law has been invoked in debates about the cameras\u2019 use and their role in federal immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis looks unlawful,\u201d Brian Hofer, executive director of Bay Area civil rights group Secure Justice, told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight. He reviewed multiple the camera records at this news outlet\u2019s request. \u201cIt definitely looks like Los Altos wasn\u2019t paying attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Los Altos officials said Flock had enabled a national and statewide \u201clookup\u201d feature on their network of cameras without notifying the city or seeking its permission. Officials said they switched off the setting after discovering it, and added they don\u2019t believe camera data was unlawfully accessed. One immigration-related search appeared in Los Altos\u2019 logs even though it had set a filter excluding all networks outside Arizona, according to the data.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe network audit identifies all agencies within the broader Flock Safety network during a given period. It does not indicate they had access to or searched Los Altos\u2019 specific data,\u201d City Manager Gabriel Engeland told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight. \u201cWhile we believe our data has not been improperly accessed, this can ultimately only be confirmed by Flock. \u2026 We are limited by the fact that we cannot independently corroborate their internal system logs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flock Safety spokesperson Paris Lewbel said the contract cancelations will move public safety backward and prolong the time it takes to solve criminal cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand communities expect strong guardrails and full compliance with California law,\u201d Lewbel told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight. \u201cFlock has implemented enhanced safeguards across the state, including disabling the national lookup feature for California agencies, blocking out-of-state discoverability, preventing federal access to California agency data and supporting agencies in auditing and confirming their settings.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Los Altos City Council had already adopted a policy restricting data sharing. In November, the city further restricted its data sharing to police departments in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and Santa Cruz counties. The city revoked search approvals for every other California agency outside this four-county boundary, including the California Highway Patrol.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am disappointed in some of Flock\u2019s business practices that have been out of our control and of which we have been unaware,\u201d Los Altos Police Chief Saskia Lagergren told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight. \u201cI have been frustrated with the lack of transparency by Flock and with their lack of communication to their customers about the various settings in their system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Santa Clara unaware\u00a0<\/p>\n
Santa Clara\u2019s camera logs, obtained by this news outlet, show the city\u2019s network was included in thousands of searches by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department for multiple months last year. In March, Santa Clara\u2019s network was included in 5,600 out-of-state searches by the Nevada law enforcement agency. There are 80 license plate reading cameras in the city.<\/p>\n
Santa Clara Police Lt. Eric Lagergren \u2014 who is the Los Altos police chief\u2019s husband \u2013 said Santa Clara wasn\u2019t aware of the issue until after the searches had been made. He similarly denied the notion that Santa Clara actively shared data with Las Vegas thousands of times.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose logs reflect instances in which a search query included multiple agency networks,\u201d Lagergren told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight. \u201cThe audit logs do not show the number of Santa Clara records returned in response to any query, nor do they indicate that Santa Clara data was specifically targeted or transferred in each instance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Feb. 24 board of supervisors vote to cut ties with Flock means the Sheriff\u2019s Office cannot access any images or data from its Flock cameras. Before the vote, the sheriff\u2019s office had been operating license plate reading cameras in Los Altos Hills, Cupertino and Saratoga, which all contract with the sheriff rather than having their own police departments. The Los Altos Hills Town Council voted to remove its cameras prior to the county\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n
Some supervisors stood by the use of license plate reader cameras, but couched their concerns solely on Flock as a vendor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not an indictment of our sheriff\u2019s office. This is not an indictment of our surveillance use policy,\u201d District 2 Supervisor Betty Duong said at the meeting. \u201cWhat we have here is notice of a bad vendor that all signs are telling us to not get in bed with.\u201d<\/p>\n
District 4 Supervisor Susan Ellenberg differed with her colleagues and took issue with the license plate reading cameras as a whole.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlternative (vendors) are not necessarily any safer and we don\u2019t know what tomorrow\u2019s news story will bring about Axon or any other provider,\u201d Ellenberg said at the meeting.<\/p>\n
Immigrant rights advocates agree.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe keep getting told this tech is there to stop crime \u2014 to fight crime \u2014 but what happens when the definition of crime expands to include dissent?\u201d Huy Tran, executive director of Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN), told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight.<\/p>\n
SIREN has partnered with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California to sue San Jose police for warrantless searches<\/a> of their 474 Flock cameras.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the risk we create with a mass surveillance system where the only source of protection is faith in the people who control it,\u201d Tran said.<\/p>\n
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