Aggregator | JCA-NET

(This appeared as an op-ed published February 12, 2026 in the San Jose Spotlight, written by Huy Tran (SIREN), Jeffrey Wang (CAIR-SFBA), and Jennifer Pinsof.)

As ICE and other federal agencies continue their assault on civil liberties, local leaders are stepping up to protect their communities. This includes pushing back against automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, which are tools of mass surveillance that can be weaponized against immigrants, political dissidents and other targets.

In recent weeks, Mountain View, Los Altos Hills, Santa Cruz, East Palo Alto and Santa Clara County have begun reconsidering their ALPR programs. San Jose should join them. This dangerous technology poses an unacceptable risk to the safety of immigrants and other vulnerable populations.

ALPRs are marketed to promote public safety. But their utility is debatable and they come with significant drawbacks. They don’t just track “criminals.” They track everyone, all the time. Your vehicle’s movements can reveal where you work, worship and obtain medical care. ALPR vendors like Flock Safety put the location information of millions of drivers into databases, allowing anyone with access to instantly reconstruct the public’s movements.

But “anyone with access” is far broader than just local police. Some California law enforcement agencies have used ALPR networks to run searches related to immigration enforcement. In other situations, purported issues with the system’s software have enabled federal agencies to directly access California ALPR data. This is despite the promises of ALPR vendors and clear legal prohibitions.

Communities are saying enough is enough. Just last week, police in Mountain View decided to turn off all of the city’s Flock cameras, following revelations that federal and other unauthorized agencies had accessed their network. The cameras will remain inactive until the City Council provides further direction.

Other localities have shut off the cameras for good. In January, Los Altos Hills terminated its contract with Flock following concerns about ICE. Santa Cruz severed relations with Flock, citing rising tensions with ICE. Most recently, East Palo Alto and Santa Clara County are reconsidering whether to continue their relationships with Flock, given heightened concern for the safety of immigrant communities.

California law prohibits local police from disclosing ALPR data to out-of-state or federal agencies. But at least 75 California police agencies were sharing these records out-of-state as recently as 2023. Just last year, San Francisco police allowed access to out-of-state agencies and 19 searches were related to ICE.

Even without direct access, ICE can exploit local ALPR systems. One investigation found more than 4,000 cases where police had made searches on behalf of federal law enforcement, including for immigration investigations.

Increasing the risk is that law enforcement routinely searches these networks without first obtaining a warrant. In San Jose, police aren’t required to have any suspicion of wrongdoing before searching ALPR databases, which contain a year’s worth of data representing hundreds of millions of records. In a little over a year, San Jose police logged more than 261,000 ALPR searches, or nearly 700 searches a day, all without a warrant.

Two nonprofit organizations, SIREN and CAIR California, represented by Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Northern California, are currently suing to stop San Jose’s warrantless searches of ALPR data. But this is only the first step. A better solution is to simply turn these cameras off.

San Jose cannot afford delay. Each day these cameras remain active, they collect sensitive location data that can be misused to target immigrant families and violate fundamental freedoms. It is a risk materializing across California. City leaders must act now to shut down ALPR systems and make clear that public safety will not come at the expense of privacy, human dignity or community trust.

Related Cases: SIREN and CAIR-CA v. San Jose

Jennifer Pinsof

New Report Helps Journalists Dig Deeper Into Police Surveillance Technology

EFF update

6 hours 7 minutes ago

Report from EFF, Center for Just Journalism, and IPVM Helps Cut Through Sales Hype

SAN FRANCISCO — A new report released today offers journalists tips on cutting through the sales hype about police surveillance technology and report accurately on costs, benefits, privacy, and accountability as these invasive and often ineffective tools come to communities across the nation.

The “Selling Safety” report is a joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Just Journalism (CJJ), and IPVM.

Police technology is often sold as a silver bullet: a way to modernize departments, make communities safer, and eliminate human bias from policing with algorithmic objectivity. Behind the slick marketing is a sprawling, under-scrutinized industry that relies on manufacturing the appearance of effectiveness, not measuring it. The cost of blindly deferring to advertising can be high in tax dollars, privacy, and civil liberties.

“Selling Safety” helps journalists see through the spin. It breaks down how policing technology companies market their tools, and how those sales claims — which are often misleading — get recycled into media coverage. It offers tools for asking better questions, understanding incentives, and finding local accountability stories.

“The industry that provides technology to law enforcement is one of the most unregulated, unexamined, and consequential in the United States,” said EFF Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Guariglia. “Most Americans would rightfully be horrified to know how many decisions about policing are made: not by public employees, but by multi-billion-dollar surveillance tech companies who have an insatiable profit motive to market their technology as the silver bullet that will stop crime. Lawmakers often are too eager to seem ‘tough on crime’ and journalists too often see an easy story in publishing law enforcement press releases about new technology. This report offers a glimpse into how the police-tech sausage gets made so reporters and lawmakers can recognize the tactics of glossy marketing pitches, manufactured effectiveness numbers, and chumminess between companies and police.”

“Surveillance and other police technologies are spreading faster than public understanding or oversight, leaving journalists to do critical accountability work in real time. We hope this report helps make that work easier,” said Hannah Riley Fernandez, CJJ’s Director of Programming.

"The surveillance technology industry has a documented pattern of making unsubstantiated claims about technology,” said Conor Healy, IPVM's Director of Government Research. “Marketing is not a substitute for evidence. Journalists who go beyond press releases to critically examine vendor claims will often find solutions are not as magical as they may seem. In doing so, they perform essential accountability work that protects both taxpayer dollars and civil liberties."

EFF also maintains resources for understanding various police technologies and mapping those technologies in communities across the United States.

For the “Selling Safety” report: https://www.eff.org/document/selling-safety-journalists-guide-covering-police-technology

For EFF’s Street-Level Surveillance hub: https://sls.eff.org/

For EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance: https://www.atlasofsurveillance.org/

Contact: BerylLiptonSenior Investigative Researcherberyl@eff.org

Josh Richman

【おすすめ本】鈴木宣弘『もうコメは食えなくなるのか──国難を乗り切るのにほんとうに大切なものとは』―農と食、暮らしを強化　地域の自給圏づくりを提唱　＝栩木誠（元日経新聞編集委員）

日本ジャーナリストクラブ（JCJ）

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　日本の農業と生産者に‟塗炭の苦しみ“を味合せてきた、安倍農政の継承を標榜する髙市政権の登場で、「日本のコメ作り」は今や、その生命線すら絶たれようとしている。歴代自民党政権が進めてきた「米国への胃袋の従属化」の動きに、警鐘を鳴らし続けてきた著者の危機感が、本書のタイトルに見事に凝縮されている。　国連機関が「飢餓国の仲間国入りした」とする日本で、いま深刻化する「令和のコメ問題」。生産コストなどへの所得補償、供給先の出口調整など、生産者が希望を見い出せる農業政策の再構築..

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