SFPD Sued Over Mass Access to Surveillance Cameras
San Francisco's police department is facing a lawsuit alleging its Flock camera database was accessed 1.6 million times by out-of-state agencies. The suit claims widespread privacy violations and potential misuse of surveillance data gathered by the city's camera network.
The class-action lawsuit was filed by the Oakland-based law firm Gibbs Mura, which alleges that Flock Safety's network of license plate readers unlawfully shared data with out-of-state and federal agencies. The suit claims these actions violate California's ALPR Privacy Act, which restricts the sharing of such data across state lines. This is not the first legal challenge to San Francisco's use of this surveillance technology. A separate class-action lawsuit was filed in late 2025 by Michael Moore, a San Francisco resident, who argued that the city's network of nearly 500 automated license plate readers constitutes a violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches. The controversy extends beyond San Francisco, with an audit in the nearby city of El Cerrito revealing that federal agencies, including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, had accessed their Flock camera data without the police department's knowledge. In response to similar concerns, the Mountain View City Council voted to terminate its contract with Flock Safety. Flock Safety maintains that its customers own and control their own data and that the company does not share or sell it. The company has stated it "intends to vigorously defend itself against the asserted claims and allegations." Following criticism, Flock announced it had disabled a "National Lookup" feature for California agencies and implemented new administrative safeguards to control federal data sharing. San Francisco has a history of regulating police surveillance. In 2019, the Board of Supervisors passed the Acquisition of Surveillance Technology Ordinance, which requires public approval for the use of such technologies. However, subsequent legislation in 2022 granted the SFPD temporary authority to access live video from private cameras under certain circumstances, a move that itself sparked controversy. The lawsuit alleges that the data sharing is not an isolated incident, citing reports that out-of-state agencies accessed the SFPD's Flock database over 1.6 million times between August 2024 and February 2025. There are also claims that at least 19 searches were related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which would contradict SFPD policy. Concerns about the misuse of surveillance data are not new in the city. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU previously sued the SFPD for allegedly using a private camera network to illegally spy on protesters during the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations. The current lawsuit seeks to represent all individuals in California whose license plate data was collected by Flock's system and made accessible to federal and out-of-state law enforcement. The plaintiffs are asking the court to block the city from using Flock cameras and to order the deletion of all recorded images and data.
