The San Francisco Police Department is the latest California law enforcement agency to get caught sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data with out-of-state and federal agencies. EFF and the ACLU of Northern California are calling them out for this direct violation of California law, which has put every driver in the city at risk and is especially dangerous for immigrants, abortion seekers, and other targets of the federal government.
This week, we sent the San Francisco Police Department a demand letter and request for records under the city’s Sunshine Ordinance following the SF Standard’s recent report that SFPD provided non-California agencies direct access to the city’s ALPR database. Reporters uncovered that at least 19 searches run by these agencies were marked as related to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”). The city’s ALPR database was also searched by law enforcement agencies from Georgia and Texas, both states with severe restrictions on reproductive healthcare.
ALPRs are cameras that capture the movements of vehicles and upload the location of the vehicles to a searchable, shareable database. It is a mass surveillance technology that collects data indiscriminately on every vehicle on the road. As of September 2025, SFPD operates 415 ALPR cameras purchased from the company Flock Safety.
Since 2016, sharing ALPR data with out-of-state or federal agencies—for any reason—violates California law (SB 34). If this data is shared for the purpose of assisting with immigration enforcement, agencies violate an additional California law (SB 54).
In total, the SF Standard found that SFPD had allowed out-of-state cops to run 1.6 million searches of their data. “This sharing violated state law, as well as exposed sensitive driver location information to misuse by the federal government and by states that lack California’s robust privacy protections,” the letter explained.
EFF and ACLU are urging SFPD to launch a thorough audit of its ALPR database, institute new protocols for compliance, and assess penalties and sanctions for any employee found to be sharing ALPR information out of state.
“Your office reportedly claims that agencies outside of California are no longer able to access the SFPD ALPR database,” the letter says. “However, your office has not explained how outside agencies obtained access in the first place or how you plan to prevent future violations of SB 34 and 54.”
As we’ve demonstrated over and over again, many California agencies continue to ignore these laws, exposing sensitive location information to misuse and putting entire communities at risk. As federal agencies continue to carry out violent ICE raids, and many states enforce harsh, draconian restrictions on abortion, ALPR technology is already being used to target and surveil immigrants and abortion seekers. California agencies, including SFPD, have an obligation to protect the rights of Californians, even when those rights are not recognized by other states or the federal government.
See the full letter here: https://www.eff.org/files/2025/09/17/aclu_and_eff_letter_to_sfpd_9.16.2025-1.pdf
