{"id":213544,"date":"2026-03-10T19:43:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T19:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/213544\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T19:43:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T19:43:06","slug":"council-poised-to-move-on-new-guardrails-on-license-plate-cameras-the-mercury-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/213544\/","title":{"rendered":"Council poised to move on new guardrails on license-plate cameras \u2013 The Mercury News"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN JOSE \u2014 The City Council looks poised to move ahead with new restrictions on data retention and access regarding its vast network<\/a> of automated license-plate reader cameras, a strong nod toward preserving the polarizing technology as other Bay Area jurisdictions have sought to curtail them.<\/p>\n

Council members are scheduled to vote Tuesday on limits instituted and proposed by the San Jose Police Department, aimed at shrinking the period it keeps plate images recorded by the 474 Flock Systems cameras installed throughout the city and restricting access to federal and immigration agencies. The council\u2019s backing came as civil-liberties groups maintain their opposition \u2014 including suing the city<\/a> \u2014 to what they call the normalization of warrantless surveillance of citizens.<\/p>\n

In a memo released late last month, Police Chief Paul Joseph informed the council that his department had revised internal protocols to require California police to provide detailed reasoning for their data requests, and require a police commander to approve requests from agencies that don\u2019t already have access agreements with SJPD. He added that the department disabled a \u201cFederal Sharing\u201d setting in its data portal to block requests from federal agencies.<\/p>\n

Joseph asked the council Tuesday to codify into city law his department\u2019s proposals to shrink the retention period for plate data from one year to 30 days, and ban cameras from recording vehicles entering and leaving houses of worship and reproductive health clinics. Most of the city\u2019s elected leadership has held up the ALPR cameras as a vital crime-fighting tool that needs strong oversight rather than reduction.<\/p>\n

After reviewing Joseph\u2019s memo, council members Domingo Candelas, Pamela Campos, David Cohen, Michael Mulcahy and George Casey issued a joint memo co-signing Joseph\u2019s proposed changes and requesting that Consulate General offices \u2014 particularly the Mexican Consulate \u2014 be included in the category of protected spaces. The joint memo also asked the city to explore \u201calternative\u201d plate-reader vendors, mandate disclosures to council of any unauthorized data access, ban future integration of facial recognition and biometric software, and ensure that generative AI models are not training on the plate data.<\/p>\n

Councilmember Peter Ortiz endorsed his colleagues\u2019 supplemental memo, and requested that \u201chealth care facilities that primarily offer gender-affirming care\u201d also be protected from surveillance by the plate readers.<\/p>\n

The changes appear to be, at least in part, a response to concerns about plate reader access by agencies from out of state, which are not subject to California law that prohibits local police from participating in immigration-related actions.<\/p>\n

A security analyst, who requested anonymity out of fear of professional retaliation, conducted research for this news organization<\/a> indicating that as recently as June 2025, San Jose police fulfilled plate data searches requested by other California agencies in instances the analyst described as tied to federal authorities, including inquiries related to ICE protests. Civil liberties groups argue that such \u201cside-door\u201d searches could conflict with state laws and First Amendment protections.<\/p>\n

Both SJPD and the city have denied that any of its data was accessed by immigration officials, and maintain that searches that included terms \u201cDEA,\u201d \u201cICE\u201d and \u201cHSI,\u201d while troubling at first glance, were not actually conducted on behalf of federal agencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a responsibility to ensure the technology we use to support our police department are held to the same high standard as our officers,\u201d Mayor Matt Mahan said in a statement ahead of Tuesday\u2019s council meeting. \u201cI applaud Chief Joseph for putting forward safeguards that ensure we can continue to leverage this technology responsibly and for its intended purpose \u2014 keeping San Joseans safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU of Northern California contend that ALPR cameras facilitate unconstitutional, warrantless searches given officers have no requirement to prove probable cause of a crime when searching the plate data. The two heavyweight civil-rights organizations are suing the city on behalf of the immigrant-rights organization SIREN and the Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.<\/p>\n

The plaintiff groups and their allies point to several instances where local Bay Area governments have decided to stop using the cameras after revelations of federal access to the corresponding plate data. In a statement Tuesday, SIREN and 16 other groups that advocate for causes including reproductive, immigration and privacy rights called for ending San Jose\u2019s contract with Flock, and failing that, aligned with the council members\u2019 supplemental requests for routine auditing, and mandated disclosure policies when unauthorized access occurs.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter how perfect the policy, the current federal government has proven that there are no bounds to their campaign of terror on immigrants and dissenters,\u201d Kimberly Woo, a community organizer with SIREN, said in the statement. \u201cWe must refuse any AI mass surveillance weapon that has already been used against our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the past three months, several Bay Area cities and municipalities have moved to terminate or disable their contracts with Flock Systems, one of the preeminent vendors of ALPR technology. The Mountain View City Council voted last month to end its contract with Flock<\/a> after the police chief said federal agencies had unauthorized access to a city camera in 2024, owing to a \u201cnationwide\u201d search setting unwittingly enabled. Santa Cruz leaders voted in January to stop using the cameras<\/a> under similar circumstances. Richmond did the same in December.<\/p>\n

Santa Clara County supervisors voted last month to prohibit the sheriff\u2019s office<\/a> \u2014 which carries out policing contracts in Cupertino and Saratoga \u2014 from pulling data from the Flock cameras, setting the stage for potential new vendor to step in.<\/p>\n

In Oakland, approved in December a two-year, $2.25 million Flock contract,<\/a> with the Oakland chapter of the NAACP supporting the cameras as a useful crime-fighting tool, pitting them against privacy advocates<\/a> who initially convinced city leaders to turn it down. El Cerrito police acknowledged last month that ALPR data was errantly made available to federal agencies<\/a>, but the cameras remain with pledges of new safeguards to prevent unauthorized access.<\/p>\n

A Flock spokesperson has said on several occasions that individual cities and municipalities should be self-determining with regards to their use of the cameras. The company has also responded to worries about facial recognition and other surveillance technologies creeping into the system by emphasizing the cameras only record vehicles\u2019 license plates.<\/p>\n

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2014 The City Council looks poised to move ahead with new restrictions on data retention and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[35939,28554,1279,35938,35937,7545,194,236,18176,9295,42807,88,90,89,5569],"class_list":["post-213544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-alpr","tag-automated-license-plate-readers","tag-data","tag-eff","tag-electronic-frontier-foundation","tag-license-plates","tag-mountain-view","tag-police","tag-policies","tag-privacy","tag-retention","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-sjpd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213544","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=213544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}