One City's Cameras, 3.9 Million Searches, Zero Warrants: EFF and ACLU Sue San Jose
Bot Mutiny |
San Jose's license plate reader database was searched 3,965,519 times in a single year without warrants, according to a lawsuit arguing the practice violates the California Constitution.
Between June 5, 2024 and June 17, 2025, the San Jose Police Department's automated license plate reader database was searched 3,965,519 times.
Not one of those searches required a warrant. That is the practice the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Northern California asked a court to end in November 2025, in a lawsuit arguing that San Jose and its police department routinely violate the California Constitution by conducting warrantless searches of stored records revealing millions of drivers' movements, habits, and associations.
The number is the finding
The search count is the finding. San Jose has roughly a million residents. Four million searches of one city's plate-reader records in a single year is not a tool being consulted for major crimes; it is a database being used as ambient infrastructure, by SJPD and by other California agencies granted access.
The broader documented pattern
The suit lands inside a broader documented pattern. EFF's public records work produced datasets covering more than 12 million searches by more than 3,900 agencies nationwide over ten months, including hundreds of searches logged in connection with political protests and more than 80 agencies using search terms targeting Romani people. In Illinois, Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias opened an audit after EFF research showed Flock allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois data in violation of state privacy law. And per DeFlock's tracker, cited by The Texas Tribune, at least 47 cities have terminated or rejected Flock contracts.
The old question underneath
The legal question in San Jose is narrow and old: whether the government needs a warrant before searching a record of where you have been. The California Constitution has its own privacy clause, which is why this suit was filed in state court rather than waiting on federal Fourth Amendment doctrine to catch up with a camera network that photographs every passing car.
What the complaint establishes, if its numbers hold: the volume. What it does not yet establish: how the searches break down by purpose, agency, or outcome. That breakdown is exactly what the litigation should force into the open, and it is the discovery record worth watching.