San Jose police allowed other California police agencies as recently as last June to search data from its vast network of automatic license plate reading cameras on apparent behalf of federal authorities in what critics charge were likely violations of state law intended to protect residents and immigrants from unreasonable government tracking.
San Jose is the latest city whose use of the cameras to snag criminal suspects, critics say, also threatens privacy and potentially runs afoul of state laws barring access of camera data by out-of-state and federal agencies including immigration enforcement. The San Jose Police Department denies wrongdoing. Last November, the City of Oakland, with 290 license-plate cameras, was accused in a lawsuit of ignoring an earlier legal settlement by continuing to allow federal and out-of-state agencies to access the data. Oakland declined to comment on the lawsuit.
In Santa Cruz, an admission in November by the city’s police chief that his department had allowed camera data to be accessed by out-of-state agencies led the City Council to vote Tuesday to stop using the cameras. And in Berkeley, police tightened access to the data after it was found to have been accessed by federal authorities, and the police department scheduled a community meeting for Thursday…