20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY MARCH 19-25, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com data should be default public for maximum transparency.” What quickly became apparent was there may be no need for FOIA requests, because there may be no FOIA officers to fulfill those requests. DOGE quickly went to work slashing through the federal government, including seizing control of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Part of the takeover included restricting access to the agency’s FOIA system and firing the employees responsible for fulfilling FOIA requests, according to a letter sent to Bloomberg reporter Jason Leopold. Meanwhile, when CNN filed a FOIA request with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for information about Musk and DOGE’s security clearance, they were told: “Good luck with that,” because the FOIA officers had been fired. DOGE also argued that its own records are exempt from FOIA under the Presidential Records Act, meaning records cannot be accessed until five years after President Donald Trump is out of office. While DOGE “doesn’t exist” anymore according to the OPM, there remains a lasting dark mark on the state of FOIA and records management. THE SECRET EYES IN THE SKY AWARD Chula Vista Police Department In 2021, Arturo Castañares at La Prensa San Diego filed a request with the Chula Vista Police Department for copies of videos taken by drones responding to 911 calls as part of the city’s “drone as first responder” program. One of the goals was to evaluate the technology’s efficacy and risks to civil liberties. The city worked overtime to maintain the secrecy of the footage at the same time officials publicly touted the drones as a revolution in policing. That’s some impressive trust-us-butdon’t-verify chutzpah. The city argued that every second of every video recorded by its drones was categorically off-limits because they were law enforcement investigative records. They even got a trial court to initially buy the argument. But an appellate court ruled that the investigatory records exemption is more limited, shielding only drone footage that is part of a criminal investigation or evidence of a suspected crime. Footage of wildfires, car wrecks, wild animal sightings and the like are not criminal investigations and must be disclosed. The California Supreme Court rejected both of Chula Vista PD’s appeals and a trial court bench slapped the city for inaccurate and incomplete court filings. In the end, the city had to shell out north of $400,000 to its outside lawyers, and then paid Castañares’ lawyers more than $500,000 when he prevailed. So what were Chula Vista police hiding? A bunch of routine service calls, such as unverified reports of a vehicle fire and a vehicle collision. Now, according to La Prensa’s reporting, officials are trying to raid a public safety fund created by voters to reimburse the city for the cost of its ill-advised secrecy. THE FLOCK YOU AWARDS Multiple Winners If you live in one of the 5,000 cities where surveillance vendor Flock Safety claims to have established relationships with local cops, you may have noticed the sudden installation of little black cameras on poles by the side of the road or at intersections. (These jurisdictions include the cities of Salinas, Monterey, Seaside, Carmel, Sand City, Soledad, Pacific Grove, Del Rey Oaks, and the County Sheriff’s Office.) These are automated license plate readers (ALPRs), which document every vehicle that passes within view, including the license plate, color, make, model and other distinguishing characteristics. The images are fed to Flock’s servers, and the company encourages police to share the images collected locally with law enforcement throughout the country. Each year, law enforcement agencies across the country conduct tens of millions of searches of each other’s databases. In 2025, journalists and privacy advocates started filing public records requests with agencies to get spreadsheets called a “Network Audit,” which shows every search, including who ran it and why. Accessing these audits uncovered abuse of the system including: investigating a woman who received an abortion, targeting immigrants, surveilling protesters and running racist searches targeting Roma people. In response, some cities have terminated their contracts with Flock Safety. Other law enforcement agencies, and Flock itself, have gone a different direction: Taunton Police Department, Massachusetts: The police department told the ACLU of Massachusetts to cough up $1.8 million if the organization wanted its network audit logs–the highest public records fee we documented this year. The civil liberties group filed requests with agencies throughout the state for the audits, and most agencies handed over the spreadsheets for free and with little fanfare. Taunton, however, said it would take 20,000 hours to process the request, at $86.57 an hour. Orange County Sheriff’s Department, California: The Orange County Sheriff gave a number of reasons it wouldn’t release the network audit logs in response to a public records request. The most inane (and misspelled one): It would “disincentive law enforcement from conducting such research.” Aren’t cops the ones who say if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide? Well, well, well, how the tables have turned. Flock Safety: The company responded to criticisms of its ALPR network by sending legal threats aimed at trying to silence its critics. First, the company used a bogus trademark claim to threaten DeFlock.me–a crowdsourced map of ALPR cameras. (The Electronic Frontier Foundation represented its creator.) Then it hired a company to try to get the hosts of HaveIBeenFlocked.com, which hosts an interface for searching these network audits, to remove the site from the internet. They have been accused of deleting 96 government databases. DOGE argued that its own records are exempt from FOIA.
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