Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department
Investigation ongoing
Based on the CPC’s findings, it appears the County Sheriff’s Department did not comply fully with our initial records requests. As explained below, there are many holes in the timeline. Below is a summary of what we currently know. This page will be updated as we obtain more records and learn more information.Summary
| Has Banned Facial Recognition? | Currently Uses of Facial Recognition? | Previously Used Facial Recognition? | Coalition Representative? Volunteer Now |
Take Action! |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No | Limited Use * Investigation ongoing |
Yes | Yes | Sign the petition |
Details
The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department is the only law enforcement agency found in this investigation to have actually licensed facial recognition software. Knowing this fact, the CPC requested all “documentation, reports, files, media, applications, or contracts showing the active use, deployment, intent to use, plans to use, or trial of use of facial recognition surveillance technology” by the agency. The request inadvertently ommitted documents demonstrating the previous use of the technology and the Sheriff’s Department responded that they did “not have any responsive documents to [the] request”. When pressed specifically about the use of facial recognition as outlined in this policy adopted in May 2018 and also reported by NBC Bay Area, the Department responded saying “The Sheriff’s Office does not currently use facial recognition technology, therefore we have no responsive record”.
Because of the literal interpretation of the request by the Sheriff’s Department, the CPC was forced was forced to file a second request for any documentation showing the previous use of facial recognition. In their response, the Department clarified that “the Sheriff’s Office no longer has access to facial recognition” but was “providing previous contracts that are no longer valid”, which are detailed below.
Previous Use
An August 2020 document shows the Sheriff’s Department entered an agreement with Walnut Creek-based Forensic Logic in late 2018. The agreement took effect in January 2019 and licensed Forensic Logic’s COPLINK Detect and LEAP Search products
Take action!
If you are a resident of Santa Clara County, consider telling the County Supervisors to ban the use of facial recognition surveillance by signing this petition.Documents
The requests and responses can be seen below in reverse chronological order.