Cities across Silicon Valley may be on the cusp of cutting ties with a surveillance company linked to local police departments’ cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Santa Clara County officials last week signaled growing distrust with Flock Safety, a company that sells license plate reading cameras to cities across California, over concerns the cameras are being used by federal immigration authorities. Flock has sold dozens of cameras to the Sheriff’s Office, which has deployed them along the roadways of Saratoga, Cupertino and Los Altos Hills. Flock also has license plate reading camera agreements with San Jose and other cities in the county.
District 2 Supervisor Betty Duong moved to delay a renewal of the cameras’ use policy at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesdaycontracts until how their being used can be explored further. The decision happened after Santa Cruz and Los Altos Hills became some of the first municipalities in California to sever ties with Flock entirely this month.
“Effectively immediately, all Flock cameras in (Los Altos Hills) will go offline. Town staff is currently in the process of getting the Flock cameras taken down,” town officials wrote on their website after the Jan. 15 decision.
The move effectively stopped the sheriff’s office from accessing any of Los Altos Hills’ camera data.
“We no longer receive (automated license plate reader) data from Los Altos Hills’ 31 Flock Safety cameras or have access to any data from Los Altos Hills,” Sgt. Brooks Jarosz, spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, told San José Spotlight.
Duong said she stands by the use of license plate reading cameras in the county — and the sheriff’s policies for using them. But she said she’s concerned about widespread reports of local police departments searching data from Flock’s cameras on behalf of ICE.
“I’m against sharing information with ICE in any way that’s weaponized against our immigrant communities,” Duong told San José Spotlight. “I pulled the item (Tuesday) after hearing comments from the public, and decided the responsible thing to do is to do our due diligence.”
The Atlanta, Georgia-based company partners with hundreds of cities across California, including Piedmont, and about 6,000 cities across the U.S. Flock representatives have stated publicly the company doesn’t share its data with ICE The American Civil Liberties Union asserts that Flock’s user agreement gives the company broad latitude to share certain data with federal authorities, regardless of municipal restrictions.
“Flock does not have a contract with ICE, or any sub-agency of (the Department of Homeland Security). None of those agencies are customers of Flock,” company spokesperson Holly Beilin told San José Spotlight. “In California, state law prohibits (automated license plater reader) data from being shared out of state or with federal agencies, and Flock has disabled those settings for California agencies to make compliance easier.”
Beilin said communities are free to choose whether or not to implement public safety technology in their city.” California cities that choose to use Flock technology see the positive impact in crimes solved, missing persons recovered and safer communities,” she said.
Duong’s vote Tuesday defers a decision on renewing the sheriff’s camera use policy by a month, over which time Duong requested county administration conduct a full review and investigation into whether Flock is flouting local policies restricting data sharing.
She also wants Sheriff Bob Jonsen, over this deferral period, to look for alternative companies to replace Flock as a vendor.
“I trust the sheriff to implement these cameras in a way our policies were designed,” Duong said. “I’m not against (automated license plate readers), and I believe in cities’ autonomy to decide the best public safety programs for them, but I am against any misuse of any personal and private data.”
Jonsen’s office did not respond to questions about alternative vendors.
“Sheriff Jonsen remains confident in our policy, which applies strict standards for privacy and technology implementation,” Jarosz said. “He strongly supports (automated license plate readers) as a tool to protect communities and empower victims. We do not share (automated license plate reader) data with any other law enforcement agencies through Flock, and all data is owned by the cities and managed exclusively by our office — not by Flock.”
San Jose is being sued for its use of Flock cameras. The lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union argues the city is violating the state constitution through warrantless searches of records of millions of drivers’ movements.
The board of supervisors’ contract delay does not affect current camera operations, Jarosz said.
“We will continue working with the board to address any concerns,” he said.
Contact Brandon Pho at brandon@sanjosespotlight.com or @brandonphooo on X.
This story originally appeared in San José Spotlight. The post Santa Clara County cities weigh ending Flock Safety contracts over ICE access appeared first on Local News Matters.