Berkeley police limit surveillance data access to prevent use in federal immigration cases

In her department’s annual report on surveillance technologies to the City Council this month, Berkeley Police Chief Jennifer Louis noted a tightening of data security practices in an attempt to prevent its use in federal immigration enforcement cases.

Berkeley police limited access to the city’s automated license plate reader data after seeing the city appeared in three statewide searches that mentioned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Patrol in the search terms within the Flock database that it and other agencies used for automated license plate readers.