The Government Outsourced the Surveillance State. Shut It Down.

Dear Representative, I am writing to ask you to ban the deployment of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), including Flock Safety cameras, by state and local agencies, and to prohibit government access to the data these systems collect on people who are not suspected of any crime. These cameras photograph every passing vehicle and record the plate, location, date, and time, regardless of whether the driver has done anything wrong. It is a continuous, warrantless search of ordinary residents going about their day. The fact that a private company owns the hardware does not change the constitutional problem. When government agencies query that data, they are conducting the search the Fourth Amendment was written to restrain, and they are doing it without a warrant, without probable cause, and without our consent. The legal ground is shifting in exactly this direction. In its June 2026 geofence decision, the Supreme Court held that sweeping up location data across a broad area is a search under the Fourth Amendment that requires individualized probable cause [1]. ALPR networks work the same way in reverse: they photograph and log every plate that passes, whether or not the driver is suspected of anything, then let police search that record later [1]. That parallel is already driving active litigation, including Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, now before the Fourth Circuit, where the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation argue these linked databases let police reach back through everyone’s movements after the fact [2]. The abuse is not hypothetical. In December 2025, Georgia State Patrol used a Flock camera to ticket a motorcyclist for holding a cell phone, a use well outside anything these cameras were sold to the public to do [3]. And in February 2026, Flock rewrote its terms to give itself a standing right to keep using data it already collected even after a city cancels the contract, and added protections that make the company harder to prosecute [4]. This is what unchecked surveillance infrastructure looks like: it expands its uses, keeps the data, and insulates itself from oversight. Legislatures across the country have already banned or tightly restricted automated photo enforcement, so there is clear precedent for drawing this line. I am asking you to draw it here. Specifically, I ask that you: • Prohibit state and local agencies from operating, contracting for, or accessing ALPR camera networks that capture data on non-suspects. • If an outright ban is not immediately possible, require a warrant based on individualized probable cause before any query, mandate automatic deletion within days, ban interstate and cross-agency data sharing, and void vendor terms that claim perpetual rights over collected data. • Require public reporting and independent audit of any system that survives. We have the right to travel freely without a private contractor logging every trip for the government. Please act to protect it. Sincerely, A Voting Constituent Sources: 1. https://uticaphoenix.net/scotus-geofence-ruling-challenges-flock-safetys-alpr-data-practices-in-july-2026/ 2. https://theautowire.com/2026/07/06/the-supreme-court-just-handed-flocks-license-plate-cameras-a-legal-time-bomb/ 3. https://tagteam.harvard.edu/hub_feeds/2036/feed_items/17646322 4. https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2026/flock-ruffles-feathers-in-michigan