SDPD stops sharing data from controversial surveillance program

The San Diego Police Department has stopped sharing controversial surveillance data with federal authorities and other out-of-state agencies after state Attorney General Rob Bonta's office told the department it was likely violating state law.

The SDPD’s decision follows years of criticism from privacy and civil rights advocates regarding the Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) system and who has access to the data. The outcry has only intensified amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign this year.

The specific law in question is Senate Bill 34, which was passed in 2015. It explicitly prohibits local police departments from sharing ALPR data with outside law enforcement agencies. In 2024, SDPD shared data with federal agencies 62 times, according to the department’s annual surveillance report.

San Diego’s ALPR system uses more than 500 cameras to capture millions of data points from cars driving around San Diego — including the color, make and model of each car, their location and which direction they are going.

That information is then stored in a third-party database that officers can use to investigate crimes like car theft or kidnapping.

Privacy advocates fear that — with enough data points — this technology can be used to track people, monitor their movements and even establish patterns in their behavior like which gyms or grocery store individuals are likely to visit.

Tim Blood, chair of the city’s Privacy Advisory Board, called the SDPD’s decision to limit outside sharing, "a big win." He praised the department for being receptive to the board’s concerns.

“They are expressing a willingness to work with us,” he said.

Other stakeholders were hesitant to give the department credit for following state law.

“They shouldn’t have been sharing the information to begin with, so it’s hard for me to say it’s a win when that was an initial requirement,” said Michelle Woodson, legal director of the community advocacy group Pillars of the Community.

Pillars of the Community is a member of the San Diego TRUST Coalition — a group of more than 30 organizations asking the City Council to defund the ALPR program.

During a budget hearing earlier this month, dozens of community members called out the City Council for continuing to fund the $2 million ALPR program while simultaneously cutting public services and raising the cost of parking and trash pick-up services.

Council members decided to have a follow-up conversation about the future of the ALPR program at Public Safety Committee meeting the end of the month.

ALPR data

For years, the SDPD has been relatively tight-lipped about the program. But this week Capt. Charles Lara told KPBS that the department takes “full responsibility” and looks forward to working with the Privacy Advisory Board to address additional privacy concerns.

“Should we have been there at inception? Of course we should,” Capt. Lara said. “But this is a learning process. And we are learning our way through the ordinance, and we are complying with the ordinance.”

Lara said the decision to limit ALPR data sharing to only California-based law enforcement agencies came after several weeks of back and forth with the AG's office and that SDPD is now, “in good standing.”

SDPD officials have stressed that data obtained from the ALPR system is only used for criminal investigations. Capt. Lara said all the information is captured out in the public right of way, where people do not have the expectation of privacy.

“I think that’s something that is important and may be getting overlooked in all of this,” he said. “This is stuff that happens in the public square.”

Lara noted that state sanctuary laws prohibit SDPD from helping any federal agency enforce immigration laws.

Immigration enforcement concerns 

The main concern from privacy advocates isn’t that SDPD will use its ALPR system to enforce federal immigration law. It is that the federal government will use data captured by SDPD to help them carry out Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

They worry that by storing local data in a third-party server, SDPD loses local control over that data.

Flock, the Georgia-based third-party vendor SDPD uses for its ALPR system, has come under criticism for working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

An investigation published by 404 Media found local and state law enforcement agencies nationwide used Flock’s database system to conduct more than 4,000 searchers at the behest of federal law enforcement with a potential immigration focus.

“I think we are, correctly and wisely, wary of Flock and what they do with the data once they have it,” said Blood. “But that said, there are now a lot of ways that corporations deal with this on a daily basis, to make sure the data they have is protected.”

Blood said the Privacy Advisory Board wants to work with SDPD to create a “comprehensive plan” that reduces that risk.

That comprehensive plan includes borrowing from established best practices to ensure the data is protected. One example he gave was shortening the amount of time SDPD keeps to ALPR data.

“One way to protect the database is to make it a target that nobody wants,” Blood said. “With ALPR data, one way to do that is to not retain data for a very long time. It ends up being a database that has little-to-no value to ICE.”

While the Privacy Advisory Board is trying to create a comprehensive plan, privacy experts are pressuring the City Council to defund the ALPR program.

They say ICE raids and other aspects of Trump’s crackdown, along with SDPD’s failure to comply with SB 34, show that the program’s risks outweigh its potential benefits.

“If they can’t even abide by the language of the law that was created specifically for the use of this technology, why would the public trust that they should use this technology at all,” Woodson said.

Pushing for reform

Even longtime proponents of the program, like councilman Stephen Whitburn, are questioning their support given the current atmosphere.

During the budget hearing, Whitburn held back tears when talking about the fear of Trump’s crackdown.

“It seems within the realm of possibility that this administration would try to force the city of San Diego to share ALPR data and that the administration would use that data to enforce its immigration policies or for other purposes that many of us would oppose,” he said.

Whitburn said the essential goal of public safety policies is to make residents feel safe.

“I think there’s a reasonable argument that in the current environment, ALPRs are making people feel less safe out of fear that the federal government could commandeer the data,” he added.

Advocates have also questioned the effectiveness of ALPR technology — pointing out that the SDPD’s own data shows less than 1% of all searches result in information that lead to a crime being solved.

Captain Lara pushed back on that criticism, saying that just because the overwhelming majority of searches are not helpful in crime solving, investigators have used ALPRs to recover more than 350 vehicles.

“There are a great many things on my tool belt that I may not use every day. But when I need them, boy do I need them,” he said.

The Privacy Advisory Board remains committed to creating a comprehensive data security plan. Blood mentioned that the police department does not have the staff to do it on their own.

“They don’t have data professionals, cyber security professionals on staff and they don’t have the budget to fill those roles,” he said. “But that’s OK because there’s people on the Privacy Advisory Board that do have that expertise. I’m confident we can guide them.”

Blood said no system is 100% perfect, but believes that it is important to try. He hopes that with a robust system of checks and balances, the data will be safe. But he also noted that an effort to build a comprehensive system could also be used as a justification to end the ALPR program.

“If, when you do all of this stuff you realize it can’t be fixed or the cost of protecting data is so high that it’s no longer worth having the data, then that provides a powerful, data-driven, fact-driven analysis to make a determination of what to do,” he said.