Mountain View police turn off license plate cameras after breach

All of Mountain View’s license plate cameras are being disabled, effective immediately, Police Chief Mike Canfield announced Monday afternoon. The move comes in the wake of the police department’s disclosure last week that hundreds of law enforcement agencies had accessed the sensitive data in violation of the city’s policies for over a year.

The cameras will remain turned off until further direction is provided by the Mountain View City Council, which is expected to discuss the future of the program at its Feb. 24 meeting, Canfield wrote in the Feb. 2 news release.

The announcement follows a Voice investigation which revealed that more than 250 California law enforcement agencies had searched the city’s license plate camera data without its authorization or knowledge. That access was only turned off last month.

There was also a three month period in late-2024 when agencies outside of California were able to search Mountain View’s data, including multiple federal entities.

The cameras, 30 in total, were installed and administered by Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company. The automatic license plate readers – known as ALPRs – automatically take photos of the back of passing vehicles.

“While the Flock Safety pilot program demonstrated clear value in enhancing our ability to protect our community and help us solve crimes, I personally no longer have confidence in this particular vendor,” Canfield said in the release. “I was deeply disappointed to learn that Flock Safety did not meet the City’s requirements regarding our data access control and transparency.”

Following a public records request from the Voice, the police department recently discovered that a “national lookup” setting had been turned on from August to November 2024. According to Canfield, Flock turned that setting on without notifying Mountain View police, and did not tell the department when it was turned off.

The department also realized that a “statewide lookup” function had allowed agencies throughout California to search the city’s data since the first camera was installed in August 2024.

Under city policy, agencies are only supposed to be given access to Mountain View’s data if they receive prior authorization from the police department. State law also prohibits sharing ALPR information with out-of-state agencies, as well as sharing this information for immigration enforcement purposes.

“This vendor’s lack of proactive disclosure is inconsistent with the standards the MVPD holds and the assurances we were given by the Flock team,” Canfield said. “I, in turn, gave assurances to the community that I now know were not grounded in the Flock system’s actual practice.”

Canfield added that community trust is vital to public safety and is a reason for discontinuing the ALPR pilot program until the City Council can weigh in on it.

Last week, a Flock spokesperson said that the company would confer with the Mountain View Police Department directly to address its concerns.

This is a developing story and more information will be included with updates.

This story originally appeared in the Mountain View Voice. Emily Margaretten joined the Mountain View Voice in 2023 as a reporter covering City Hall. Zoe Morgan joined the Mountain View Voice in 2021, with a focus on covering local schools, youth and families.