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East Palo City Council on Tuesday postponed a five-year contract renewal of its Flock Automated License Plate Reader technology, citing concerns over data privacy and immigrant rights.
The city entered a year-long pilot program in December 2024, installing 25 non-mobile cameras throughout the city to document the rear license plates on cars at a time when the new tech was growing in popularity. But today, under a federal administration that has found new avenues to arrest immigrants, people have expressed distrust of the Flock surveillance cameras, which store recordings for 30 days in East Palo Alto.
“I supported this as a pilot,” Council member Ruben Abrica said. “In some ways I feel like this whole area is always in pilot mode. There are no assurances, in many ways, that we could have complete defense against what the federal government can do.”
City council members requested a presentation from Flock representatives in an attempt to get assurance about the company’s integrity, its safeguards and its data-sharing policies. In doing so, they paused a years-long contract renewal that would’ve cost over $450,000.
East Palo Alto Police Department Chief Jeff Liu pitched the contract renewal to the council Tuesday night, citing its success in helping solve criminal cases and the growing adoption of data-sharing safeguards.
He cited as an example an Aug. 6 incident in which a suspect drove up to a woman who was walking alone and sexually assaulted her near 77 Newell Road in East Palo Alto. After the woman fought him off, he fled the scene traveling northbound on W. Bayshore Road, where Flock cameras caught his license plate as it left town, Liu said. Local police followed the plate and arrested the man in Mountain View.
“This was a random act, there was no relation between the two and if it wasn’t for the Flock cameras, this person would still be driving around looking for vulnerable females to sexually assault,” Liu said.
While he acknowledged privacy concerns, Liu said the data can only be shared on a case-by-case basis by one staff member and that the federal administration would have to “hack” the system to access its data. The East Palo Alto Police Department shares its data with neighboring agencies to help apprehend local suspects who travel into other cities, but city policies prohibit the use of Flock technology for immigration enforcement use and out-of-state data sharing, according to city documents. That said, there have been reported instances in other jurisdictions where data was shared contrary to local policies, according to media reports.
“The technology hasn’t failed, it was human error,” Liu said about unauthorized data access.
Some city council members praised the technology for its ability to help find local suspects but were not convinced that the data was not used for immigration enforcement.
“Jeff, this is not about you or the department, let’s make no doubt about it,” said Council member Carlos Romero. “This administration considers undocumented people criminals, period. They are the criminals they want to round up. They want to round up a million people a year, they’re not anywhere near that.”
In other states, police departments have provided surveillance data to agencies across the country through audits, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. It is unclear whether or not the departments were aware that their data would be shared so widely.
“Its basically a network of agencies and you have to trust every agency is using the system in the right way … I want to know more about the technology itself,” Council member Webster Lincoln said.
Residents were overwhelmingly concerned about how constant surveillance could affect the health of the city’s large immigrant community, which has experienced targeted arrests and the apprehension of a local mother with health issues.
“Over the past few weeks, many EPA residents have already been scared to leave their homes and houses in fear of ICE being in the city,” said East Palo Alto resident Dana Moreno. “This fear will only continue to grow with these cameras being present.”
City staff and law officials plan to coordinate a presentation from Flock representatives at a future city council meeting.
