Livermore
ALPR program.
What the City's own records say about Livermore Police's automated license plate reader program.
What is an ALPR? What is Flock?
An Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) is a camera system that captures license plates and vehicle information and makes those observations available for computer-assisted searching. Livermore Police identifies Flock Safety as its ALPR technology provider and says the system supports retroactive searches and real-time hot-list alerts.
Livermore permits up to one year of ALPR data retention
LPD Policy 460 says ALPR data on the server should be stored for a maximum of one year, after which it should be purged unless an evidence-related exception applies.
That deserves particular attention now. In August 2026, Flock announced that its default LPR retention period will be reduced from 30 days to seven days. But a vendor default is not the same thing as a local retention policy. Flock has also stated that its customers control retention and deletion according to their policies and legal requirements.
Our campaign position: seven days is still seven days too many for people suspected of no crime. Livermore's written maximum of one year is dramatically longer than Flock's newly announced default.
What does “deleted after X days” actually mean?
A stated retention period normally describes how long ALPR data is kept under the system's ordinary retention policy. It should not automatically be interpreted to mean that every copy of the data becomes permanently and irretrievably destroyed when that period expires.
When litigation is pending or reasonably anticipated, potentially relevant information may become subject to a litigation hold, suspending its ordinary disposition. Investigations, evidentiary requirements, subpoenas and other lawful preservation requirements may also result in particular information being retained beyond the normal retention period.
Electronic information may also exist in more than one place: production systems, backups, replicas, exports, investigative files, evidence repositories, or copies previously provided to another agency. Deleting a record from the primary ALPR system therefore does not, by itself, establish that every copy has ceased to exist or that no recoverable copy remains.
The public deserves specific answers:
- What exactly happens when the stated retention period expires?
- Is the information removed from a searchable database, or actually destroyed?
- Are backups, replicas and exported copies also deleted?
- What happens to information already shared with another agency?
- What circumstances suspend ordinary deletion?
- How long can information subject to a litigation hold, investigation or evidentiary requirement remain?
- Can information described as “deleted” remain technically recoverable?
- Who independently verifies that deletion actually occurred?
- What technical standard determines when the data is considered irrecoverable?
- Who bears the cost of auditing and verifying that process?
It is a rule governing ordinary disposition.
When you tell the public “30 days” or “one year,” what exactly happens on day 31 or day 366?
An important distinction: This does not mean that every deleted record must always be recovered or produced. Preservation and production obligations depend on the facts, applicable law, relevance, accessibility, proportionality, legal control, court orders and other circumstances. The narrower point is that expiration of an ordinary retention period does not, by itself, establish that the information no longer exists, cannot be recovered, or cannot be preserved longer when a legal obligation requires it.
No reasonable suspicion or probable cause required by Policy 460
Policy 460 says an ALPR may be used with routine patrol operations or criminal investigations and explicitly states that reasonable suspicion or probable cause is not required before using an ALPR.
California is actively enforcing the sharing restrictions
In October 2025, the California Attorney General sued the City of El Cajon, alleging that its police department unlawfully shared ALPR data with numerous out-of-state law-enforcement agencies. The Attorney General asked the court to declare the practice unlawful and order it stopped.
This does not establish that Livermore has committed the same violation. It does show that California's ALPR sharing restrictions are an active enforcement issue rather than a theoretical concern.
78 cameras in the 2025 report
Livermore Police's 2025 ALPR Annual Report reports 78 cameras. Because deployments change, this site identifies that as the 2025 reported count rather than an eternal number.
$55,000 FY 2025–26 project funding
The City's FY 2025–2030 Capital Improvement Plan lists $55,000 in FY 2025–26 for project PS201722, Automated License Plate Readers, from Asset Seizure – County funds. The same project page says the project will increase the number of ALPR systems and identifies remaining downtown-core installations.
SignalTrace: research, not a Livermore deployment claim
Leonardo's ELSAG SignalTrace is a separate signal-intelligence product that can collect and correlate identifiers emitted by consumer electronics with LPR observations. We have no verified evidence that Livermore has deployed SignalTrace. It is included here to educate readers about surveillance capabilities that exist in the market—not to attribute that product to Livermore.