Oakland cops gave ICE license plate data; SFPD also illegally shared with feds
372 comments
·July 14, 2025potato3732842
everforward
> These things will keep happening until it is no longer socially acceptable to advocate for the creation of data collection programs that are a necessary precondition.
The root issue here is that the government is no longer able or willing to control and bind their own law enforcement agencies. Agreed that this program was a bad idea, but the wider issue that law enforcement agencies can and do wantonly disregard direct orders from the state. There's the direct issue of impact on people as a result, and the more intangible idea of the questionable legitimacy of a government that is not able to control its own enforcement agencies.
This needs to be met with swift repercussions for both the individuals that participated, as well as the agencies that allowed it. Lacking that, it seems a reasonable inference that enforcement agencies are no longer bound by the will of the people and are in fact the ruling government.
Uehreka
> This needs to be met with swift repercussions for both the individuals that participated, as well as the agencies that allowed it.
That’s not going to happen. Cross out that sentence and reason as if we’ve already asked for that and it failed. We’ve heard this song too many times to pretend we don’t know the first verse.
coliveira
The US has a long history of agencies that decide by themselves to do things that are frequently illicit with the excuse that they're protecting the public. From police to 3 letter agencies, they're all operating illegal programs that should be stoped by the public. Whenever someone tries it, they protect their power using the excuse that they're doing this for the "benefit" of democracy or some similar BS.
davrosthedalek
It's a lesson people haven't learned in 80 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_...
For any dataset you collect, think about how it can be miss-used. Because in all likelihood it will. Maybe not by you. But maybe by your successor. Or the hacker.
slg
Although it is interesting how inconsistently this principle of is applied to other areas. For example, if you come to HN and advocate against encryption or AI because they can amplify the dangers of bad actors, you are going to be met by fierce opposition. So why do these hypothetical bad actors only become valid concerns in certain conversations?
prophesi
When it comes to encryption, it helps save actual lives. If you mandate getting rid of encryption, bad actors will still break the law and use encryption to carry on business as normal. Regular citizens lose, oppressive governments & criminals win.
rented_mule
Something that seems inherently different between GP's comment and encryption is that encryption is an algorithm / tool, not a dataset. Not creating literal tools because they might have bad use cases is clearly a bad idea (e.g., fire, knives, hammers, etc.).
I'd say that one thing inherently different about datasets is that they are continually used badly, including by well-meaning actors. Data is frequently misinterpreted, with good intent, to draw bad conclusions.
You might hit your thumb with a hammer. That hurts! People would be a lot more careful if misinterpreting data had such clear, immediate effects on them.
Also, there are many different groups with different passionate opinions in any community as large as this one.
null
mindslight
Encryption is this same exact topic, and the prevailing technical viewpoint is the direct application of the principle of minimizing collected datasets.
yieldcrv
Its noteworthy to me that it took till 1943 for the reality of the threat to be taken seriously for this outcome
People making parallels I feel have been inaccurate, as the parallels right now are much closer to Europe's 1933 happenings, and people act like 1945's happenings is what will happen the very next day
Not sure what to make of that, just noticing that these particular "resistances" didn't have a prior allegory to watch, and made these choices eventually, and still how late into the story we know that these things occurred
davrosthedalek
What can I say, it's hard to give up data. So I guess the situation must escalate until the bad outcome was undeniable.
And I don't want to make a point here about current political affairs. My point is that data collection has serious dangers, independent how good you think the current collectors are, how good the intentions of the data collection are, and how good the benefits of the data collection are. We should not pretend that at least some data collection has benefits. But we should also not pretend that any given data collection doesn't have the risk of misuse.
It's up to politics (in the end, us), to make sure that these risks are valued correctly, for example by making sure that data collectors take over some of the risk in a serious way. "The data was protected according to industry standards" is not enough.
chaps
A lot of that is because of the advent of computer systems built by IBM to maintain records.
macNchz
I think the whole timeline of WWII is broadly misunderstood in the US. I imagine it’s related to the fact the US entered quite late, and that much of what’s taught in school is fairly US centric.
It’d be very interesting to survey people and see how people’s mental models reflect reality. I imagine very few Americans would identify what was going on in 1933 at all, never mind that Hitler’s first attempt at a coup took place nearly 20 years before the US entered the war.
marricks
Before the Nazi's invaded the main guy who advocated for the civil registry which allowed the Nazi's to easily find jewish people went to his grave believing he did nothing wrong in advocating for such a database.
Clearly we all need to be thinking much more deeply on these issues.
airza
I think the hard counterpoint is - some ways that American government function are patently insane compared to other industrialized countries. Having moved from US to Nl just having one single source of truth about where I live and who I am for all sources of government is much less of a headache in day-to-day life. Mail forwarding, authentication for municipal governments, health insurance, etc, just takes 0% of my life (compared to the pain of authenticating myself separately to every part of the government, sometimes by answering questions about my life trawled from _private_ data aggregation companies - the lack of a central civil register does not seem to be particularly effective right now in stopping the Us government from terrorizing its citizens. Gathering this data for everyone is certainly more tedious but i think avoiding the dragnet completely for the average member of society is functionally impossible.
fooker
Who was this guy?
bigyabai
What can we even change? It's likely HN will also go to the grave demanding deregulation amidst a maelstrom of consumer protection malfunctions. We're already there in many respects; the DOJ's case against Google and Apple both seem to have stalled-out while the EU, Japan and South Korea all push forward with their investigations.
In many respects, the attitude of "we'll fix this one day" is exactly why we don't think deeply about these issues. Client-side scanning was proposed only a short while ago, and you can still read the insane amount of apologists on this site who think that unmitigated data collection can be a good thing if you trust the good Samaritan doing it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28068741
It will take an utter catastrophe before the deregulation bloc sees what's at stake. This is far from over, despite the unanimous desire to put security in the rearview mirror.
whats_a_quasar
Fair enough, but it is also valid to be angry at your local law enforcement if they are acting against the community's preferences. Especially when local law enforcement is breaking state law in the process.
Dilettante_
Maybe true, but at a certain point you're just getting angry at the wind for blowing. The system is a scorpion: It cannot, will not go against its nature.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF
They are a political force, not a force of nature. It is certainly reasonable to get angry at a political force even if their politics are predictable.
fn-mote
At this point it sounds like you have given up believing in checks and balances in politics.
ETA: It’s complicated, but having you give up actually weakens the rule of law even more.
xyzzy9563
The greater community, i.e. the United States, may have different preferences than San Francisco.
FireBeyond
Those officers are employees of the City, County or State, not the United States.
mc32
But that would put them between federal law vs state law and federal law supersedes state law and state law supersedes local laws.
ceejayoz
There are plenty of things Federal law can't do under the Tenth Amendment.
As an example, the Feds can round up marijuana users in California, if they like. They can't require California's law enforcement to help.
vector_spaces
Why not be angry at all of them?
As someone who works with sensitive healthcare data, I can tell you that the mere existence of a dataset doesn't guarantee its misuse, nor it does it absolve anyone who interacts with that data of responsibility for proper stewardship.
Yes, you are right that we should think carefully before creating a sensitive dataset. If we insist on creating such a dataset, the people involved must put in place guardrails for stewardship of those datasets. But the stewards of that data, past, present, and future, also share responsibility.
Of course if the incentive structures don't line up with concern for mitigation of harm to vulnerable people as is the case with law enforcement in the US, then all of that is out the window.
Anyway, what you have written implies that we need not think about accountability for those who misuse of datasets after they are created, which is clearly absurd as I and anyone else familiar with healthcare data can tell you.
panic
Also, be angry at those who didn't follow through with promises to severely reduce funding to their police departments in 2020. If an organization consistently behaves in a way we don't like, we should seek alternatives to that organization, not continuously act surprised when they act out and keep giving them more money.
JumpCrisscross
> be angry at those who didn't follow through with promises to severely reduce funding to their police departments in 2020
This was tried. It generated a generational backlash against the left as petty crime and visible homelessness rose.
To the extent police reform has historically worked, it’s been by rebooting a police department. (Think: replacing the Mets with the NYPD.) Not replacing police with a hippie circle.
stouset
> This was tried. It generated a generational backlash against the left as petty crime and visible homelessness rose.
Crime has been on a downward trend for a generation, outside of a few areas. In San Francisco specifically, crime also increased due to police officers quietly going on strike against policies they disagreed with. Now that police officers are actually doing their jobs again, shockingly, crime is rapidly falling.
What has actually increased is sensationalist coverage in the media, which you're right, has created a significant political backlash.
sagarm
SF did not reduce police funding. They quiet quit anyway.
mlinhares
Crime did not rose, crime has been in a downward trajectory for decades, this is likely one of the reasons the crackdown on illegal immigrants is so bad, prison owners are noticing they might lose their cash cow and needs a new population to imprison.
loeg
"Defund the police" was never actually tried. (This is not a defense of defunding -- I agree it would have similarly bad outcomes! But you can't just point at changes that weren't defunding the police and say it was tried.)
panic
Where was it tried? My understanding is that even Minneapolis didn't follow through with it.
rightbyte
> It generated a generational backlash against the left as petty crime and visible homelessness rose
With "the left" you mean the SF DA?
Ar-Curunir
Don't speak bullshit. There was more media outrage hullabaloo around the idea of reducing cop funding than there was any actual reduction. Especially because the cops went on strike to ensure that no cuts would happen.
Police forces across the US have never seen higher funding rates.
lazyasciiart
It was not tried, and saying that it was is a fundamentally false claim that is actively pushing public opposition to the idea supported by lies. It’s as reasonable as saying don’t vote for democrats because they have a pedophile office under a pizza store. Are there a bunch of people who were convinced by this lie? Yes. Does that make it anything other than a manipulative lie to say? No.
mlinhares
These people were mostly defeated in elections and the ones promising to shovel even more money got elected, just look at Eric Adams in NYC.
I seriously hope what is happening right now finally radicalizes the rest of the population that law enforcement as it is right now does not work for the public interest.
jahewson
I guess this depends on how one defines the public interest. Shielding data from federal authorities surely has both upsides and downsides.
Geezus_42
They aren't even required to protect you according to the supreme court. The only point of cops is to protect private property, not people, and to harass people that conservatives don't like.
davrosthedalek
If you defund police, what do you think will be cut first? The control organs and oversight, or the thing they should oversee?
ceejayoz
> If you defund police, what do you think will be cut first?
That's why you don't just go to the cops and say "find $1B in your budget to cut". You give specifics.
null
Ar-Curunir
So you are saying that the police force is a extra-governmental organization that has full control over how they allocate funds?
All the more reason to reduce their funding!
LazyMans
To be fair, systems like Flocksafety really help departments being squeezed for funding. It's one of the ways the system is sold. It's an effective tool.
dimitrios1
"Defund the police" was and remains wildly unpopular with almost everyone, especially minorities (as a reminder to any of those out touch reading this: there are large racial disparities in who is affected by crime, particularly violent crime) . It was quintessential "progressives are out of touch" ammunition, not only used by republicans (obviously), but also establishment democrats in competitive districts.
As another commenter posted, its about not allowing the creation of the data set in the first place.
We really need everyone in this country to go read "Nothing to Hide" by Daniel Solove, because thats how this crazy shit gets through in the first place: innocuous citizens go "Sure, I got nothing to hide"
stouset
This same argument is true for every bit of authority we give to law enforcement agencies (and really, the government in general). We expect they'll use those powers responsibly and within the limitations that we've ascribed, but it's always a risk that they're used irresponsibly and in situations we don't approve of.
Yes, this is an argument for not giving them more authority than necessary, but it's also an argument for holding them accountable when they do act out of bounds.
To this point, any law that gives power to government officials also needs to have explicit and painful consequences for abuse of those powers. Civilians who break the law face punishment and penalties, but government employees are almost never held to account. That needs to change.
TechDebtDevin
There are mobile survalience cameras systems at my very family friendly park. Everyone has asked the city to tow them away but they refuse. There was no vote on this.
orthecreedence
Spraypaint?
spauldo
A tire and some gasoline seems to work for the Brits.
geocar
> If you're gonna be angry at someone be angry at the people among us were in favor of the creation of this data set
I think it's okay to be angry at public servants for "following orders" too.
We didn't let the Nazis get away with that bullshit for a good reason.
thaumaturgy
Flock is absolutely designed to facilitate and encourage this kind of abuse. They have extensive data sharing built in to their system while promising agencies that the users "own" the data.
My local police department just recently got a grant for these and is in the process of setting them up, and I'm working with a number of local technologists and activists to shut it down. We are showing up at every police commission meeting and every city council meeting and keeping actively engaged with local press. I spent almost three hours yesterday having coffee with a police commissioner and I have meeting requests from a number of other local officials. There are similar efforts ongoing in other cities across the U.S.
An interesting one to keep an eye on is Cedar Rapids, which includes a neat teardown of one of the devices: https://eyesoffcr.org/blog/blog-8.html
Immediately after setting up the system -- before all of the devices were even fully online -- our local PD began sharing access with departments in non-sanctuary states. When we asked questions about it, they hid that section from their transparency page. We are cooking them publicly for that.
Flock is VC-funded commercialized mass surveillance.
techdmn
Chiming in to add crowd-sourced flock camera locations: https://deflock.me/
spankalee
I live in Oakland and this is a difficult topic.
The type of crime common here is nearly impossible to address without technological assistance. People steal cars, drive into neighborhoods, then break into other cars and houses. They're gone sometimes before a 911 call can even be made, and far before the police arrive. The criminals know this and are just incredibly brazen about it. They'll finish the job with people watching and recording because they know there's no way for them to be caught. People get followed home and held up in their driveway. The criminals are often armed, and people have been shot and killed for even the mildest of resistance. One guy was killed a block from where I was standing for knocking on the window of a getaway car of some guys stealing another car in broad daylight.
Leaving aside broader and more fundamental fixes for crime, which are much longer term projects, the only near-term thing that actually reduces this kind of crime is arrest and conviction rates. In SF, drones have helped reduced car break-ins, because they've actually caught some crews. Oakland doesn't have drones that I know of, but Flock cameras have enabled enough tracking for police to sometimes actually find these people quickly, even several miles away, and make an arrest.
Those are just the plain facts of the situation. It's understandable that people want some kind of solution here. Without at least starting from that understanding, it'll be very difficult to convince people that a solution that is having a positive impact already is not worth the other costs and risks.
And to me, this is the core conflict at a really high level: the economic and societal fixes for crime are usually opposed by the same people who abuse these kind of surveillance systems for authoritarian purposes. To me it's no coincidence that their preferred solution to crime just happens to help them keep an eye on the whole population.
ghushn3
There's a hugely material difference between deterring local property crime and handing ICE this information.
ICE is deporting people to death camps (e.g. CECOT), not giving people due process, operating masked and with military support. ICE is a gestapo in all but name.
By all means, find ways to get your community police departments to address crime in your communities. Work with systems outside of police to fix the systemic root causes (crime doesn't "just happen", it's a symptom of other problems). But you don't need the secret police to fix car jackings and break-ins.
simianparrot
ICE is deporting illegals. How is that equivalent to the Gestapo? Please don't throw around terms like this, it's how we've ended up with everyone that's slightly uncomfortable being called Hitler, and the name itself becoming a joke rather than a stark reminder.
ryandrake
Anyone, citizen or non-citizen, illegaly here or legally here, can now be kidnapped off the street, stuffed in an unmarked van by masked men not identifying themselves as police, and sent to a foreign prison, without any due process. This is a little bit beyond merely “deporting illegals.”
grumio
ICE deports US citizens. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ice-deported-3-childre...
They're like the gestapo because they act in secret and hide their identities. They arrest dissidents because they say things the administration doesn't like. See Mahmoud Khalil. They're like the gestapo because hateful people get to just make people "illegal" at their own discretion. Half a million Haitians fleeing violence were here under temporary protected status, the executive branch is choosing to make them "illegal" and lying that Haiti is safe now. Half a million people were legal. Now they're "illegal". https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/27/haiti-temporar...
They do not follow due process which is guaranteed by the constitution to all persons in the US (not just citizens).
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/jul/13/rosie-odonne... Trump wants to make Rosie O'Donnell "illegal". What are your thoughts on this?
GuinansEyebrows
"illegal" is not a noun and the use of it as such dehumanizes people for terrible reasons.
ceejayoz
> ICE is deporting illegals. How is that equivalent to the Gestapo?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws
"The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens."
The Holocaust was, broadly speaking, legal under German law at the time. The Gestapo were frequently enforcing laws with their actions. Eventually, Jews were deported to concentration camps; they were made "illegal".
"Legal" and "moral" are sometimes related, but not always. The Gestapo didn't start with the killings.
jahewson
Please stop with this hateful nonsense. The gestapo straight-up murdered millions.
You just loose all credibility with this outrageous rhetoric.
perihelions
JumpCrisscross
Between this and the abortion story [1] (CEO deflected blame and took zero ownership [2]), it looks like Flock leans into enabling this sort of lawlessness. They should be torn out of our cities.
Do we have a list of their clients?
EDIT: Apparently my town installed them in 2023 [3]. Inciting a couple council members over for dinner this week.
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-te...
[2] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/statement-network-sharing-u...
[3] https://atlasofsurveillance.org/search?vendor=Flock+Safety
aprilthird2021
What a ridiculous response. Just say "Flock cameras are designed for law enforcement to use however they see fit, even if it's to chase down abortion-getters, even if it's to kidnap people off the street into unmarked vans"
bigyabai
Another example for the whiteboard of "why 'invest in founders not ideas' doesn't work" I suppose.
The more I look back on it, working for a YC-funded company will forever remain the black eye of my resume. I don't feel even a lick of pride "solving" the "problems" that YC perceives to be important. The greatest minds of my generation are looking at China and envying the confidence of their state.
josefresco
"The first public safety operating system that eliminates crime."
I've heard of "startup founder hubris" before but this is a new level.
barbazoo
> Our flock of hard-working employees thrive in a positive and inclusive environment
I'm honestly surprised they weren't too woke for them.
lupire
Occasional reminder that YC application required applicants to give an eample of how they cheated a system for personal gain. YC prefers "naughty" founders over honest ones.
int_19h
I was curious about this and found the precise wording of the question:
> Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.
Gormo
That's way too broad to support the previous comment's claim, and seems to be looking for examples of ingenuity. Modifying your dishwasher to use less water would fit that prompt.
barbazoo
YC prefers potential profit over anything else it seems, otherwise I can't imagine how this would have gone through.
Ar-Curunir
Because VCs are psychopaths by most measures? I mean just look at Andreesen, or Thiel, or any of the ghouls creating a fascist state.
pj_mukh
What YC is (actually) asking: For example, When was a time you went the extra mile to get a job interviewers attention
What HN thinks YC I asking: "how they cheated a system for personal gain"
lol.
Source: Me, I got into YC by answering the question that way.
varenc
> The OPD didn’t share information directly with the federal agencies. Rather, other California police departments searched Oakland’s system on behalf of federal counterparts more than 200 times — providing reasons such as “FBI investigation” for the searches
Does this mean it wasn't exactly to Oakland Police that violated state law, but rather other CA based law enforcement entities?
tonymet
it's also possible the other agencies only shared findings rather than specific records.
For example if the law says "plate reader records cannot be shared" and the CHP just confirms the presence of the records , and does not share the records, no violation occurred.
You did a good job reading the article from bottom to top. The headline and lead are usually misleading.
tonymet
"The OPD (Oakland PD) didn’t share information directly with the federal agencies. Rather, other California police departments searched Oakland’s system on behalf of federal counterparts more than 200 times —
tonymet
So the headline is misleading. It seems like oakland made their records available to state agencies like CHP, and one of those agencies queried the records and shared the query results with federal agencies.
And the article doesn't specify which results were shared.
So it's clear Oakland didn't violate the law, and there is reasonable doubt that the other agencies didn't violate the law either.
Judgements come from judges, not journalists.
ghushn3
"I posted the answer key openly in the hallway, how could I possibly know people would use this to cheat on their homework!"
They are aware this is happening and are taking no action. They are as culpable as the other agencies.
exabrial
Just so everyone remembers: automated collection is an unlawful search by the constitution. Stop advocating for a police state and expecting something different. (Mandatory registration of objects, mandatory medical procedures, mandatory facial accessories, mandatory automatic government payments to fund all of this)
rapatel0
The supremacy clause of the constitution asserts that federal law takes precedence over state laws. There are thousands of state laws on the books that are basically rendered null, because a federal law overrides it. One clear example is segregation laws like interracial marriage which was on the books in some states decades after the civil rights movement.
Example: Alabama was the last state to remove its ban on interracial marriage from its statutes in 2000, though this was largely symbolic as interracial marriage was legalized nationwide by the Supreme Court's ruling in Loving v. Virginia in 1967.
There is probably a specific federal law enforcement authority that may or may not be in conflict with the state law. It's unclear if this is a 10th amendment violation for the state or if federal law enforcement is granted this authority
542354234235
Federal Law takes precedence over State, but the anti-commandeering doctrine prevents the federal government from directly compelling states to implement or enforce federal law. So local law enforcement is under no obligation to pass information to ICE or assist ICE. It has been ruled on time and time again, from 1842 when Justice Joseph Story affirmed it [1] to Justice Samuel Alito in 2018 [2].
[1] “The clause relating to fugitive slaves is found in the national Constitution, and not in that of any State. It might well be deemed an unconstitutional exercise of the power of interpretation to insist that the States are bound to provide means to carry into effect the duties of the National Government nowhere delegated or entrusted to them by the Constitution.” Prigg v. Pennsylvania https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/41/539/
[2] “Congress may not simply ‘commandeer the legislative process of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program.” Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-476
singron
I don't think there is a 10th amendment violation or a question of federal authority. States can't be compelled to perform federal law enforcement because of the 10th amendment. States are accordingly allowed to prevent their own law enforcement from performing federal law enforcement. If state law enforcement aids the feds anyway, then they are just breaking state law.
A 10th amendment violation would be if the feds require the state to perform federal law enforcement.
Federal authority is relevant if they e.g. raided state law enforcement offices to take the data without consent, but in this case they are just given the data by state officers.
gtirloni
> "If these allegations are confirmed, there will be consequences."
Sure.
some_random
Cops do the thing they always wanted to do as soon as leadership vaguely hints that they won't be punished for it, what a surprise.
null
Havoc
US seems like a free for all with sensitive data lately
oceansky
Free for the rich and for government agencies.
vkou
It is. Some of it is being accessed illegally (ICE has been given full access to the IRS, which is a violation of the fifth amendment, local LE sharing it in contravention with state laws), and some of it is being accessed legally (local LE sharing it in compliance with state laws).
The criminals are, sadly, running the circus, and they are acting like they'll never lose power.
Hikikomori
At this point they're unlikely to lose power unless there's a military coup dismantling the entire extreme right.
bigyabai
Lately?
The only implication that your information was ever safe in America was marketing. Programmers should have been able to read the privacy-destroying tea leaves a decade ago.
The law enforcement agencies which behaved the way law enforcement agencies always behave and did what anyone with even the slightest familiarity with how law enforcement acts thought they would do with the data. This outcome was 1000% predictable even if the details were not.
If you're gonna be angry at someone be angry at the people among us were in favor of the creation of this data set because they foolishly thought it would be used to combat mundane property crime or because perhaps they thought that subjecting motorists to an increased dragnet would be a good thing for alternative transportation, or some other cause, think that they have done no wrong despite warnings of the potential for something like this being raised way back when the cameras and the ALPRs were being put up.
These things will keep happening until it is no longer socially acceptable to advocate for the creation of data collection programs that are a necessary precondition.