- United States
- Del.
- Letter
I am writing to demand action to stop the warrantless surveillance of Delawareans by automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), including systems operated by Flock Safety.
These cameras are not a hypothetical threat. They are tracking, logging, and uploading the movements of *everyone* into a shared nationwide database – all with no warrant and no oversight on how groups can use what they find.
We have already seen how this mass surveillance tool can be weaponized and abused by law enforcement. ICE and CBP have repeatedly used Flock to go after immigrants without warrants. Kansas police used them to pursue a man who wrote a critical op-ed about the department. A mother and her children were held at gunpoint because ALPR cameras wrongly flagged their car as stolen.
ALPRs are being actively used in Delaware. According to public audits:
• New Castle County PD has performed over 237,072 searches since March 2022, including 530 in the past two months
• Delaware State Police records include more than 87,337 searches since July 2022
• Wilmington PD records show a total of 9,958 searches since February 2023
• Newark PD completed at least 4,719 searches since October 2023
The scale of this surveillance demands legislative intervention. Each day these cameras remain active, they violate our right to privacy and harm our ability to live and travel free from pervasive government surveillance.
Get rid of the cameras now and protect us from future violations.