License to Chill – Flocking Surveillance on ICE

This article was a collaboration between Rob Bowen and Angie Bowen

“The San Jose police department conducted over 250 thousand warrantless searches in a single year (just under 700 per day).”

In an age where holding the powers that be to account is becoming ever more difficult, emboldening the bad actors to be even more brazen and daring in their overreaches and illegal actions. The latest group acting with absolutely no chill whatsoever, is Flock.

Flock is company you might never have heard of, but that doesn't mean that you aren't already on their proverbial radar. Because their reach is massive. Flock's ALPR is used by over 3000 police departments across the country allowing shareable, multijurisdictional databases tracking movement across cities and states.

They have a patented “Vehicle Fingerprint Technology” allowing them to engage in what they like to call "no plate required" searches based on car features such as luggage racks, decals, and bumper stickers. A service they use in their marketing along with their Minority Report-esque pattern recognition software that can spot "suspicious behavior across cities and states," and flag them.

And now, San Jose has blanketed its city with almost 500 Flock license plate-reading surveillance cameras. A company with no moral qualms or hang-ups about sharing their collected data with the likes of I.C.E. and beyond.

Luckily, there are those who are hoping to hold these bad actors to account. Enter the ACLU and EFF, who are currently suing the city of San Jose, Police Chief Paul Joseph, and Mayor Matt Mahan on behalf of SIREN (Services, Immigrant Rights, & Education Network) and CAIR-CA (Council on American-Islamic Relations, California). They allege that the defendants illegally waste public, taxpayer provided funds on an unconstitutional system.

In a city where it's difficult for most residents to get around without a car these cameras track their vehicles, record their location histories indiscriminately, and store this information for a full year. If alarm bells aren't sounding, then you might be need to get your hearing checked. These cameras exist around medical facilities, immigration centers, and places of worship. They're also on residential streets so they can track where people live. These are certainly moves that should unsettle you if privacy is paramount, and overreach is a concern.

Because what we are seeing is just that. Overreaching affronts to privacy and rule of law. The San Jose police department conducted over 250 thousand warrantless searches in a single year (just under 700 per day). This violates California's constitution guaranteeing the right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. But most residents are not even aware that it is happening, let alone in their neighborhoods.

"SJPD personnel routinely conduct retrospective searches of the database of ALPR information. These searches can return extensive information about a driver’s exact whereabouts at precise times, dozens of times a day, stretching back at least 365 days"

What's more problematic still is the fact that unlike most jurisdictions, who limit ALPR systems to scanning in real time for license plate matches to stolen vehicles, fugitives, etc, San Jose is amassing a giant database about their drivers, which again they keep for a full year. Data hoarding of this nature should also raise concerns about proper use and handling to ensure it is not part of the seemingly semi-regular data breaches we the people suffer at the hands of lacking or shortsighted corporate security measures.

The ALPR provides constant surveillance, needing no human involvement. Over 2 million plates can and are being scanned in a 30 day period. It collected over 361 million scans of license plates and location information in 2024. Out of these, there were less than 1 million hits that actually led to breaks in cases, an exceedingly lackluster success rate of 0.2%. So if it is not helping to solve cases, why is so much data being collected and kept?

Automated license plate readers are invasive mass surveillance technology, make no mistake about it. They automatically capture images of every vehicle, indiscriminately, including:

• Anyone visible in the vehicle
• Political/message based bumper stickers
• Make, model, and color of the vehicle
• License plate number
• GPS location
• Date & time

This is new technology that allows government authorities to effortlessly surveil drivers en masse and to continuously surveil entire communities in a way that would not have been possible before. And it gets worse. Because the technology can be used over time to map a person's private habits, movements, associations, and other "privacies of life." And they are not keeping it proprietary or to themselves either. The SJPD has no rules that limit the number of personnel who has access to the database. They also allow other California law enforcement agencies access to their databases without warrants.

This is more than concerning, it is unconstitutional. Something that we used to care about in this country, but that has long gone the way of the Walkman and a sense of shame. These final quotes clearly put this point into context and highlight the unconstitutional nature of these kinds of surveillance programs.

A single driver can be recorded multiple times per day as they travel around the city. "SJPD’s system raises these concerns even for drivers who happen to pass by relatively fewer ALPR cameras on a given day. People’s patterns of movement are unique, and it takes only a small number of location points to identify someone or to infer their path of travel, including to or from sensitive locations."

"Location information reflecting people’s long-term physical movements, even in public spaces, is entitled to constitutional protection under the Fourth Amendment. That protection exists because the recording of individual movements over time reveals sensitive information about a person’s private life."