San Jose has hundreds of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) from Flock surveilling everyone who drives through the city. In March, while activists called for the city council to cancel the contract with Flock due to documented abuses, council voted to keep the cameras while simultaneously lowering the data retention from an egregious one-year to a 30-day period. During that council meeting, the Police Chief said how important the cameras were and that any abuses reported in other jurisdictions would not happen here with the personnel in San Jose Police Department.

We now know unequivocally that claim was a lie. At the same time the Police Chief assured us SJPD would never misuse their mass surveillance tools, an officer was in the process of being fired for tracking a domestic abuse victim with Flock cameras and giving her location data to the abuser. Mass surveillance tools do not keep us safe - they put us at risk.

At the September 30 rules meeting of San Jose City Council, two council memos will be discussed to agendize ALPRs at a future meeting. Send letters to council and let them know the community does NOT want any ALPRs and demand they cover the cameras, perform an independent audit, and cancel the contract.