Flock & ALPR cameras in San Francisco, CA

San Francisco has the widest gap between public records and mapped reality of any metro we cover. The EFF's Atlas of Surveillance documents just two agencies with ALPR programs across this area, while the live map records 81 separate operators. That is a records gap, not an absence of cameras — which is exactly why this page leans on the map data rather than on paperwork.

The largest operator here is not the city police. The California Highway Patrol accounts for 465 mapped cameras against San Francisco Police Department's 431, making this the only metro in our set where a state agency runs the biggest share. Coverage then fragments quickly across Oakland, Daly City, Berkeley and dozens of smaller Bay Area departments, so a short drive can cross several agencies' retention policies.

Counted from OpenStreetMap and community reports through the BanditKin public camera map, read on 2 August 2026. Coverage is incomplete by nature — a camera appears here once somebody maps it, so treat these as a floor, not a full inventory. Unlike most metros in this set there is almost no Atlas of Surveillance record to cross-check against here.

Showing the 19 largest of 81 operators. The Highway Patrol figure merges two spellings recorded in the public data. Attribution comes from OpenStreetMap tagging where an operator is recorded, and otherwise from the convention that a camera inside a jurisdiction is run by that jurisdiction — a strong signal, not a confirmed record. 263 cameras have no operator in the public data at all.

245 of the 2,708 mapped cameras carry no manufacturer tag in the public data, so the real split is wider than this table. The Flock figure merges three spellings recorded in the source data, including its legal name Flock Group Inc. Counts are of mapped cameras, not of agency purchase records.

Plate readers are usually the small rectangular unit on a slim pole near an intersection, often with a solar panel and a squat cylindrical camera head. Where the public data records a mounting, this is how they break down around San Francisco:

Each camera reads plates from one direction, so the direction it points decides which trips it records. The mapped bearings around San Francisco fall out like this:

Bearings come from public map data and describe an approximate capture zone, never an exact field of view. 184 mapped cameras have no recorded bearing, and 2 are tagged as omnidirectional.

New to this? Read what ALPR cameras capture, how long it's kept, and who can search it. Not in San Francisco? Search the full map by any city, or see what BanditKin costs — free during early access.

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