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ORWELL INDEX

Who runs license plate readers in San Mateo County?

On the map

0
Verified by us
699
Community-reported

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), including community reporting via the DeFlock project. Tiles by OpenFreeMap.

What we do not know

San Mateo County Sheriff

  • Which document the civil grand jury was reading when it recorded "No stated retention" for the Sheriff's Office. The office's current policy states two retention periods, one year in general and thirty days for Flock data, and states the twelve-month ceiling a second time in its accounting requirements. The report compared each agency's policy against the vendor's transparency portal and the vendor contract, and does not say which of the three the entry refers to. We could not resolve it from the documents we read.
  • What the Sheriff's Flock contract and vendor transparency portal say about retention. We have read neither.
  • Whether the audits the policy requires were conducted. The grand jury reported that the records produced to it were insufficient to substantiate compliance; it did not report that no audits occurred, and its own report says a finding based on nonproduction is not a determination that no record exists.
  • How the Sheriff will answer the six findings assigned to the office. A response is required under Penal Code section 933.05, due roughly sixty days after the August 3, 2026 report.
  • Why the 2018 version of Policy 420 is still served from the same directory as the current one. The two differ on retention, and the older file is the one a search engine tends to return.

What license plate readers are

An automated license plate reader photographs every passing vehicle and records the plate, the time and the place. It does not watch suspects. It logs everyone, and the record is usually kept on a vendor’s servers.

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 Mateo County.

Go to the San Mateo 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 ↗