Who flies surveillance drones in San Francisco County?
- Expanding Drones
- Agency
- San Francisco Police Department
- Vendor
- —
- Devices
- —
| System | Agency | Vendor | Status | Devices |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drones | San Francisco Police Department | — | Expanding | — |
What we do not know
San Francisco Police
- What Proposition E actually changed. The department names Administrative Code Chapter 96I.2 as its authority, and the code is published on a host that refused our requests, so we have not read the text. Nothing on this page describes what Proposition E did to the surveillance ordinance, because we cannot yet say.
- What the drones carry. The program page does not describe cameras, zoom, thermal imaging or any other payload, and we have not read the use policy or the two unit orders the page names.
- How long drone footage is kept, who may view it, and whether it is shared. None of that is on the program page.
- Why flights roughly doubled between 2025 and the first half of 2026. The log records that it happened; nothing we have read explains it.
- Whether the six drones of the initial phase are still the whole fleet. The program page describes an initial phase and does not say what came after it.
What drones are
An unmanned aircraft carrying a camera, flown by a public agency. Where a state classes drones as military equipment, as California does, a public policy and a governing-body vote are required before an agency uses one.
How they work, why agencies buy them, and every county we have documented →
What you can do
Civic action
Show up
This technology is bought and renewed by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have not yet confirmed where each of them meets in San Francisco County.
Go to the San Francisco County hub →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.
Surveillance Self-Defense ↗