California
Marin County
On record
Checked 21 Aug 2026- Technologies
- 2
- Systems
- 4
- Devices mapped
- 178
Marin County, California. Device data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), with community reporting via DeFlock. Open the full map →
Marin County’s research pass read the California State Auditor’s Report 2019-118 and the survey answers four Marin agencies gave it, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office policy manual stamped September 2025, Tiburon’s posted license plate reader policy and its monthly internal audit series, the Central Marin Police Authority staff report of August 2024, the accounts the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Northern California published of the 2021 suit and the 2022 settlement, and local reporting on the Sheriff’s 2023 camera contract. The Sheriff’s military equipment inventory and drone statistics both returned HTTP 404 to our fetcher, Novato’s and Sausalito’s camera registry pages returned HTTP 403, the vendor transparency portals could not be read by our tools, and the Board of Supervisors item behind the Sheriff’s contract, the reported Peregrine Technologies proposal and the reported 2026 Mill Valley change all stayed open.
What's in use here
The California State Auditor examined this program in February 2020 and recorded that Marin's policy was to retain images for two years, that images were shared with hundreds of entities, and that staff searches were not audited. A suit over that sharing was filed in October 2021 and settled in May 2022. The office's policy manual stamped September 2025 caps retention at thirty days and requires an annual audit of all user queries.
Tiburon posts its license plate reader policy on the town website and publishes a monthly internal audit of every search run against its database. The policy bars sharing the town's plate data with out-of-state or federal agencies, and for federal immigration enforcement. The Ark reported in 2026 that its own audit of those records documented 475 federal searches by nine California agencies, and that the police chief acknowledged the searches in a February 3 email.
The authority's council received an informational staff report on Flock Safety license plate readers on August 8, 2024. The requested action was to receive the presentation, and the report estimated no cost to the authority because private donations were being pursued. The report attached a draft policy that would delete the data after 30 days and bar sharing with agencies outside California. We did not find an approval, an agreement or a donation record after it in the records we fetched.
The Sheriff's Office policy manual carries a small unmanned aerial system policy. Flights are requested through the Communications Center and approved by the on-duty Watch Commander, and the equipment may not be used to conduct random surveillance. The size of the fleet and the number of flights are not in any record we fetched.
Who runs it
The agency is the accountability unit: who voted, whose policy applies, and who answers a records request.
| Agency | Jurisdiction | AB 481 policy | SB 34 policy | Systems |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marin County Sheriff's Office | Marin County | On file | On file, not posted | 2 |
| Central Marin Police Authority | Larkspur, Corte Madera and San Anselmo | — | — | 1 |
| Tiburon Police Department | Town of Tiburon | — | Posted | 1 |
| Belvedere Police Department | City of Belvedere | — | — | 0 |
| San Rafael Police Department | City of San Rafael | — | — | 0 |
| Sausalito Police Department | City of Sausalito | — | — | 0 |
| 6 agencies on record. A jointly run system counts against each of its operators, so this column is not a county total. "Posted" means the policy is published where the law requires it. "On file" means we hold the document. "Not posted" and "not found" mean we could not find it on the agency's own website on the date shown; they say nothing about how the system is used. An agency with a dash has not been checked, which is not a finding. | ||||
Trackers
Meetings, contracts, records
Nothing listed yet. The trackers launch here, and facts appear only with their sources.
How the inventory works →What you can do
Civic action
Show up
Public comment is open to any resident, and you do not have to be an expert to use it. We have not yet confirmed where the bodies that decide for Marin County meet. How the inventory works explains what we check and how to check it yourself.
How the inventory works →Personal protection
Protect yourself
Practical steps to shrink your personal data trail. Our guides publish at launch; until then, EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense is the best starting point.
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