\u201cIn America’s finest city, we want to have not America’s biggest surveillance state, but America’s finest protection of our residents,\u201d said Frederick Carroll, legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union. \u201cAnd that does not happen with that surveillance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit names the city, Mayor Todd Gloria and San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl. Both the mayor’s office and the police department declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carroll said lawyers in other parts of the country have also filed suits to block automated license plate readers in their cities. He said the Northern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union sued over the issue in San Jose. That case is still pending.<\/p>\n He said the requests that the lawsuit makes to remedy the issue in the San Diego case are unique among the lawsuits he’s aware of. Instead of seeking compensation for individual people harmed by the surveillance \u2014 such as someone wrongfully arrested<\/a> because the system told police that the person was at the scene of a crime when they were not, which happened in San Diego already \u2014 the lawsuit calls for a judicial order ending use of the cameras on state constitutional grounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCancel the contract. Pull down the cameras,\u201d Carroll said. \u201cDelete the data. Restore our privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n The cameras don’t just record license plates, Carroll said. They record everything within their line of sight. That includes children’s faces passing by them on the way to school, the hats and tattoos of drivers with their windows down and even bumper stickers, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat data goes into a database that is then searchable by human beings, police officers and artificial intelligence to create an entire mosaic of a person’s existence,\u201d Carroll said. \u201cWhether you go to the beach, to a house of worship, to the mountains, to someplace with your kids, to a meeting, you are being tracked in San Diego by these cameras that can then recreate all of your movements so that people can come and look at it.\u201d<\/p>\n Article 1 of the California Constitution includes a right to privacy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Homayra Yusufi with the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans said that many of the immigrants and refugees that her organization works with are scared to leave their homes because they know law enforcement has access to this level of surveillance.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yusufi pointed to instances around the country when law enforcement have used surveillance technology to track people seeking reproductive care, protesters and people who attended a Pride parade.<\/p>\n \u201cThese vulnerable communities might be in the crosshairs right now, but we are all at risk of becoming the next disfavored group,\u201d Yusufi said.<\/p>\n She said that while law enforcement has used the technology to target these groups, it has also failed to protect<\/a> vulnerable people from violent attacks, including when two White supremacist teens opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego in May, killing three men who tried to protect the mosque and school.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you compile the fact that these are ineffective technologies and who they are surveilling and targeting, we have to recognize that this technology is being used against us, not for us,\u201d Yusufi said.<\/p>\n Seth Hall of Trust SD Coalition said that the city has used the technology irresponsibly and without transparency.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen faced with a crushing amount of debt and lack of funding for our city, our city has decided to shut down critical services for our neighbors like libraries and homeless services, and have withheld funding for things like safety for our disabled neighbors on sidewalks in favor of maintaining this mass surveillance technology,\u201d Hall said.<\/p>\n While the city cut hours to libraries and reduced other public services, it maintained<\/a> the $2 million in its budget for the license plate readers in fiscal 2027.<\/p>\n According to Yusufi, the city is late in releasing its next report concerning automated license plate reader use. She said the groups will be calling on community members to join them<\/a> at city hall when the report does come out to once again protest the surveillance.<\/p>\n Sign up for Daylight San Diego<\/p>\n News and information that is for San Diego’s diverse communities, not just about them.<\/p>\n No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we can mount enough pressure, and there is enough of us day in and day out saying that we don’t want this, we hope that we can win,\u201d Yusufi said.<\/p>\n Both Yusufi and Carroll emphasized that the lawsuit is one facet of the organizations\u2019 strategy to get rid of the surveillance devices.<\/p>\n Carroll said no amount of safeguards could protect people sufficiently from the technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the kind of technology that is dangerous in any hands, and we know the hands that it’s in \u2014 law enforcement these days are not particularly keen on protecting our communities,\u201d Carroll said. \u201cThis is technology that is unsafe when it’s used correctly and even worse when it’s used incorrectly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/2026-Membership-Campaign-Goal-Tracker-3.png\"){kind=tracking}
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Frederick Carroll, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties speaks during a press conference outside the Hall of Justice in downtown San Diego on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. Kate Morrissey\/Daylight San Diego<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/flocklawsuit-09.jpg\")
Homayra Yusufi of the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans speaks during a press conference outside the Hall of Justice in downtown San Diego on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. Kate Morrissey\/Daylight San Diego<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/flocklawsuit-07.jpg\")
Seth Hall with Trust SD Coalition speaks during a press conference outside the Hall of Justice in downtown San Diego on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. Kate Morrissey\/Daylight San Diego<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Dark-Beach-for-background-on-sign-up.png\")
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