Sonoma County Agency Agrees to Reel in Drone Program After Privacy Violations

Here are the morning’s top stories on Wednesday, September 9, 2026

• Changes are coming to a controversial drone code enforcement program in Northern California’s Sonoma County. The county’s land use planning and development permitting agency, Permit Sonoma, agreed last week to settle after being sued for allegedly spying on much more than what the program initially intended.
• Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra has a strong lead over Republican Steve Hilton in the race for California governor. But Becerra has kept a relatively low profile since the June Primary and made few specific commitments about what he would do as governor.
• Attorneys for Santa Clara County say they’re optimistic after a federal judge in San Jose extended a halt on the construction of a new ICE holding facility near Gilroy.
• The clean-up effort following last year’s battery fire at Texas-based energy company’s Vistra facility in Moss Landing is moving into its final phase.

Permit Sonoma agreed to a settlement brokered by the ACLU of Northern California, after 3 local residents sued the agency and a number of county officials last year over the use of invasive drone surveillance.

Permit Sonoma’s drone program was started in 2019 to allegedly target illicit cannabis operations. However, ACLU attorney Nick Hidalgo says it quickly spread to more mundane issues.

“So not only were these drones being used to violate people’s right to privacy, but they were doing so without any clear idea of what they were looking for,” said Hidalgo. “And in a lot of cases they of course found code violations because no one’s perfect.

The ACLU had argued that code enforcement inspectors violated the California Constitution by spying on residents’ homes and the areas surrounding them without first getting a warrant. Hidalgo argues the privacy violations are clear cut.

“Forty years ago, the California Supreme Court said that aerial surveillance of a person’s home violated our Constitutional rights, and that was with an airplane flying at 1600 feet using a magnification lens that had a maximum zoom of 4 times.”

Hidalgo says the surveillance landscape now is very different.

“Drones today, including the ones in Sonoma and purchased by many other agencies around the state, can fly lower than 100 feet, can fly quietly, sneak up on people, peer through windows, have zoom capabilities between 56x and 200x, can be equipped with thermal imagery.”

The three plaintiffs in the case were cited for civil code violations spotted during drone flights.

A spokesperson for Permit Sonoma says the agency disagrees with the ACLU’s characterization of the case.

The spokesperson notes the settlement is not an admission of fact and says Sonoma County has successfully defended the use of drones on previous occasions, but is settling to avoid an expensive legal process.

As part of the settlement, the three residents will each receive $50,000 and Hidalgo says Permit Sonoma will change how the agency uses drones, including obtaining a warrant or a resident’s consent.

They are agreeing to not only publish their drone policy, which they had not done prior, but they are going to revise it through a public process, which will involve a meeting with the board of supervisors, a meeting that Sonoma County residents are welcome to attend and voice their concerns if they have any.

Permit Sonoma has also agreed not to hold images of people’s properties indefinitely and will produce drone flight logs to the ACLU for 2 years.

Xavier Becerra says California needs to build more housing by reducing permitting times and making affordable housing funding easier to access, but he doesn’t want to say how many new homes he would deliver as governor. To address inequality, he’s considering whether the public should own shares of artificial intelligence companies, but he won’t commit to pursuing that policy.

The Democratic candidate’s promises remain vague to Californians who, polls show, widely favor him for governor this November.

Sacramento State political science professor Wesley Hussey says there’s little political incentive for Becerra to take risks.

“If Becerra starts talking about issues in detail and laying out what he wants to do, all that would do is just anger either parts of his coalition or make people more uncomfortable if they don’t like what he says.”

But that strategy also means voters have fewer details about what Becerra would actually do in office. Hussey says that’s because of the large political advantage Democrats have in California and points to Governor Gavin Newsom’s housing agenda as an example.

“And I think Newsom overselling how much we’re going to shift on building housing is an example of why Becerra doesn’t want to lay out all the things he promises to do because I don’t think he wants to then be on the hook for those things as governor.”

Newsom made adding more housing a major priority with a promise of building 3 and a half million new homes by 2025. Less than half a million were actually completed. The latest Berkeley IGS poll has Becerra ahead of Hilton by 18 points.

Becerra declined to comment.

Judge Eumi K. Lee of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that for the next week, the federal government may not continue its plans to build an immigration center near Gilroy, in unincorporated Santa Clara County.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement was quietly developing the facility on a 25-acre agricultural parcel that was formally used for research. In June, the San Jose Spotlight, a nonprofit newsroom, discovered and published blueprints of the plans. Santa Clara county and the state of California filed suit, arguing the site is unfit and likely contaminated with hazardous waste. The federal government agreed to pause construction through September 9th.

County Counsel Tony LoPresti said, “This is the wrong place for this facility. This should have never been proposed here, and it should certainly not proceed here.”

Attorneys for ICE argued the project is exempt from further environmental review, because plans for the project would not differ greatly from its prior use by agricultural research companies.

But the judge was skeptical and extended a stay on the development until at least next week, while she considers a potentially longer pause.

Crews are tearing down the burned Vistra building to reach the remaining batteries. The work comes more than a year and a half after a fire damaged tens of thousands of lithium-ion batteries. The EPA says damaged batteries will be treated and tested on site, then they’ll be sent to off-site disposal facilities.

Meanwhile, crews will continue to monitor air quality, water and battery temperatures. Dust control measures will also remain in place to protect workers and the surrounding community.

Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church says the slow clean-up is understandable because of the safety risks, but he still wants answers about what started the fire.

“The California Public Utilities Commission is still doing its investigation into this and has not determined a cause,” said Supervisor Church. “I wish that was moving along a little faster, because it’s an important consideration in all of this.”

Church says the county is being informed, but the clean-up itself is being managed by Vistra and the EPA.

Vistra did not respond to a request for comment.

The work is expected to wrap up by mid-2027.