Flock & ALPR Cameras in Palo Alto, California
Volunteers have reported 11 automated license plate readers in and around Palo Alto — cameras that log every passing plate with a time and location.
Jurisdiction · by recorded street address
The 11 cameras counted on this page are every reader mapped within about 20 kilometres of Palo Alto, so the count crosses municipal lines. By the street address recorded for each one, 8 of them sit inside Palo Alto itself.
The rest sit in East Palo Alto (2), Menlo Park (1).
7 of them name an operator in the record: Palo Alto Police Department (5), East Palo Alto Police Department (2). The operator is who runs the camera, which is not always the local government.
Source: community-mapped camera data (OpenStreetMap, ODbL), with addresses resolved by Nominatim.
Need this city’s camera data? Custom extracts are free for researchers, journalists and advocates. Ask for it.
- Sep 12 Flock Safety camera newly reported
Newly reported by volunteers — cameras may have been up long before someone mapped them.
Where the cameras are in Palo Alto
The readers mapped around Palo Alto break down as 12 Flock Safety. Named operators in the reports: Palo Alto Police Department, East Palo Alto Police Department. The first camera here was reported in Jul 2024; the most recent in Mar 2026.
- Embarcadero Road — 3 readers
- Middlefield Road — 3 readers
- East Bayshore Road — 3 readers
- East Charleston Road — 1 reader
- Woodland Avenue — 1 reader
- Oregon Expressway — 1 reader
Palo Alto CA PD and the sharing network
Per Flock’s own transparency portal, Palo Alto CA PD runs 31 cameras of its own, has logged 402 plate-database searches, has captured 762,569 vehicle records. Its network connects to 130 other agencies — a plate read here can surface in searches far beyond city limits.
Connected agencies include: Alameda County CA SO, Albany CA PD, Belmont CA PD, Benicia CA PD, Berkeley CA PD, Burlingame CA PD, California Department of Corrections, California Highway Patrol.
Palo Alto in the Santa Clara County picture
Santa Clara County has 1,096 reported cameras county-wide and ranks #406 of 3,222 U.S. counties for cameras per resident, inside the top 19% nationally. That’s across 1,903,297 residents and 5,143 road miles. By road density that is 0.21 cameras per road mile, in the top 1.1% of counties nationally.
Where contributors recorded what a camera watches, the split here is 9 traffic. Operators named on the record: Palo Alto Police Department (6), East Palo Alto Police Department (2).
What’s watching Palo Alto
These aren’t red-light cameras. Automated license plate readers like Flock Safety’s photograph every plate that passes, log the time and place, and store it in a searchable database that’s often shared far beyond Palo Alto — here’s where that data goes. Counts cover cameras reported closest to Palo Alto (within ~20 km), so nearby towns share the same corridors. Spot one that’s missing? Report it on DeFlock.
The latest around Palo Alto
- Menlo Park overhauls license plate reader sharing after discovering more improper searches
- 2 new license plate readers reported around East Palo Alto, CA
- East Palo Alto council doubles down on Flock cameras
- East Palo Alto: City Council Upholds Contract For Flock Cameras
What you can do in Palo Alto
Ask who approved these cameras, how long plate data is kept, and who it’s shared with. File a public records request, raise it at a council meeting, and see the full playbook on Take Action. Fighting this locally? Join or start a chapter and we’ll amplify you.
Not sure what one looks like? See photographs of installed cameras before you go looking.
Cameras near Palo Alto
← All California cameras, counties & cities
Camera reports: the open-source DeFlock project. Place data: GeoNames (CC BY).