For many years, cars dictated urban planning in the United States.
Few might have predicted that they might someday additionally double as nodes for surveillance.
In thousands of towns and cities throughout the U.S., automated license plate readers have been put in at main intersections, bridges and freeway off-ramps.
These camera-based techniques capture the license plate data of passing automobiles, together with photos of the car and time stamps. Extra not too long ago, these systems are using artificial intelligence to create an unlimited, searchable database that may be built-in with different regulation enforcement knowledge repositories.
As a scholar of technology policy and data governance, I see the growth of automated license plate readers as a supply of deep concern. It’s occurring as authorities authorities are looking for methods to focus on immigrant and transgender communities, are already utilizing AI to monitor protests, and are contemplating deploying AI systems for mass surveillance.
Eyes on the highway
Utilizing cameras to trace license plates dates to the Nineteen Seventies, when the U.Ok. was embroiled in a long-simmering battle with the Irish Republican Military.
The Met, London’s police drive, developed a system that used closed-circuit television cameras to observe and report the license plates of automobiles getting into and exiting main roads.
The system and its successors have been seen as helpful crime-fighting instruments. Over the subsequent twenty years, they expanded to different cities within the U.Ok. and world wide. In 1998, U.S. Customs and Border Safety implemented this technology. By the twenty first century, it had began showing in cities throughout the U.S.
There are alternative ways for a jurisdiction to implement these techniques, however native governments normally signal contracts with personal corporations that present the {hardware} and repair.
These corporations usually entice authorities with free trials of surveillance equipment and guarantees of free entry to their knowledge in ways in which bypass native oversight legal guidelines.
AI thrown into the combination
Just lately, AI has been included into these digital camera techniques, significantly increasing their reach.
The car info that’s captured is usually saved within the cloud, creating an enormous internet of knowledge repositories. If a digital camera collects info from a suspect’s automobile or truck—say, one additionally listed within the Nationwide Crime Info Middle—AI can flag it and ship an on the spot alert to native regulation enforcement.
In actual fact, that’s a selling point of Flock Safety, one of many largest suppliers of automated license plate readers. The corporate makes use of infrared cameras to seize photos of automobiles. AI then analyzes the information to establish topics and shortly alert native authorities.
On the floor, automated license plate readers appear to be a logical method to combat crime. Extra details about the whereabouts of suspects can doubtlessly assist regulation enforcement. And why fear about cameras if you happen to’re following the regulation?
However there are few peer-reviewed research on their effectiveness. People who exist discover little proof that they’ve led to reductions in violent crime rates, although they appear to be helpful in solving some crimes, like automobile thefts.
Moreover, set up and upkeep are pricey.
For instance, Johnson Metropolis, Tennessee, signed a 10-year, US$8 million contract with Flock in 2025. Richmond, Virginia, paid over $1 million to the corporate between October 2024 and November 2025 and not too long ago prolonged its contract, regardless of opposition from some residents.
The Dialog reached out to Flock for remark and didn’t hear again.
Erosion of civil liberties in plain sight
The know-how appears to focus on the pitfalls of what students name “technosolutionism,” the assumption that complicated points like crime, poverty and local weather change could be solved by know-how.
Much more disquieting, to me, is the truth that these digital camera techniques have created a mass location monitoring infrastructure knitted collectively by synthetic intelligence.
The U.S. doesn’t have a federal regulation just like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation that meaningfully limits the gathering, retention, sale or sharing of location and mobility knowledge.
Consequently, knowledge gathered by way of surveillance infrastructure within the U.S. can flow into with restricted transparency or accountability.
License plate readers can simply be accessed or repurposed past their unique targets of managing visitors, meting out fines or catching fugitives. All it takes is a shift in enforcement priorities—or a brand new definition of what counts as against the law—for the unique function of those cameras to recede from view.
Civil liberties teams and digital rights organizations have been sounding the alarm about these cameras for over a decade.
In 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union published a report titled “You’re Being Tracked: How License Plate Readers Are Being Used To Document Individuals’ Actions.” And the Electronic Frontier Foundation has decried them as “street-level surveillance.”
A counter-camera motion emerges
The promise of those cameras was easy: extra knowledge, much less crime.
However what adopted has been murkier: extra knowledge, and a big growth of energy over the general public.
With out strong authorized safeguards, this knowledge can presumably be used to focus on political opposition, facilitate discriminatory policing, or chill constitutionally protected actions.
This has already occurred throughout the present administration’s aggressive deportation efforts. Automated license plate reader databases were shared with federal immigration agencies to observe immigrant communities. Just lately, Customs and Border Protection was granted access to over 80,000 Flock cameras, which have additionally been used to surveil protests.
Then there’s reproductive well being care. After the Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, there have been fears that individuals touring throughout state traces to get an abortion could potentially be identified by way of automated license plate reader databases. In Texas, authorities accessed Flock’s surveillance knowledge as a part of an abortion investigation in 2025.
Flock told NPR in February 2026 that cities management how this info is shared: “Every Flock buyer has sole authority over if, when, and with whom info is shared.” The corporate famous that it has made efforts to “strengthen sharing controls, oversight and audit capabilities inside the system.” However NPR additionally reported that many metropolis officers across the U.S. didn’t understand how extensively the information was being shared.
In response, some states have sought to control the know-how.
Washington state lawmakers are deliberating the Driver Privacy Act. The laws would prohibit companies from utilizing the surveillance know-how for immigration investigations and enforcement, and from amassing knowledge round sure well being care services. Protests would even be shielded from surveillance.
In the meantime, grassroots initiatives such as DeFlock have additionally emerged.
DeFlock’s on-line platform paperwork the unfold of automated license plate reader networks in order to help communities resist their deployment. The motion frames these techniques not merely as visitors applied sciences, but additionally as linchpins of an increasing authorities knowledge dragnet—one which calls for stronger democratic oversight and group consent.
Jess Reia is an assistant professor of knowledge science on the University of Virginia.
This text is republished from The Conversation underneath a Inventive Commons license. Learn the original article.
