A report by the SF Standard revealed apparent violations of state and city laws. But Oakland police insist they aren’t facilitating immigration enforcement.
by Eli Wolfe July 15, 2025 (Oaklandside.com)
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Last month, the Oakland Police Department assured privacy advocates they are not sharing data from OPD’s surveillance camera network with federal agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But a report by the San Francisco Standard on Monday called that into question. Local police departments in California have searched OPD’s surveillance system on behalf of federal agencies over 200 times, according to the story. One prolific searcher was the San Francisco Police Department, which may have broken state law by turning over data from Oakland’s cameras to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and several other federal agencies. In one instance, the California Highway Patrol logged a search of OPD’s system, giving the reason as “ICE case.”
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The report has kicked up a storm of concerns from privacy advocates, especially given the Trump administration’s recent interest in broadening its crackdown on immigration enforcement by having federal agents from the FBI and other agencies help find and arrest immigrants.
Now, OPD is trying to push back against the report’s findings.
Shortly after the Standard article was published, OPD issued a statement that called the headline “misleading.”
“To be clear, no member of the Oakland Police Department was involved in this alleged sharing of (automated license plate reader) information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” the department said.
The Oaklandside obtained and reviewed the data reported on by the SF Standard and confirmed that the San Francisco Police Department accessed OPD’s license plate reader system numerous times for the purposes of helping the FBI with cases. The Fremont Police Department also searched the system dozens of times to help the FBI. And the California Highway Patrol did a search on April 23 of this year, noting only that it was for the purpose of an “ICE case.” It’s unclear what that means.
A CHP spokesperson told The Standard it was investigating the search and that if it confirmed any personnel requested license plate data on behalf of ICE for immigration enforcement, “there will be consequences.”
California prohibits local law enforcement agencies from sharing with federal agencies any data collected by automated license plate readers. These are powerful cameras that can take a “digital fingerprint” of the back of any vehicle that passes by, including the license plate.
Oakland and San Francisco installed hundreds of these cameras over the past year in response to concerns over crime. Both cities use the same vendor, Flock Safety, which advertises how local law enforcement can share data across jurisdictions. Over the past year, Oakland’s system has been searched over one million times by state and local police.
Federal agents can’t directly access cameras in California and several other states. In May, the newsroom 404 Media discovered that some local police departments have run searches on cameras when asked to by federal authorities, essentially creating a backdoor to access. This is apparently what happened with San Francisco sharing OPD’s data with the feds.
“In OPD’s data sharing request form, we require all agencies using our system to ‘be in compliance’ with state law,” OPD said in its statement. The department added that it is verifying that its partners who access data from the ALPR system are complying with state law around not sharing with federal agencies.
Privacy advocate Brian Hofer doesn’t believe Oakland can realistically prevent this kind of illegal data sharing from happening due to the immense size of the surveillance networks.
“We’re giving the illusion of oversight and guardrails here,” Hofer said in a recent interview. “That’s why people like me keep trying to push back and have smaller systems and siloed databases.”
OPD is currently seeking permission to grow its surveillance camera network
Hofer is a member of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission, which evaluates new technologies and policies that could impact the privacy and civil liberties of Oakland residents. The commission is currently scrutinizing a new policy that, if approved, would allow OPD to incorporate potentially hundreds more cameras into its Flock network.
At a meeting in June, an OPD representative promised the commission that the department doesn’t share ALPR data with ICE and that it complies with state law that prohibits sharing information with federal authorities.
Last week, Hofer warned that these restrictions aren’t bulletproof because there’s a long history of agencies — including ICE — using proxies to conduct searches of local surveillance systems. This is exactly what the Standard uncovered.
Hofer said the commission was never given some of the logs the Standard obtained through a public records request to tell its story. He plans to bring the findings to an upcoming commission meeting to discuss potential next steps. But he also said Oakland should stop sharing data with San Francisco.
“They’re a dirty police department, I don’t think they’re trustworthy, ever,” Hofer said. “They’ve proven by these queries that they don’t give a damn about state law.”
ELI WOLFE
Eli Wolfe reports on City Hall for The Oaklandside. He was previously a senior reporter for San José Spotlight, where he had a beat covering Santa Clara County’s government and transportation. He also worked as an investigative reporter for the Pasadena-based newsroom FairWarning, where he covered labor, consumer protection and transportation issues. He started his journalism career as a freelancer based out of Berkeley. Eli’s stories have appeared in The Atlantic, NBCNews.com, Salon, the San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. Eli graduated from UC Santa Cruz and grew up in San Francisco.More by Eli Wolfe
