mmissile
Well-Known Member
What follows is a summary of how license plate surveillance cameras were installed across the country without public consent, the cities and states that have fought back and won, and what a law that ends the practice would contain. After the summary come instructions for contacting your representatives, written so the minimum action takes about two minutes. After the instructions comes the full text of the model legislation.
Most of its provisions already exist in laws that states have passed or formally proposed, including Washington's Driver Privacy Act, Colorado's warrant requirement for sharing data with federal agencies, Illinois's per-violation damages structure, and the criminal penalty Texas applies to officials who conduct public business in unlawfully closed meetings.
The provision that exists nowhere yet is the felony for installing the cameras without public consent. The document ends with a library of free resources for anyone who wants to organize locally, followed by the reference list.
The small raised numbers that appear throughout are called superscripts. Each superscript points to a numbered source in the reference list at the end of this document, so you can check every factual claim against the reporting, statutes, and court records it came from.
There is a fair chance that a small camera on a pole near your home photographs every license plate that passes it. Flock Safety operates more than 100,000 automated license plate reader cameras across 49 states, and its network scans roughly 20 billion plates per month.
In most of the cities where those cameras operate, no elected body ever voted to install them. A police chief or a city manager signed a contract, often a no-cost trial that required no budget approval, and residents learned the cameras existed after they were already recording.
The record of what happens next is now extensive. Local police ran more than 4,000 immigration-related searches through Flock's network on behalf of federal agencies, according to reporting by 404 Media. Mountain View, California terminated its contract after an investigation found roughly 600,000 searches of its data in a single year by more than 250 agencies the city had never approved.
A class action filed in February 2026 alleges that out-of-state and federal agencies searched the San Francisco Police Department's Flock database more than 1.6 million times in seven months. Flock has installed cameras without required permits in at least five states, and two state transportation agencies barred it from new installations. It has made false statements to city councils about what its systems do,¹ and in February 2026 it rewrote its standard contract terms to make cancellation harder even when a council votes against approval.
The public response so far has been cancellation. More than 50 cities have ended their contracts since late 2024. In the same period, roughly 800 cities signed new ones. Cancellation works one council at a time, and it happens only after the cameras are installed and the data has already left the jurisdiction. Every state law passed so far, including Washington's Driver Privacy Act, regulates how the data can be used after the cameras exist. No law anywhere attaches a consequence to the person who decides to install them without asking the public. The model legislation at the end of this article makes that decision a crime. It does six things.
First, it requires public consent before deployment. No government agency may install license plate reader cameras, including free trials, pilot programs, and donated cameras, without an ordinance passed by recorded vote after at least two public hearings noticed 30 days in advance. The hearing notice must disclose the camera locations, the vendor, the full contract, the data collected, the retention period, and every entity that will have access.
Second, it makes unauthorized deployment a felony. An official who knowingly installs or authorizes these systems without that ordinance faces up to five years in prison. Concealing the system, lying to the council about it, or continuing to operate it more than 30 days after written notice raises the maximum to ten years. Conviction forfeits the office and disqualifies the person from holding public office for ten years, and public funds may not pay the fines.
Third, it gives the state attorney general direct authority to prosecute, so enforcement does not depend on a county prosecutor deciding whether to charge officials that prosecutor works with every day.
Fourth, it makes the company pay. A vendor that installs cameras without first receiving a certified copy of the authorizing ordinance owes every driver it scanned $1,000 per scan, or $5,000 per scan if the violation was willful. One camera records thousands of vehicles per day, so the liability for a single unauthorized installation passes one million dollars within days. The vendor also owes the state $10,000 per camera per day, must delete all data collected, and loses eligibility for public contracts in the state for five years.
Fifth, it regulates the systems the public does approve. Data may not be shared with federal agencies or out-of-state entities without a warrant. It may not be used for immigration enforcement, for surveillance of health care facilities or protests, or for any officer's personal purposes. It must be deleted within 30 days, and every search must be logged in a public audit record. Willful violation of these rules is also a felony.
Sixth, it lets residents enforce it. Any person whose plate was scanned can sue, and a winning plaintiff collects attorney fees. Systems already operating get 180 days to obtain public authorization or shut down and be removed.
The penalty grades have precedent. Federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 2511, makes intercepting a single phone conversation a felony punishable by up to five years.⁸ Texas has made it a jailable offense since 1967 for officials to knowingly conduct public business in an unlawfully closed meeting.⁹ Illinois grades official misconduct as a Class 3 felony.¹⁰ The per-scan damages structure copies the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, which sets $1,000 to $5,000 per violation¹¹ and produced a $650 million settlement from Facebook.¹² If intercepting one conversation is a five-year felony, deploying a network that records the movements of every driver in a city without authorization can be graded the same or higher.
What You Can Do
The minimum action takes about two minutes, and here is exactly how to do it.
First, find the people who represent you. For state legislators, go to openstates.org, type in your home address, and it returns your state representative and your state senator with their phone numbers and email addresses. Your state legislature's own website has the same lookup, usually under a link named "Find My Legislator" or "Who Represents Me." For city council, search "[your city] city council members" and the city's website will list each member's name, district, email, and phone number. If the cameras in your area belong to a county sheriff rather than a city police department, your county commissioners approve that budget, and the county website lists them the same way.
Second, send the message or make the call. Use this structure and fill in the blanks with your own facts:
I'm a [your job, your role, or however you describe yourself] living in [your neighborhood or city], and I care about this because [your reason, in one sentence]. I do not want license plate reader cameras operating here without a public vote, and I want officials and vendors who install them without one to face real penalties. Please support legislation that requires public consent before any deployment.
Filled in, it reads like this: "I'm an electrician living on the east side of town, and I care about this because my work van gets photographed a dozen times a day and I never agreed to that. I do not want license plate reader cameras operating here without a public vote, and I want officials and vendors who install them without one to face real penalties. Please support legislation that requires public consent before any deployment."
The blanks are the point. Legislative offices record identical form messages as a single campaign. A message that opens with who you are, where you live, and why you care gets recorded as an individual constituent contact, and individual contacts are the number legislators see. If you call instead of writing, a staffer will answer, you say the same four sentences, they record your position, and the call ends in under a minute. You do not need to argue with anyone.
A short message from many people does more than a long message from a few. If every reader does only this, it is enough.
If you want to do more, here are the next steps in order of effort.
1. Send this article, with the model act below, to your state legislators and ask them to introduce it or sign on as co-sponsors. A template email follows.
2. Send it to your county Democratic central committee or your legislative district organization and ask them to adopt the endorsement resolution below at their next regular meeting. Party endorsements matter because legislators read them as a measurement of primary-election sentiment in their own district.
3. Find out whether your city already has these cameras. The crowdsourced map at deflock.org shows known locations.¹³ Whether or not it shows cameras near you, file a public records request with your police department for any ALPR vendor contract, the current data-sharing configuration, and the complete network audit log of searches run against your city's data. The audit log is the document that has caused city councils across the country to cancel, because it lists federal and out-of-state searches the council never approved.¹
4. Speak at a council meeting if your city has cameras. State three things during public comment: the contract was signed without the process this act requires, you are requesting the network audit, and you are asking the council to adopt the consent requirement as a local ordinance.
5. Coordinate with existing campaigns. The ACLU organizes state by state under the name Get the Flock Out,¹⁴ and more than 50 cities have already canceled.⁷ Your officials would not be the first to act.
6. Report your results where other residents of your district will see them. Each public endorsement makes the next one easier to get.
Template Email to a State Legislator
Subject: Request to sponsor the Automated License Plate Surveillance Consent and Accountability Act
Dear [Representative / Senator] [Last Name],
I live in your district, in [city]. Attached is model legislation requiring public consent before any government in [STATE] installs automated license plate reader cameras, making it a felony for an official to install them without that consent, and imposing per-scan financial penalties on any vendor that installs them without verifying authorization.
More than 50 cities nationwide have canceled contracts with Flock Safety after audits showed federal agencies and out-of-state police searching local data without authorization. [STATE] residents are in that network right now. Existing laws regulate the data after the cameras exist. This bill regulates the decision to install them.
Will you introduce this bill or sign on as a co-sponsor? I am available by phone or email to discuss it, and I will follow up within two weeks.
[Full name]
[Street address]
[Phone number]
Endorsement Resolution for a Local Democratic Organization
Resolved, that the [County] Democratic [Central Committee / Party] endorses the Automated License Plate Surveillance Consent and Accountability Act; calls on the [STATE] Legislature to enact it; calls on every Democratic legislator representing any portion of [County] to sponsor or co-sponsor it; and directs the Chair to transmit this resolution and the full text of the act to each of those legislators within 14 days of adoption.
Most of its provisions already exist in laws that states have passed or formally proposed, including Washington's Driver Privacy Act, Colorado's warrant requirement for sharing data with federal agencies, Illinois's per-violation damages structure, and the criminal penalty Texas applies to officials who conduct public business in unlawfully closed meetings.
The provision that exists nowhere yet is the felony for installing the cameras without public consent. The document ends with a library of free resources for anyone who wants to organize locally, followed by the reference list.
The small raised numbers that appear throughout are called superscripts. Each superscript points to a numbered source in the reference list at the end of this document, so you can check every factual claim against the reporting, statutes, and court records it came from.
There is a fair chance that a small camera on a pole near your home photographs every license plate that passes it. Flock Safety operates more than 100,000 automated license plate reader cameras across 49 states, and its network scans roughly 20 billion plates per month.
In most of the cities where those cameras operate, no elected body ever voted to install them. A police chief or a city manager signed a contract, often a no-cost trial that required no budget approval, and residents learned the cameras existed after they were already recording.
The record of what happens next is now extensive. Local police ran more than 4,000 immigration-related searches through Flock's network on behalf of federal agencies, according to reporting by 404 Media. Mountain View, California terminated its contract after an investigation found roughly 600,000 searches of its data in a single year by more than 250 agencies the city had never approved.
A class action filed in February 2026 alleges that out-of-state and federal agencies searched the San Francisco Police Department's Flock database more than 1.6 million times in seven months. Flock has installed cameras without required permits in at least five states, and two state transportation agencies barred it from new installations. It has made false statements to city councils about what its systems do,¹ and in February 2026 it rewrote its standard contract terms to make cancellation harder even when a council votes against approval.
The public response so far has been cancellation. More than 50 cities have ended their contracts since late 2024. In the same period, roughly 800 cities signed new ones. Cancellation works one council at a time, and it happens only after the cameras are installed and the data has already left the jurisdiction. Every state law passed so far, including Washington's Driver Privacy Act, regulates how the data can be used after the cameras exist. No law anywhere attaches a consequence to the person who decides to install them without asking the public. The model legislation at the end of this article makes that decision a crime. It does six things.
First, it requires public consent before deployment. No government agency may install license plate reader cameras, including free trials, pilot programs, and donated cameras, without an ordinance passed by recorded vote after at least two public hearings noticed 30 days in advance. The hearing notice must disclose the camera locations, the vendor, the full contract, the data collected, the retention period, and every entity that will have access.
Second, it makes unauthorized deployment a felony. An official who knowingly installs or authorizes these systems without that ordinance faces up to five years in prison. Concealing the system, lying to the council about it, or continuing to operate it more than 30 days after written notice raises the maximum to ten years. Conviction forfeits the office and disqualifies the person from holding public office for ten years, and public funds may not pay the fines.
Third, it gives the state attorney general direct authority to prosecute, so enforcement does not depend on a county prosecutor deciding whether to charge officials that prosecutor works with every day.
Fourth, it makes the company pay. A vendor that installs cameras without first receiving a certified copy of the authorizing ordinance owes every driver it scanned $1,000 per scan, or $5,000 per scan if the violation was willful. One camera records thousands of vehicles per day, so the liability for a single unauthorized installation passes one million dollars within days. The vendor also owes the state $10,000 per camera per day, must delete all data collected, and loses eligibility for public contracts in the state for five years.
Fifth, it regulates the systems the public does approve. Data may not be shared with federal agencies or out-of-state entities without a warrant. It may not be used for immigration enforcement, for surveillance of health care facilities or protests, or for any officer's personal purposes. It must be deleted within 30 days, and every search must be logged in a public audit record. Willful violation of these rules is also a felony.
Sixth, it lets residents enforce it. Any person whose plate was scanned can sue, and a winning plaintiff collects attorney fees. Systems already operating get 180 days to obtain public authorization or shut down and be removed.
The penalty grades have precedent. Federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 2511, makes intercepting a single phone conversation a felony punishable by up to five years.⁸ Texas has made it a jailable offense since 1967 for officials to knowingly conduct public business in an unlawfully closed meeting.⁹ Illinois grades official misconduct as a Class 3 felony.¹⁰ The per-scan damages structure copies the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, which sets $1,000 to $5,000 per violation¹¹ and produced a $650 million settlement from Facebook.¹² If intercepting one conversation is a five-year felony, deploying a network that records the movements of every driver in a city without authorization can be graded the same or higher.
What You Can Do
The minimum action takes about two minutes, and here is exactly how to do it.
First, find the people who represent you. For state legislators, go to openstates.org, type in your home address, and it returns your state representative and your state senator with their phone numbers and email addresses. Your state legislature's own website has the same lookup, usually under a link named "Find My Legislator" or "Who Represents Me." For city council, search "[your city] city council members" and the city's website will list each member's name, district, email, and phone number. If the cameras in your area belong to a county sheriff rather than a city police department, your county commissioners approve that budget, and the county website lists them the same way.
Second, send the message or make the call. Use this structure and fill in the blanks with your own facts:
I'm a [your job, your role, or however you describe yourself] living in [your neighborhood or city], and I care about this because [your reason, in one sentence]. I do not want license plate reader cameras operating here without a public vote, and I want officials and vendors who install them without one to face real penalties. Please support legislation that requires public consent before any deployment.
Filled in, it reads like this: "I'm an electrician living on the east side of town, and I care about this because my work van gets photographed a dozen times a day and I never agreed to that. I do not want license plate reader cameras operating here without a public vote, and I want officials and vendors who install them without one to face real penalties. Please support legislation that requires public consent before any deployment."
The blanks are the point. Legislative offices record identical form messages as a single campaign. A message that opens with who you are, where you live, and why you care gets recorded as an individual constituent contact, and individual contacts are the number legislators see. If you call instead of writing, a staffer will answer, you say the same four sentences, they record your position, and the call ends in under a minute. You do not need to argue with anyone.
A short message from many people does more than a long message from a few. If every reader does only this, it is enough.
If you want to do more, here are the next steps in order of effort.
1. Send this article, with the model act below, to your state legislators and ask them to introduce it or sign on as co-sponsors. A template email follows.
2. Send it to your county Democratic central committee or your legislative district organization and ask them to adopt the endorsement resolution below at their next regular meeting. Party endorsements matter because legislators read them as a measurement of primary-election sentiment in their own district.
3. Find out whether your city already has these cameras. The crowdsourced map at deflock.org shows known locations.¹³ Whether or not it shows cameras near you, file a public records request with your police department for any ALPR vendor contract, the current data-sharing configuration, and the complete network audit log of searches run against your city's data. The audit log is the document that has caused city councils across the country to cancel, because it lists federal and out-of-state searches the council never approved.¹
4. Speak at a council meeting if your city has cameras. State three things during public comment: the contract was signed without the process this act requires, you are requesting the network audit, and you are asking the council to adopt the consent requirement as a local ordinance.
5. Coordinate with existing campaigns. The ACLU organizes state by state under the name Get the Flock Out,¹⁴ and more than 50 cities have already canceled.⁷ Your officials would not be the first to act.
6. Report your results where other residents of your district will see them. Each public endorsement makes the next one easier to get.
Template Email to a State Legislator
Subject: Request to sponsor the Automated License Plate Surveillance Consent and Accountability Act
Dear [Representative / Senator] [Last Name],
I live in your district, in [city]. Attached is model legislation requiring public consent before any government in [STATE] installs automated license plate reader cameras, making it a felony for an official to install them without that consent, and imposing per-scan financial penalties on any vendor that installs them without verifying authorization.
More than 50 cities nationwide have canceled contracts with Flock Safety after audits showed federal agencies and out-of-state police searching local data without authorization. [STATE] residents are in that network right now. Existing laws regulate the data after the cameras exist. This bill regulates the decision to install them.
Will you introduce this bill or sign on as a co-sponsor? I am available by phone or email to discuss it, and I will follow up within two weeks.
[Full name]
[Street address]
[Phone number]
Endorsement Resolution for a Local Democratic Organization
Resolved, that the [County] Democratic [Central Committee / Party] endorses the Automated License Plate Surveillance Consent and Accountability Act; calls on the [STATE] Legislature to enact it; calls on every Democratic legislator representing any portion of [County] to sponsor or co-sponsor it; and directs the Chair to transmit this resolution and the full text of the act to each of those legislators within 14 days of adoption.
