Silicon Valley Goes Dark: San Jose Police Encryption

Silicon Valley's transparency double standard

San Jose sits in the middle of Silicon Valley, where Apple, Google, Meta, and hundreds of startups have built businesses around collecting and monetizing user data. Your location, browsing history, photos, and private messages are the feedstock of the local economy.

On March 16, 2020, the San Jose Police Department encrypted all radio communications and ended decades of public access to scanner traffic. The same city whose economy runs on information decided its police department's communications were nobody's business.

March 16, 2020: the day before lockdown

On March 16, 2020, SJPD switched to the Silicon Valley Regional Communications System with full encryption enabled. The following day, Santa Clara County issued the first shelter-in-place order in the nation.

Scanner monitors who had listened to SJPD for decades found every talk group encrypted overnight. There was no public notice, no community input, and no City Council involvement.

Some observers argued the timing was deliberate. Police didn't want the public overhearing COVID-19 enforcement discussions or responses to potential civil unrest during a period of unprecedented restriction. Within weeks, police and the DA's office were fielding nearly 3,000 complaints about shelter-in-place violations.

VTA mass shooting: May 26, 2021

Fourteen months after encryption, San Jose had its deadliest mass shooting. At 6:34 a.m. on May 26, 2021, a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority employee opened fire at a VTA rail yard, killing nine coworkers before taking his own life.

Contrast this with Highland Park, Illinois, where open scanner access helped residents escape during the July 4, 2022 parade shooting. In San Jose, the public depended entirely on official statements for information about whether the threat was contained.

Santa Clara County: full regional blackout

San Jose wasn't the only one. By the end of 2021, every law enforcement agency in Santa Clara County had encrypted its radio communications, cutting off nearly 2 million residents from public safety information.

The only exception is the California Highway Patrol, which runs open dispatch channels statewide and uses separate methods to protect personally identifiable information.

The DOJ directive: what it said versus what agencies did

Police agencies across California pointed to an October 2020 California Department of Justice directive (Information Bulletin #20-09-CJIS) as their reason for encrypting. The bulletin required agencies to protect personally identifiable information from the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS).

CHP has shown every day since 2020 that compliance is possible without full encryption. San Mateo County agencies kept their radios open by training officers on what to say over the air. The DOJ confirmed these approaches satisfied the directive.

Palo Alto reversed course

Not every Silicon Valley city stayed dark. Palo Alto reversed its encryption decision in August 2022 after 20 months of community advocacy led by Councilman Greer Stone. The city adopted the CHP model: keeping dispatch open while routing sensitive information through cell phones.

SB 1000: how close it came

State Senator Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park) introduced SB 1000 in 2022 to require California law enforcement agencies to adopt alternatives to full encryption. The bill passed the state Senate 25-8 and died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee in August 2022.

Becker revived the effort in 2023. San Jose is still encrypted.

What encryption cost Bay Area journalists

The San Jose Mercury News lost its most basic newsgathering tool when San Jose encrypted. For over a century, journalists used scanners to monitor breaking news, check police claims against real-time radio traffic, and get to scenes before information was shaped into press releases.