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Update: In the wake of this Voice investigation, Mountain View Police Chief Mike Canfield announced Monday afternoon that all of the city’s license plate cameras are being disabled, effective immediately.
Despite repeated assurances of strict protocols and privacy safeguards, the Mountain View Police Department disclosed this week that it had inadvertently violated its own policies and allowed hundreds of unauthorized law enforcement agencies to search information captured by the city’s license plate cameras for more than a year.
Why wasn’t it caught sooner? I couldn’t tell you.
Mike Canfield, Mountain View Police chief
The revelation comes at a time when the Trump administration has been carrying out an immigration crackdown in cities throughout the country, with federal agents fatally shooting two American citizens in Minneapolis this month. In recent weeks, hundreds have participated in back-to-back protests in Mountain View and neighboring cities, and fears are mounting about potential immigration raids ahead of the Super Bowl in Santa Clara on Feb. 8.
Automatic license plate readers – known as ALPRs – have drawn significant national scrutiny over the past year as reports have come out that the cameras have been used for immigration and reproductive healthcare enforcement under the Trump administration.
Following a public records request from the Voice, originally submitted last summer, the Mountain View Police Department recently discovered that law enforcement agencies around the state and nation had been able to search the city’s ALPR data without its knowledge, Police Chief Mike Canfield told this news organization.
“We built a system around limited access control of partner agencies,” Canfield said on Jan. 29. “I’m very disappointed that other agencies were able to utilize our data and were able to review it. But why wasn’t it caught sooner? I couldn’t tell you.”
Several weeks ago, the police department realized that its ALPR system had been set to allow “national lookup” for three months in 2024, meaning agencies throughout the country could search Mountain View’s data. At the time, only one camera had been installed in Mountain View, with Canfield noting that this was before President Donald Trump took office.
However, officers also uncovered that “statewide lookup” had been turned on for all the city’s cameras since the program began 17 months ago, giving agencies across California access to Mountain View’s data. The police department turned that setting off on Jan. 5, 2026.
State law prohibits sharing ALPR information with out-of-state agencies as well as the sharing of this information for immigration enforcement purposes. Mountain View’s ALPR policy goes farther, stating that California law enforcement agencies are not supposed to be given access to the city’s data unless they receive prior authorization from the police department.
In May 2024, the Mountain View City Council approved a contract with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company, to install and administer the cameras. Since August of that year, Mountain View has been adding Flock cameras to major thoroughfares and exit and entry points to the city. The last camera was installed on Jan. 16, 2026 – bringing the city’s total number of Flock cameras to 30.
The cameras automatically take photos of the back of passing vehicles, capturing license plate numbers and other identifying information like a vehicle’s make and model. The data is then cross-checked with a national database to identify stolen cars as well as cars associated with missing person or criminal investigations.
“There is nothing more important for our ability to provide safety for Mountain View than to have the trust of our community,” Canfield said. “I’m very disappointed in the relationship with Flock Safety and in their failures to create a system that met our expectations and that performed in a manner which was expected and required by our contract.”
They’re a mass surveillance dragnet system that captures information from anyone who goes by them, regardless of whether they’re accused of any crime. Once that data is collected, it’s really hard to control.
Nick Hidalgo, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California senior staff attorney
Paris Lewbel, a Flock spokesperson, said it would confer with the Mountain View Police Department about its concerns.
“We value our relationship with the Mountain View Police Department and we will address these concerns directly with the Chief,” Lewbel said in an emailed statement.
In light of these discoveries, Canfield said that the police department was reevaluating its relationship with Flock and that it planned to bring a report to the City Council in the coming months. He would not say whether he planned to recommend continuing the Flock contract.
Nationwide access to Mountain View’s ALPR data
California law enforcement agencies that are part of the Flock system are only supposed to be able to search ALPR data captured by Mountain View’s cameras if they agree to the city’s policies about how the information is collected, used and shared. This includes not using the data for immigration enforcement.
However, the national lookup setting was active on one camera at the intersection of Charleston and San Antonio roads for approximately three months, from Aug. 14, 2024 until sometime in November of that year, Canfield said. Flock did not tell the city that the national lookup setting had been turned on, nor that it had been turned off, he added.
“We were never told that this was here,” Canfield said. “We would have had this conversation month three into a pilot program, likely maybe month two into a pilot program and been able to pivot. And they didn’t do that.”
It is not just another tool in a toolbox. It is an essential tool to fighting crime and protecting our Mountain View community.
Mike Canfield, Mountain View Police chief
According to Canfield, the police department audits its Flock system regularly, but had largely been focusing on the searches done by its own officers. Recently, the department undertook a deeper review, partially prompted by the Voice’s public records request, which was originally submitted last July. It was during this most recent audit that officers discovered the “national lookup” issue, Canfield said.
While national lookup was enabled, federal agencies including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, and the U.S. Office of Inspector General conducted searches that included Mountain View’s camera.
The records don’t show whether any of these searches found a match in the city’s data, nor do they reveal the purpose of the searches. The police department redacted the “reason” field from the records released to the Voice, citing the potential for personally identifiable information to be included.
Privacy advocacy groups argue that ALPR data can be exploited by federal authorities seeking to identify, roundup and deport immigrants.
“They’re a mass surveillance dragnet system that captures information from anyone who goes by them, regardless of whether they’re accused of any crime,” said Nick Hidalgo, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California. “Once that data is collected, it’s really hard to control.”
The severity of the current political moment was not lost on Canfield who expressed relief that nationwide access to the city’s ALPR data, while distressing, had been limited to one camera for three months during 2024.
“I don’t think I can overstate the importance from a community safety perspective, that that access was in place during a previous administration,” he said.
Statewide access to Mountain View’s ALPR data
Around the same time that the Mountain View Police Department became aware of the national lookup breach, it learned that a “statewide lookup” setting was active for all of its Flock cameras.
Unlike the national lookup situation, the statewide access was not contained to just a few months during the Biden administration. It spanned from when the first Flock camera was installed in 2024 until the police department turned off the setting in early January 2026. This meant that any California law enforcement agency that opted into statewide lookup could search the city’s ALPR data, whether or not Mountain View had an agreement with them.
There are roughly 75 state agencies that have been granted access to the city’s ALPR data, according to the police department’s online dashboard. Through the statewide lookup tool, more than 250 additional agencies searched the city’s ALPR data without its authorization, the Voice found. From December 2024 through December 2025, these unauthorized agencies conducted roughly 600,000 searches of the city’s ALPR data.
As with the nationwide searches, the purpose of these searches is unclear because the police department redacted the “reason” field. Canfield told the Voice that the department was delving into the data, looking to see if any of the searches were related to immigration enforcement or other concerning areas. From an initial review, Canfield said there were no search queries that “jumped off the page.”
The Voice asked the police department to search the records for nine specific terms, including “ICE,” “immigration” and “CBP.” Canfield said that the department would conduct the keyboard searches, but that it would take time. The results were not ready before the Voice’s deadline.
Canfield also noted that the department is evaluating each of its partner agency’s searches to make sure they align with the city’s values and policies and had not identified any that are out of compliance.
However, the Voice found that one of the agencies granted access to the city’s ALPR data – the El Cajon Police Department – is currently being sued by California Attorney General Rob Bonta for allegedly sharing ALPR information with more than 100 out-of-state law enforcement agencies, despite multiple warnings not to do so.
“California law requires ALPR data to remain within state lines,” Bonta said in a Jan. 21 press release providing an update about the lawsuit. “As the Trump Administration continues to target Americans’ private and sensitive data to use beyond its intended purpose, it is important that we maintain safeguards to ensure this technology is used appropriately and lawfully.”
Between December 2024 and December 2025, the El Cajon Police Department conducted roughly 7,000 searches using Mountain View’s ALPR system, the Voice found. With the “reason” field redacted, the purpose of these searches is unknown.
After the Voice reached out to the Mountain View Police Department on Jan. 30 for comment on the decision to share data with El Cajon, Capt. Evan Crowl said that El Cajon had been removed from Mountain View’s network.
“We will be reaching out to the California Attorney General’s office to gather more information and have revoked their access to our data,” Crowl said.
“Side door sharing” is a big risk with ALPR cameras, according to Lisa Femia, a staff attorney with Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group.
“This is where instead of granting direct access to the database, the agency just does a search on behalf of someone else and then shares that information with them,” Femia said. For these reasons, Femia said that it was better to limit the number of partner agencies in a Flock network to keep ALPR data more secure.
“The closer it can be kept to home is always better,” she said.
What’s next for Mountain View’s Flock cameras?
This spring, the Mountain View Police Department plans to present a review of the ALPR pilot program to the City Council. Canfield declined to disclose whether the police department would recommend the continuation or removal of ALPR cameras in the city, but said that it was not necessarily a binary option. The city could continue to use ALPR cameras, whether or not it contracts with Flock to provide them, he said.
Canfield also stressed the value of ALPR cameras for assisting law enforcement investigations, noting that the cameras have helped local police investigate burglaries, home break-ins and a kidnapping.
“I know how important this is to providing safety,” he said. “It is not just another tool in a toolbox. It is an essential tool to fighting crime and protecting our Mountain View community.”
Canfield emphasized the importance of ensuring that security breaches don’t occur in the future, noting that the department is focusing on providing more oversight and transparency.
“We’re committed to being transparent and sharing information with our community,” Canfield said. “We’re committed to providing public safety holistically to everybody in Mountain View, and that means evaluating the Flock Safety program and the relationship with Flock Safety.”
Reporters Hannah Bensen and Arden Margulis contributed to this article.
Flock will have a log of who changed switch to national. If that data is not revealed, that means it’s Flock’s Fault and they’re hiding it from us and the contract should end.
If the city knows who did it, this is considered accessible information, and subject to a PRA, and cannot redacted.
All we are asking for chief, is the name of the human who logged in and flipped the switch. These switches don’t turn on by themselves. If they do, Flock should be fired.
This should be a straight forward investigation / review. Look at the original agreement between Flock and the police department to see if it states what the default settings are AND if those will be changed before going live. And yes, hopefully user logging was turned on. Who was the police department I.T. Admin at the time and anyone who had admin authority. Shouldn’t be very hard to figure out. I like the way the Police spokesperson is trying to cast Flock as the “bad guy”. It’s always CYA with the cops.
If you’re expecting to get a straight answer out of anyone, consider that the department couldn’t run the simple query requested by the Voice in time for the report. It’s probably an SQL database that would return the answer in a couple seconds.
If the chief can’t keep track of how his employees are using crime tools, why do we trust him to keep track of all the bullets in Mountain View?
If this was a pilot program and this violation of privacy has occured, it sounds like the pilot failed and the system should be removed and defunded.
Great reporting, Emily and Zoe! This is a perfect example of why democratic societies need newspapers and trained investigative reporters. I’ve been a paid subscriber (a.k.a. “donor”) to the 501(c) 3 that publishes The Voice for over a year, but I think it’s a good time for me provide a monthly donation instead of just giving once a year.
Agreed – this is excellent in-depth reporting.
Turn the damn things off. This is unforgivable
Kudos to the Voice for once more providing vital local reporting.
I didn’t read any guarantees that the illicit sharing stopped. At a minimum the cameras should be turned off immediately. Worth noting that Los Altos Hills just terminated its contract to stop being part of that nationwide dragnet. Per LAH website:
“At the January 15th, 2026 City Council Meeting, City Council voted to terminate the contract with Flock. Effectively immediately, all Flock cameras in Town will go offline. Town Staff is currently in the process of getting the Flock cameras taken down.”
Great article! I would like to know how many local crimes have been solved using this data in the past year. Also, it might be a good idea to do some investigating of Flock itself – who are its investors, who is on its board, who are its executives? Is it being motivated or paid to “accidentally” flip the switch?
Thanks,
Sally
EXACTLY!!
I’m sure the 600,000 queries run against the data in less than two years (1000 PER DAY) led to one or two crimes being solved a day sooner.
THIS is why I continue to donate to support journalism at every level. Without their work, we would be deaf, blind, & unaware until all of our rights are gone.
GET RID of all Flock cameras! I’ve never been like this, but this past year has made me realize how precarious our freedom is. We’re seeing how billionaires & corporations are spineless and can be bought so why would we trust Flock or some authority figures with access to these info to not be bought?
Remove Flock cameras to protect us and our friends and neighbors in this community.
This article has prompted me to make another donation to the Voice. I hope others will join me.
Got to support all the positive comments about the reporting, great work by the Voice and I’m glad I support it.
It seems that we can’t trust the MVPD to maintain the expertise to manage this technology (and who knows what other technologies they don’t have a great grip on?) so the only prudent thing to do is to shut this system down — full stop, not leave up for testing or whatever — until there is a full public disclosure of what went wrong and who got the data, no redactions! This is just too dangerous to leave lying around. Then the city council can decide if the benefits of easier investigations are worth the civil liberties costs.
Please contact all members of our city council and ask them to shut down all the Flock cameras. They’d approved this. They can shut it down.
What a way to erode what little public trust still exists. Get rid of all Flock cameras now!! Also, consider turning off your Ring camera as they began a partnership with Flock in October.
Someone forward this to the NyTImes please! They love a good big brother story!
I mentioned this is exactly what would happen when this contract was signed; you literally put a wolf in the hen house, the results of which were completely foreseeable. Just keep watching those slick PowerPoint presentations and keeping drinking the Kool aid, as they tell you everything is good and secure.
Flock is known for their default settings and cities are just as responsible hiring inept IT staff that use those default settings including the default username/password. These live stream cameras (unencrypted), accessible data ports, and stored data then end up easily accessible remotely or locally. There are countless youtube videos on these Flock cameras, its quite shocking.
Good luck getting those camera down, lol. Based on what already happened in other cities, they are staying up. Flock owns those cameras and its a crime to change those settings. It’s also been deemed public information by the courts (thanks to countless cities saying there are no privacy concerns since its public data), so anyone can request information and they can sue under federal law to obtain the data if denied. So now cities repeatedly lose federal lawsuits attempting to restrict the information. One city actually used trash bags to cover all the cameras including the solar panel since that’s all they could do per their contract since they didn’t own the cameras. Great aesthetics for a city, lol.
The newer flock cameras automatically zoom in on the face and you can even see the screen on the phone they are viewing, likely also obtaining their passcode for their phone as well. I can see why the police like them.
As for why there are so many queries, they are obviously harvesting MV camera data and maybe even running it against 3rd party image facial recognition software. Of course the authorities would always respond they aren’t doing it, which translates to they hired a 3rd party to do it for them.
It sounds like we need to show up at City council meetings and forcefully reject this ALPR pilot and any future expansion. And as a side note, this is a great example of the value of local reporting. Please keep supporting the Mountain View Voice.
You may see an analysis of the Flock data for a few cities at .
I did ask Mountain View for the Flock data on August 26, 2025. , and data was provided on November 2, 2025. Besides being much later than allowed by law, the data was provided in a non-machine readable form, making it hard to use. Other agencies, with the same Flock system, are able to provide usable data in less than a week.
Ah, yes, that request is “unpublished”, I wonder why (seems to be same for the Moutain View Voice request). And the answer said “However, we will not be providing records related to queries made by outside agencies using our data.” as if that did not concern Mountain View residents (or anybody for that matter).
I also note that Santa Cruz and Los Altos Hills recently decided to terminate their contracts with Flock, and that Santa Clara County is considering the same.
https://www.kqed.org/news/12069705/santa-cruz-the-first-in-california-to-terminate-its-contract-with-flock-safety
https://www.losaltosonline.com/news/los-altos-hills-to-remove-alpr-cameras/article_59f90aa8-14c1-4309-9f7f-12d16c649d9e.html
https://sanjosespotlight.com/santa-clara-county-may-ditch-camera-vendor-amid-privacy-issues/
Eric.
Sorry for the missing urls.
analysis of a few cities: http://efele.net/alpr
request for MV data: https://cityofmountainviewca.nextrequest.com/requests/25-2173
This is an important story. I look forward to the following articles on this topic. Solid journalism! I’m sharing this link with family and friends.
MVV – Great reporting!
MVPD – Do better at protecting the privacy of law-abiding citizens and do better with transparency around public records requests.
MV City Council – Public surveillance is a serious matter, and it’s clear that MVPD has not yet demonstrated the ability to adequately protect residents’ privacy. If public surveillance has any place in our city, it requires rigorous auditing and oversight.
MV Residents – we are being watched with very powerful surveillance tools. Given MVPD’s management to date, we can’t even be certain about who is watching us.
Want to learn more about Flock and see a map of cameras everywhere—not just in MV?
• Take a deeper dive here:
https://deflock.org/
• View the location and orientation of more than 72,000 license plate readers:
https://deflock.org/map#map=14/37.390414/-122.088575
This site also helps identify cameras that are apparently not government-operated and not subject to MV policies. Notably, there are some Flock cameras located within apartment complexes on San Antonio as well as extensive coverage at nearby Home Depot and Lowe’s parking lots. In these cases, access and data sharing would be governed by corporate policies or Flock’s terms and conditions.
Lastly, if you have a Ring doorbell camera, your device may be integrated into broader surveillance networks, including their partnership with Flock.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/16/amazons-ring-to-partner-with-flock-a-network-of-ai-cameras-used-by-ice-feds-and-police/
While Ring and Flock describe agency access to home cameras as opt-in, consider this quote from MV Police Chief Mike Canfield:
“I’m very disappointed that other agencies were able to utilize our data and were able to review it. But why wasn’t it caught sooner? I couldn’t tell you.” – MV Police Chief Mike Canfield
The MV City Council is scheduled to debate the future of this pilot program at the February 24 council meeting.
Good work, thank you for bringing this to light. This is why we need local journalism. Has anyone checked to see if Peter Thiel funds this company? If so, this might be a bigger story since ICE is using his company’s technologies.