Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias has “immediately ordered” the largest automatic license plate reader (ALPR) system in the U.S. to shut off access to a federal agency. Giannoulias said this comes after an audit by his office found that a federal agency had accessed Illinois license plate cameras to “surveil drivers.”
Flock Safety, announced on Aug. 25 that they will be halting all of their federal pilot programs.
This comes after an Illinois state audit found the company was illegally sharing data with federal agencies.
Flock Safety, whose cameras are mounted in more than 4,000 communities nationwide, put a hold last week on pilot programs with the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection and its law enforcement arm, Homeland Security Investigations, according to a statement by its founder and CEO, Garrett Langley.
The company operating many of them, Flock Safety, has a network of those cameras across the country, obtaining billions of license plate scans across the U.S. each month. The sharing of those scans and the data that comes with them has now come under intense scrutiny after it was discovered Flock Safety was operating a pilot program with the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection and its law enforcement arm, Homeland Security Investigations.
The national network of cameras has been faulted with warrantless surveillance and encouraging potential breaches of the First and Fourth Amendment. It’s also been revealed that its cameras do quite a bit more than simply read a vehicle’s license plate.
the town of Atherton is sharing sensitive surveillance data with police departments that do not conform with California law and Atherton’s own policies.
The town has around 50 cameras from Atlanta-based surveillance company Flock Safety, including 30 privately funded cameras, that capture the license plates of passing cars.
While Atherton has used the license plates to investigate cases of stolen vehicles and burglaries, the town also allows 295 outside agencies to search its automated license plate data.
While its policy requires the police commander to review every search request Atherton receives, it has not been followed since at least January. The policy also requires outside agencies to specify the reason for the request — something missing from thousands of requests.
While Atherton claims it does not share the license plate data with federal agencies, thousands of searches were done on behalf of federal authorities by partner agencies.
The ACLU of Iowa is raising constitutional concerns about new surveillance technology being considered in Coralville. The ACLU said this type of surveillance is essentially breaking people’s Fourth Amendment right to a reasonable search and seizure. It’s also worried about what happens to that data after it’s collected.
https://www.kcrg.com/2025/08/21/aclu-looks-stop-more-cameras-installing-automatic-license-plate-readers/
Here's a crowd-sourced map of ALPR's: https://deflock.me/
ReplyDeletethanks, but, with 5000 around the country.... I think we can probably just figure they are nearly every where
Deletebut it's a good map, so I'm adding it to the post, thanks!
DeleteWeird how the ACLU nor anyone else one cared until the fedgov appeared to be using it to track possible illegal immigrants.
ReplyDeleteno one cared that the fedgov was using it to track US citizens, only when the fedgov might be using it to track foreigners who entered illegally, did anyone care.
Yup. Never bothered anyone, in fact, it resulted in some stolen cars tracked in the get away, and recovered. Notice Chicago and Detroit have more, each, than any other location but San Jose? Looks more like a license plate stolen car tracking thing to me, than illegal aliens... All of New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas, COMBINED don't have as many "illegal alien tracker cameras" as Chicago has all by itself. Or Detroit
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