{"id":271546,"date":"2026-04-16T22:59:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T22:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/271546\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T22:59:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T22:59:15","slug":"san-jose-residents-sue-city-saying-flock-safety-cameras-allow-mass-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/271546\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jos\u00e9 Residents Sue City, Saying Flock Safety Cameras Allow \u2018Mass Surveillance\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

City officials have said this can be helpful to follow a suspect\u2019s vehicle movements between nearby jurisdictions. In recent months, though, some Bay Area cities have amended their controls around data sharing after discoveries that their records had been accessed by out-of-state-agencies, including to aid in federal immigration enforcement activities in violation of local Sanctuary policies.<\/p>\n

More than two dozen municipalities across the U.S. \u2014 including Santa Cruz<\/a> and Los Altos Hills <\/a>\u2014 have terminated contracts with Flock altogether. Others, like Oakland and San Francisco, have doubled down on their contracts<\/a>,\u00a0 lauding the technology\u2019s benefits to aid in investigations and even curb dangerous vehicle collisions.<\/p>\n

But the San Jos\u00e9 residents represented in the suit say that the city\u2019s more than 470 cameras have\u00a0 created a system of \u201cmass surveillance.\u201d\u00a0 Plaintiff Zhaocheng Anthony said in court documents that the system \u201creminds him of the Chinese surveillance state.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPervasively tracking a person\u2019s movements and then storing them in a government database \u2026 creates precisely the type of suffocating atmosphere of surveillance the Framers adopted the Fourth Amendment to prevent,\u201d the suit reads. \u201cPolice no longer need to identify suspects in advance to place them under surveillance; they just surveil everyone instead.\u201d<\/p>\n

The residents say that Flock can create \u201cvehicle journey maps\u201d that can be traced to a driver, allowing the city to track residents\u2019 routines, habits and outings, especially to sensitive locations like health care clinics, places of worship and protests.<\/p>\n

\"\"San Jos\u00e9 Mayor Matt Mahan helps to install a Flock Safety brand automated license plate reader on April 23, 2024. The city and Mahan are now being sued by civil liberties groups over the technology\u2019s uses. (Joseph Geha\/KQED)<\/p>\n

In March, San Jos\u00e9\u2019s city council put restrictions<\/a> on where the city can position cameras, including near reproductive health care facilities and places of worship; reduced the default data retention period from one year to 30 days; and added new documentation and authentication requirements for agencies requesting sharing access.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0 San Jose Police Department has robust, transparent policies in place to ensure that the information is not misused in any way, including policies that prohibit direct access to the data to private entities, out-of-state law enforcement agencies, or federal agencies,\u201d City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood said in a statement. \u201cAccess to our ALPR system is tightly controlled and limited to authorized SJPD personnel only.\u201d<\/p>\n

SJPD said it conducted a review of internal and external searches in 2025, and found that \u201call searches were in compliance with department policy and California law.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City officials have said this can be helpful to follow a suspect\u2019s vehicle movements between nearby jurisdictions. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":{"0":"post-271546","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\/271546","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=271546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}