The San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SFBA) and Services, Immigrant Rights & Education Network (SIREN) today acknowledged the San Jose City Council’s March 10 vote to adopt new guardrails on the city’s use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The organizations emphasized, however, that the changes do not go far enough to end warrantless police searches of drivers’ location data, the core issue in their joint lawsuit over the city’s ALPR program.
SEE: San Jose Council moves ahead with new guardrails on license-plate cameras
On Tuesday, March 10, the city council unanimously approved new limits on the San Jose Police Department’s (SJPD) use of the 474 Flock ALPRs across the city. The changes reduce the data retention period from one year to 30 days, add new documentation and authentication requirements for agencies requesting data, and prohibit cameras near abortion clinics, healthcare facilities with gender-affirming care, consulate offices, and places of worship.
The lawsuit, filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California on behalf of CAIR-CA and SIREN, argues that San Jose’s ALPR practices violate the California Constitution. The case challenges the city’s practice of allowing police to search drivers’ historical location data without a warrant and seeks a court order requiring San Jose to obtain one before searching its ALPR database or allowing other agencies to do the same.
The scale of the program remains significant. According to publicly released audit documents cited in the complaint, SJPD conducted 261,711 retrospective searches of its ALPR database between June 5, 2024, and June 17, 2025.
In a statement, CAIR-SFBA Civil Rights Managing Attorney Jeffrey Wang said:
“While the city council has approved limits on data retention and protections for sensitive locations, these reforms do not fix the core constitutional problem. SJPD still has the power to search drivers’ location history without a warrant, allowing the government to reconstruct where people have been without judicial oversight. If police want to sift through that kind of deeply revealing data, they should have to go to a judge first.”
In a statement, SIREN Community Organizer Kimberly Woo said:
“While San Jose passed stronger guardrails against ALPR cameras, no perfect policy will protect us against the constitutional privacy violations that AI mass surveillance fundamentally brings, especially in a time of federally sanctioned violence against our immigrant neighbors. If the government still believes in ALPRs’ invasive technology, then they must obtain a valid judicial warrant, or the safety and civil rights of every driver on our roads are compromised.”
The organizations noted that San Jose’s contract with Flock is up for renewal in June, giving the city an opportunity not only to end the contract, but also to reconsider its use of ALPR surveillance altogether. They also urged community members, following Tuesday’s city council discussion of the ALPR data usage protocol, to organize now and press city leaders to end the city’s mass surveillance of its residents and drivers.
CAIR-SFBA is an office of CAIR, America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, protect civil rights, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.
SIREN is a nonprofit organization and a vehicle for low-income immigrants and refugees in California—to be their own agents for change. We do this through community education and organizing, leadership development, legal services, policy advocacy, and civic engagement.
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CONTACT: CAIR-SFBA Communications Manager Lorrie Adam, (408) 498-5779, ladam@cair.com; Mariam Arif, mariam@sirenimmigrantrights.org