![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_3545-scaled-1.jpg\")
A Flock Safety automated license plate reader camera in Oakland. The nonprofit Secure Justice has threatened to sue Berkeley unless it drops all its contracts with Flock, which manufactures Berkeley\u2019s ALPRs. Credit: Darwin BondGraham\/The Oaklandside<\/p>\n
Facing threats of a lawsuit over its crime-fighting surveillance network, Berkeley is tightening its rules on who can collect data in the city and how, seeking to keep the data out of federal immigration agents\u2019 hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Critics of the surveillance program say there\u2019s reason to worry the Trump administration will abuse it to carry out its agenda of mass deportations, and that other states will do the same to enforce their restrictions on reproductive and other medical rights.<\/p>\n
A two-year, $425,000 contract with Flock Safety for the Berkeley Police Department\u2019s network of automated license plate readers<\/a> (ALPRs), is up for renewal in the coming months, while a separate $310,000 deal for a network of fixed surveillance cameras<\/a> was also supposed to go to Flock, but now may go to a different vendor.<\/p>\n Georgia-based Flock has come under national scrutiny for how its hardware passes data from agency to agency, including to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Officials in Chicago have accused it of violating a state law<\/a> that forbids sharing certain data with immigration agents, and a number of sanctuary cities have cut ties with the firm.\u00a0<\/p>\n Berkeley police say they are confident that the rules in place will keep data in existing or proposed networks secure, and that the surveillance technology is needed to keep the city safe with their department perpetually understaffed.\u00a0<\/p>\n But opponents are not convinced, criticizing the department for a recent incident where the California Highway Patrol and police in Southern California were able to search Berkeley\u2019s ALPR network for terms like \u201cICE\u201d and \u201cCBP,\u201d the acronym for Customs and Border Protection. And opponents point to reports<\/a> accusing San Francisco police of illegally accessing Oakland\u2019s system and turning ALPR data over to federal law enforcement multiple times.<\/p>\n Secure Justice, a nonprofit that this week sued Oakland police over their alleged breach<\/a>, has threatened to sue Berkeley unless it drops all its contracts, present and future, with Flock, alleging that the city has violated many of its own rules. If Berkeley is found liable it could be on the hook for up to $5,000 per violation, plus attorney fees; if a court rules Flock violated the ordinance, it could be fined $1,000 per violation.<\/p>\n The city denies any violation of state law or city ordinance, saying that despite Flock\u2019s widely publicized troubles elsewhere, Berkeley\u2019s network is locked down and secure. Berkeley \u201ccannot base its contracting decisions on unsubstantiated speculation regarding Flock\u2019s conduct,\u201d City Attorney Farimah F. Brown wrote in response to Secure Justice\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n One of the city ordinances in question, Berkeley\u2019s Sanctuary Contracting Ordinance, prohibits the city from doing business in most cases with organizations that provide \u201cdata broker\u201d or \u201cextreme vetting\u201d services to ICE. Attorneys for the city, while acknowledging recent revelations about Flock\u2019s data from elsewhere winding up in the hands of federal immigration agents, said there\u2019s no evidence the firm had hit either of those specific thresholds.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s still unclear what the City Council will decide about the pair of Flock contracts, it voted unanimously on Tuesday for a couple tweaks that make Berkeley\u2019s Sanctuary Contracting Ordinance even more restrictive.<\/p>\n Instead of singling out ICE, the ordinance now bans Berkeley from contracting with any firm doing extreme vetting or data broker work for \u201cany person or agency\u201d working on federal immigration enforcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf we are prohibiting our vendors from helping ICE with deportations, as the current sanctuary city contracting ordinance says, they should also not be able to help CBP with deportations,\u201d Councilmember Cecilia Lunaparra wrote in an email.<\/p>\n And if the city determines there has been a violation, it would now have 30 to 60 days in most cases to fix it, rather than 90.<\/p>\n The idea is that shortening the window will put pressure on the city administration to evaluate possible violations faster and fix ones that turn out to be legitimate, reducing the time before someone could sue over the violations.<\/p>\n Brian Hofer, who heads Secure Justice, said he consulted on the ordinance and recommended the smaller window.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNinety days is a long time if real bad stuff is happening,\u201d Hofer told Berkeleyside. \u201cYou could identify hundreds of thousands of people in that time.\u201d<\/p>\n 3 searches for terms like \u2018ICE\u2019 and \u2018CBP\u2019 on Berkeley\u2019s license plate network<\/p>\n Berkeley police say they\u2019ve set up their network to work exactly as it should: After some growing pains that involved a handful of questionable searches by outside agencies, they reported to the council that they have enough safeguards in place that none of the data their readers collect should end up in the hands of immigration agents.<\/p>\n Flock\u2019s critics in Berkeley have pointed out that it was right around the same time that the council signed off on the proposed locations for the new cameras, this July, that BPD figured out that several agencies had been making searches<\/a> on its ALPR network with keywords like \u201cICE\u201d and \u201cCBP.\u201d<\/p>\n (There were five other searches that, at first glance, seemed related to immigration enforcement. But when BPD\u2019s auditors dug deeper they found that the mentions of \u201cDHS\u201d in those searches referred instead to the Desert Hot Springs Police Department, and not the Department of Homeland Security.)<\/p>\n \u201cBPD did not mention that it had identified a potential policy violation,\u201d Josh Cayetano, who chairs the Police Accountability Board, wrote in a Nov. 4 memo listing concerns about BPD\u2019s surveillance hardware. In its presentation BPD made mention of \u201cdata security issues that were reported in other jurisdictions and still, BPD did not mention, either in its papers or at the hearing, the breach that it identified. BPD, in other words, was less than forthcoming about the data security issues with Flock Safety.\u201d<\/p>\n Police have continued to keep much information on their current Flock hardware, the plate readers, to themselves. Berkeleyside requested the agency\u2019s first 10 months\u2019 worth of ALPR data in August and the agency has yet to turn over a single record. Nor have BPD said which agency or agencies searched their network with the \u201cCBP\u201d search term, beyond that they were based in Southern California.<\/p>\n Police have said those three oversights \u2014 fewer than one fifth of one percent of external searches \u2014 should not happen again.<\/p>\n Not only did they kick the agencies behind those searches off their network, they completely disabled their network from responding to the sort of statewide searches that had included those search terms. They also \u201ctightened sharing controls to exclude out-of-region agencies,\u201d according to BPD\u2019s annual surveillance technology report<\/a>, though they have not specified precisely which agencies do or do not have access, despite numerous inquiries by Berkeleyside. According to the report, \u201cno federal agencies, and no agencies outside of California accessed Berkeley\u2019s ALPR network.\u201d<\/p>\n Some cities in other states ended<\/a> their contracts with Flock after the company disclosed that it had briefly partnered<\/a> with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and provided the agency with access to ALPR data. In October, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden wrote in a letter<\/a> to Flock\u2019s CEO stating his belief that \u201cabuses of your products are not only likely but inevitable\u201d and encouraged local Oregon communities to remove the company\u2019s cameras.<\/p>\n The backlash against Flock and ALPR cameras has been building<\/a> in the Bay Area. On Wednesday, the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and other groups filed a lawsuit against San Jose over the use of warrantless searches of the city\u2019s ALPR data, the East Bay Times<\/a> reported. The plaintiffs claim this practice is unconstitutional and allows law enforcement \u2014 including federal agencies \u2014 to continuously monitor the movements of San Jose residents and visitors.<\/p>\n Berkeley police say cameras have been helpful in over 80 cases<\/p>\n Berkeley police note that the readers have been instrumental in several high-profile BPD arrests over the last 13 months.<\/p>\n \u201cMy district includes a number of what we call \u2018gunfire corridors\u2019 and the ALPR network has been used to identify suspect vehicles involved in the shootings,\u201d Councilmember Terry Taplin, who has advocated for building out BPD\u2019s surveillance capacity and represents Southwest Berkeley, told Berkeleyside in a phone interview. \u201cI understand that technology is scary, but it is a valuable tool and it yields results.\u201d<\/p>\n So far in 2025, Berkeley police have made \u201cat least 52 arrests, including for commercial burglaries, robberies, sexual assault, homicide,\u201d thanks directly to the readers, and used the network to help in another 29 cases, Arlo Malmberg, the civilian overseer of BPD\u2019s Office of Strategic Planning and Accountability, told the City Council Nov. 10.\u00a0<\/p>\n For context, BPD made roughly the same number of arrests, 52, in less than the last week for which data were available. It is unclear how many of those arrests were for felonies, and how many resulted in formal charges from the Alameda County District Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n Flock is one of the biggest players in the surveillance market. Arizona-based Axon Enterprise, the firm that builds BPD officers\u2019 body-worn cameras, also makes ALPRs, fixed surveillance cameras and drones, but hasn\u2019t received the same scrutiny as Flock has \u2014 perhaps because its surveillance tech appears to have many fewer customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Berkeley Flock camera contract now in state of uncertainty<\/p>\n Berkeley was just one final hurdle \u2014 a single vote on a final contract \u2014 from a new contract with Flock to build a new network of fixed surveillance cameras.\u00a0<\/p>\n That deal, more than two years in the making and that originally contemplated a different camera vendor, was meant to be inked Sept. 9 but City Manager Paul Buddenhagen pulled off a council agenda at the eleventh hour, asking to bring it back Oct. 28. At the time he said it was so the city could tweak the rules on how it would use the cameras, and also host a town hall-style meeting on the proposed hardware.<\/p>\n That town hall was supposed to be in October, only it never happened. And now city administrators are talking about bailing on Flock for that network.<\/p>\n \u201cThe city manager and BPD staff have been assessing issues regarding Flock cameras in other jurisdictions and evaluating other potential fixed camera vendors,\u201d Matthai Chakko, a city spokesperson, said in an October email, responding to a Berkeleyside inquiry as to why the contract was never placed on the council\u2019s Oct. 28 agenda. (Postponements, even repeated ones, are not uncommon for council agenda items.) \u201cDue diligence requires more time. Once that process is complete, a date to return to council will be set.\u201d<\/p>\n The Oaklandside reporter Eli Wolfe contributed to this article.<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Flock Safety automated license plate reader camera in Oakland. The nonprofit Secure Justice has threatened to sue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7981,21375,7872,28618,2465,2466,14,143,145,144,9550],"class_list":{"0":"post-62911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-berkeley-city-council","9":"tag-berkeley-fire-department","10":"tag-berkeley-police-department","11":"tag-crime-trends","12":"tag-home-highlight","13":"tag-home-lead","14":"tag-immigration","15":"tag-oakland","16":"tag-oakland-headlines","17":"tag-oakland-news","18":"tag-surveillance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62911","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=62911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763686089_346_large-MayorStateoftheCity_EG_41.jpg\")
Brian Hofer\u2019s nonprofit Secure Justice has asked Berkeley to cut off its relationship with Flock Safety. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n