Ark investigation: Dozens of federal agencies accessed Tiburon license-plate data

AFTER THREE MONTHS of refusing comment, Tiburon Police Chief Michelle Jean acknowledged in a Feb. 3 email that 23 agencies have conducted potentially illegal federal searches of the town’s automated license-plate camera database, including for immigration enforcement. The admission and department’s quiet December revisions to its oversight policies came in direct response to an Ark investigation that documented 475 federal searches by nine California agencies, raising significant questions about violations of state privacy laws and the town’s handling of driver data.

Jean called the searches an “unacceptable use of the town’s license-plate reader data,” acknowledging that California agencies “may have accessed the town’s data and potentially shared that data with federal immigration agencies” amid the Trump administration’s nationwide crackdown.