{"id":384183,"date":"2026-07-02T22:08:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T22:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/384183\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T22:08:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T22:08:25","slug":"2-4-million-surveillance-contract-with-flock-approved-by-alameda-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/384183\/","title":{"rendered":"$2.4 million surveillance contract with Flock approved by Alameda County"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alameda County\u2019s new $2.4 million contract extension<\/a> with Flock Safety, approved by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, includes automated license plate readers, which capture data from the backs of passing vehicles; pan-tilt-zoom cameras that provide operators with a real-time view of public areas; and a fleet of drones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sheriff\u2019s department will also have access to Nova, software that allows users to centralize data from computer-aided dispatch and record management systems and access open-source intelligence data.<\/p>\n

But Alameda County leaders\u2019 approval of the powerful new police surveillance technologies comes just as new concerns about who can access all this sensitive data were aired out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last month, San Francisco police revealed<\/a> that a \u201cfusion center\u201d known as the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) accessed data from San Francisco\u2019s Flock system. A different fusion center, the Western States Information Network, illegally searched NCRIC\u2019s data on behalf of out-of-state and federal agencies. <\/p>\n

California law<\/a> bars the state\u2019s law enforcement agencies from sharing license plate reader data outside of the state, but officials have repeatedly violated this rule.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SFPD shared data collected from OPD\u2019s Flock system with multiple federal agencies, according to reports<\/a> last year. These violations have received more public scrutiny during the Trump administration because license plate readers have been used by ICE and others to track immigrants, or by police in Texas and other states that have outlawed abortions against people seeking reproductive healthcare.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sheriff\u2019s office staff said Tuesday at the supervisors\u2019 meeting that they conducted an audit and confirmed that the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center and the Western States Information Network accessed the county\u2019s system and improperly shared data. They said these searches were for legitimate law enforcement purposes and only applied to a small fraction of the overall searches conducted over the past year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez said she responded by reducing the number of agencies her office directly shares data with. Sanchez said that her office has taken significant steps to prevent further abuses of state law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI am disclosing to you and the community what happened, and what corrective actions we took,\u201d Sanchez said, adding that her office \u201cshut off half the state\u201d in response.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Concerns about Flock and how police use its data aren\u2019t new<\/p>\n

Some county officials have expressed reservations about Flock, citing news reports detailing how the company\u2019s surveillance tools have been used by law enforcement track people seeking reproductive healthcare and search for undocumented immigrants<\/a>. The sheriff stressed that the agreement with Flock is a \u201cbridge\u201d contract while the county conducts a request for proposals from other vendors for a future agreement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This promise didn\u2019t assuage Supervisors Nikki Fortunato Bas and Elisa M\u00e1rquez, who voted against the contract.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bas said she appreciated some additional safeguards the sheriff incorporated into the agreement, but asked to hold the item to consider further changes proposed by Secure Justice<\/a>, a nonprofit government watchdog group. Brian Hofer, Secure Justice\u2019s executive director and an Oakland resident, sued<\/a> Oakland last year for allegedly sharing license plate reader data with federal police.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, this isn\u2019t about the technology. I know we need it,\u201d M\u00e1rquez said. \u201cBut we need to have stronger safeguards in this county, which we currently don\u2019t have.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Supervisors David Haubert and Nate Miley were unmoved by these arguments. Miley said he wouldn\u2019t be doing his job if he denied the sheriff access to this technology. The sheriff has already addressed concerns previously expressed by the board, he said. This included outlining restrictions around sharing of data, affirming the county\u2019s control and ownership of Flock data, and demanding immediate notification of breaches, among other things.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Haubert stated bluntly that he doesn\u2019t believe the Flock cameras are being misused.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThese cameras are meant to keep us safe,\u201d Haubert said. \u201cI don\u2019t believe that they are widely used by ICE. Has it been that it\u2019s happened? I don\u2019t think it\u2019s widely used by the federal government. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s used to surveil people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

While ICE doesn\u2019t have direct access to Flock cameras, local law enforcement agencies outside of California have knowingly and purposefully shared data from their own systems with that agency, according to 404Media<\/a>. And Flock\u2019s surveillance capabilities are vast: Oakland\u2019s license plate reader system captured data from over 638 million license plates<\/a> last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Haubert argued that if the board didn\u2019t take action on Tuesday the sheriff would be out of contract with Flock. It\u2019s not clear what would have happened if the county had postponed its decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oakland approved<\/a> its current contract with Flock last December. But as of several months ago, OPD acknowledged that it hadn\u2019t finalized the contract, according to the Oakland Observer<\/a>. In April, OPD told The Oaklandside that the contract process was ongoing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Haubert also dismissed the critique that Flock cameras disproportionately target people of color. He recognized Brenda Grisham, a Black Oakland business owner and mayoral candidate, who was sitting in the audience during the supervisors\u2019 meeting to express support for Flock. Grisham has been a vocal defender of Flock in other cities, including Richmond<\/a> and Berkeley<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is never going to be a perfect system, but we have the system working for us,\u201d Grisham said during Tuesday\u2019s meeting. She said that her daughter\u2019s car was recently stolen and recovered with help from license plate readers. Grisham was one of a handful of people who urged the board to approve the contract, including another Oakland mayoral candidate, Mindy Pechenuk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Roughly 40 people asked the board to spike the deal with Flock, with many raising familiar concerns about how this technology can infringe on privacy and civil liberties. Mike Katz, the director of the advocacy group Oakland Privacy<\/a>, pointed out that the county\u2019s agreement with Flock retains data captured on the license plate reader system for 365 days, which is far longer than in most other jurisdictions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A homeowner and business owner who identified himself as Jordan warned the board that Alameda County is becoming more embedded with Flock with each passing year, making it harder for officials to extract themselves from their relationship with the company.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are not acting in good faith. They do not have the best intentions,\u201d said Jordan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alameda County\u2019s new $2.4 million contract extension with Flock Safety, approved by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[57536,155163,105606,75057,69656,28555,94789,16582,143,145,144,407],"class_list":["post-384183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-county-board-of-supervisors","tag-brenda-grisham","tag-brian-hofer","tag-david-haubert","tag-elisa-marquez","tag-flock-safety","tag-nate-miley","tag-nikki-fortunato-bas","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-police-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384183","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=384183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}