EFF Goes to Court to Uncover Police Surveillance Tech in California

Which surveillance technologies are California police using? Are they buying access to your location data? If so, how much are they paying? These are basic questions the Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to answer in a new lawsuit called Pen-Link v. County of San Joaquin Sheriff’s Office.

EFF filed a motion in California Superior Court to join—or intervene in—an existing lawsuit to get access to documents we requested. The private company Pen-Link sued the San Joaquin Sheriff’s Office to block the agency from disclosing to EFF the unredacted contracts between them, claiming the information is a trade secret. We are going to court to make sure the public gets access to these records.

The public has a right to know the technology that law enforcement buys with taxpayer money. This information is not a trade secret, despite what private companies try to claim.

How did this case start?

As part of EFF’s transparency mission, we sent public records requests to California law enforcement agencies—including the San Joaquin Sheriff’s Office—seeking information about law enforcements’ use of technology sold by two companies: Pen-Link and its subsidiary, Cobwebs Technologies.

The Sheriff’s Office gave us 40 pages of redacted documents. But at the request of Pen-Link, the Sheriff’s Office redacted the descriptions and prices of the products, services, and subscriptions offered by Pen-Link and Cobwebs.

Pen-Link then filed a lawsuit to permanently block the Sheriff’s Office from making the information public, claiming its prices and descriptions are trade secrets. Among other things, Pen-Link requires its law enforcement customers to sign non-disclosure agreements to not reveal use of the technology without the company’s consent. In addition to thwarting transparency, this raises serious questions about defendants’ rights to obtain discovery in criminal cases.

“Customer and End Users are prohibited from disclosing use of the Deliverables, names of Cobwebs' tools and technologies, the existence of this agreement or the relationship between Customers and End Users and Cobwebs to any third party, without the prior written consent of Cobwebs,” according to Cobwebs’ Terms.

Unfortunately, these kinds of terms are not new.

EFF is entering the lawsuit to make sure the records get released to the public. Pen-Link’s lawsuit is known as a “reverse” public records lawsuit because it seeks to block, rather than grant access to public records. It is a rare tool traditionally only used to protect a person’s constitutional right to privacy—not a business’ purported trade secrets. In addition to defending against the “reverse” public records lawsuit, we are asking the court to require the Sheriff’s Office to give us the un-redacted records.

Who is Pen-Link and Cobwebs Technologies?

Pen-Link and its subsidiary Cobwebs Technologies are private companies that sell products and services to law enforcement. Pen-Link has been around for years and may be best known as a company that helps law enforcement execute wiretaps after a court grants approval. In 2023, Pen-Link acquired the company Cobwebs Technologies.

The redacted documents indicate that San Joaquin County was interested in Cobwebs’ “Web Intelligence Investigation Platform.” In other cases, this platform has included separate products like WebLoc, Tangles, or a “face processing subscription.” WebLoc is a platform that provides law enforcement with a vast amount of location data sourced from large data sets.