Opinion: San Jose’s vast surveillance network is watching you. Be afraid.

The governing body surveils you every time you drive through San Jose collecting a trove of highly revealing details that police search thousands of times per month without ever seeking a warrant It s an unchecked police power an end run around judicial oversight and a blatant privacy invasion It s also a violation of the California Constitution That s why we at the Electronic Frontier Foundation with ACLU of Northern California have sued the city its police chief and its mayor Warrantless searches like this violate your right to be free of unreasonable executive searches under Article I Section of the California Constitution and your guarantee of privacy under Article I Section Related Articles Civil liberties groups sue San Jose over warrantless access to license plate reader content Man dies after being detained by San Jose police officers Exec for San Jose police nonprofit investigated for embezzlement assertions Latest organized mass robbery assault on owner prompt San Jose city DA response Nearly automated license plate reader ALPR cameras line the streets of San Jose quietly capturing and storing images of every driver who passes by This surveillance infrastructure indiscriminately records millions of trips every month whether people are on their way to work dropping their kids off at school seeking strength care going to a place of worship or attending a protest San Jose stores this content in a massive central database and holds onto it for a full year substantially longer than several other cities Despite their name ALPRs record far more than just license plate numbers San Jose s fleet of high-speed computer-controlled cameras automatically log precise locations timestamps full photos and even specific carriage details including bumper stickers San Jose s ALPR vendor also offers AI-powered features that claim to predict suspicious movements and reveal when cars frequently trip to the same places together Using ALPR location records San Jose police can easily reconstruct drivers movements throughout the city over weeks months or even a year Input from these cameras flows into a central cloud-based searchable database operated by third-party surveillance company Flock Safety a firm that s received negative headlines after its ALPR products were used to assist immigration enforcement track an abortion seeker and surveil protestors Flock s database lets agencies hook into a larger sharing organization and San Jose police have granted hundreds of external law enforcement agencies access to their ALPR database These outside agencies can also search San Jose s ALPR material without a warrant ALPR supporters insist the surveillance is worth it that the cameras crime-solving magic outweighs any privacy harm But the numbers tell a different story San Jose s cameras captured over million conveyance scans in alone Yet only of those scans were hits matching vehicles on hot lists for stolen cars or demanded defendants This means the vast majority of people in San Jose s sprawling database were under no suspicion whatsoever when their information was collected Between June and June San Jose police logged more than searches of their ALPR database according to audit logs distributed in a general records request This averages out to nearly searches a day Factor in searches logged by external law enforcement agencies over the same period and the search total balloons to nearly million all without any requirement police get a warrant You might ask If I m not doing anything wrong why should I care But where you drive reveals intimate details about your private life and you shouldn t be forced to surrender this privacy especially without adequate legal safeguards in place Officers in other cities have abused ALPR records to stalk and harass ex romantic partners and other personal acquaintances And consider what happens when political winds start blowing in a different direction Police across the nation have already been using ALPRs to surveil people exercising their constitutional right to protest and to track someone who had an abortion There s one straightforward step to better protect our constitutional rights to privacy Require police to obtain a warrant before searching the ALPR database Real-time alerts for stolen vehicles or demanded accused could continue unaffected This simple safeguard would ensure police demonstrate probable cause and receive judicial approval before reconstructing someone s movements over time That s what we re suing for on behalf of the Services Immigrant Rights and Tuition Configuration and the Council on American-Islamic Relations of California The people of San Jose shouldn t need to sacrifice their privacy just to drive around their city We must ensure the privacy rights guaranteed by the California Constitution still mean something in the digital age Lisa Femia is a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation a nonprofit digital civil liberties group based in San Francisco