A few weeks ago, I noticed Flock cameras appearing in my Texas neighborhood. Our cars and license plates are visible every time we drive on a public road. But then I started wondering: What happens to that information after the camera sees it? Who can see it? Where does it go? And importantly, what happens after a record of one trip becomes a record of hundreds? Then I discovered that Texas has thousands of cameras and that lawmakers are debating what the government should be allowed to do with the information they collect. In August, The Texas Tribune reported that a state agency has devoted at least $30 million toward expanding Flock surveillance. That same month, Governor Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to pause funding for Flock cameras amid increasing scrutiny of the surveillance. Additionally, in September The Texas Tribune reported that TxDOT stopped issuing permits for new Flock and other automated license plate readers (ALPR) installations along state roads.
Over 120,000 cameras nationwide capture 20 billion plate scans per month. The cameras capture license plate image, vehicle image, vehicle characteristics, plate number, state, date, time and camera location. Flock’s policy says these records are transferred to a government cloud and are deleted on a seven-day basis by default, but customers can establish different retention periods under applicable law or policy.
The Washington Post reported at least sixty-nine police officials have been accused, charged, or convicted of misusing Flock or other license-plate reader systems. Flock announced changes requiring officers to attach a criminal case number to every search, reviewing searches for abnormal activity, reducing the default retention period from thirty days to seven days. Automated license plate readers can help officers locate stolen vehicles, identify vehicles in investigations, locate suspects, find missing people, investigate crimes and generate alerts based on law enforcement databases. Flock says that their cameras help police solve one million crimes per year. According to the ACLU of Oregon, Flock’s AI-powered tools are able to capture pedestrians, animals and cyclists if they’re in view of the camera, indicating the technology can see beyond license plates.
The existence of safeguards does not settle the constitutional question of whether those safeguards are sufficient. The Fourth Amendment states that it is the right of the people to be secure in their effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. In Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Supreme Court held that obtaining cellphone location records from service providers was a Fourth Amendment search requiring a warrant supported by probable cause. This case does not indicate that automated license plate readers are unconstitutional, however it recognizes an important principle: Americans do not surrender their Fourth Amendment right just because they enter public spaces. The question Flock presents is whether millions of individual public observations can, when compiled, become something constitutionally different from any single observation. Technology has moved faster than the law’s ability to define the difference between a snapshot of public activity and a comprehensive record of public life.
The post 9/11 surveillance debate provides historical context. The USA FREEDOM Act of 2015 banned bulk collection under section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and replaced it with a mechanism in which providers retained the information and government access operated through specific legal orders. Flock is not a Patriot Act program. After 9/11, the surveillance debate has forced Americans to reconsider how much information the government should collect in the name of public safety and Flock presents a newer version of that question.
The answers shouldn’t lead to abolition but rather to strict safeguards. There should be warrant requirements for searches seeking historical patterns rather than single plate observations. Longer retention of data should come with public justification and legislative authorization. Every query should be monitored, logged and routinely reviewed. Information collected for vehicle-theft investigations shouldn’t become a general purpose database for unrelated investigations. Citizens should have transparency. We should be aware of where cameras are, who operates them, what data they collect, how long it’s retained, who can access it, when it can be shared, and what legal process is required. Unauthorized searches shouldn’t be brushed aside as “misuse,” there should be meaningful consequences for those who abuse the system.
There is a counterargument: If surveillance helps police solve crimes, why should law-abiding Americans protest? Because constitutional rights are not reserved for those already suspected of crimes. A police officer seeing a license plate doesn’t equal a searchable database reconstructing someone’s movements. One observation tells police where a vehicle has been once. A database could potentially reveal where it has been repeatedly. Repeated observations can reveal patterns: home, workplace, religious services, political events, medical facilities, relationships, etcetera. The constitutional question isn’t whether each individual observation is public, it’s whether the potential accumulation of them changes what the government is capable of knowing about a person.
The question isn’t whether the government should protect us. It should. The question is whether a government powerful enough to protect us can also remain constrained enough to preserve the liberty it exists to preserve. The cameras outside my neighborhood may simply record a car passing by. However, when millions of those records can be stored, searched and connected, as citizens we should begin asking when a record of public activity ends and a record of private life begins.
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