San Francisco police said Wednesday that their license plate reader data was improperly searched nearly 300 times on behalf of federal and out-of-state law enforcement agencies, a disclosure likely to renew scrutiny of a surveillance tool that has expanded rapidly across California and the nation.
Every day in San Francisco and across the Bay Area, thousands of cameras, many operated by Atlanta-based Flock Safety, capture license plates. The goal is to flag stolen or wanted cars and pinpoint locations of vehicles for use in investigations of murders, robberies and other crimes.
The San Francisco Police Department said it was among 532 to 764 law enforcement agencies whose license plate data was simultaneously queried over a year by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, an anti-crime fusion center that acts as an information-sharing hub for law enforcement…