Cybersecurity Policy Report, Evidence Collected From License Plate Cameras Should Require Search Warrants, Senators Told, (Sep 24, 2026)

By Tom Leithauser

Authorities should have to obtain probable-cause warrants in most circumstances before sifting through images collected by automated license plate recognition (ALPR) technology, according to witnesses at a Senate hearing yesterday whose recommendations seemed well-received by lawmakers.

The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s crime and counterterrorism subcommittee was titled “Always Watching: Flock’s Nationwide AI Surveillance Network,” naming one of the leading ALPR vendors, Flock Safety. But Flock is only one of several companies whose ALPR systems raise concerns about mass surveillance and constitutional rights, said Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), the subcommittee’s chairman.

“There’s many players in this industry, but there’s one name that really stands out above the rest, and that is Flock. If you haven’t heard of Flock, all I have to say is Flock’s probably heard of you. In fact, the truth is you have probably been scanned and surveilled and tagged and logged multiple times this week alone,” he said.

Sen. Hawley noted that he had invited the chief executive officers of Flock and three other leading ALPR vendors—Motorola Solutions, Inc., Verkada, Inc., and Axon Enterprise, Inc.—to testify at the hearing (CPR, Sept. 18).

“Sadly,” he said, the CEOs declined. “I think that’s unfortunate,” he added. “I think we need to hear from them about their intentions, about their capabilities, and we need to have an honest conversation about where this is leading us as a country.”

“Obviously, they’re nervous about being on camera,” quipped Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), ranking member of the subcommittee and the full committee. “But I sure wish they would have joined us today.”

Instead the subcommittee heard from civil rights lawyers, an Arizona sheriff, a cybersecurity researcher, and a Florida woman who spent 13 days in jail after authorities, using Flock surveillance data, charged her in a fatal hit-and-run.

Her arrest in the wee hours of Oct. 5, 2025, was frightening and unexpected because she knew she hadn’t been in an accident and her vehicle was undamaged, Lindsey Isaacs of Palm Coast, Florida, told the subcommittee.

“I later learned that a Flock automated license plate recognition camera had captured my Dodge Durango approximately two to three miles west of the crash scene,” she said in written testimony. “I came here today because I want you to understand that surveillance technology does not exist in a vacuum. Information collected by technology can become part of an investigation that affects a real human being.”

The spread of ALPR technology is being fueled by venture capitalists who care about the value of the data being collected by networks of cameras—and not an interest in public safety, according to Chad Marlow, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Let me be clear: the injection of massive investment into the ALPR industry doesn’t reflect a rise in venture capitalist interest in public safety. Rather, it reflects a view that ALPR use, if massively scaled up, could produce the type of windfall profits venture capitalists seek from their investments,” Mr. Marlow said in written testimony.

The advent of (AI) artificial intelligence, meanwhile, has enabled the “data haystack” amassed by ALPR networks to be mined “to identify drivers’ intimate patterns of life,” he told the subcommittee.

Mr. Marlow disputed ALPR vendors’ claims that their technology contributed to public safety. “There is considerable evidence, however, to the contrary. The inability of surveillance to deter crime has been studied and reported on extensively,” he said.

He cited Supreme Court decisions—most recently Chatrie v. U.S.—that found that authorities needed to obtain search warrants when they mined databases for historical location data (CPR, June 29). Congress doesn’t have to wait for a ruling on ALPR technology to enact a law requiring warrants for searches of ALPR databases, he told the subcommittee.

“Courts may take years to reach a final decision on this issue, and the U.S. Congress has no obligation to wait for them to do so when all Americans’ privacy is at stake. Just as the Constitution creates a rights floor, legislatures, like the U.S. Congress, can raise that floor to establish even greater protections,” Mr. Marlow said.

The call for a warrant requirement was echoed by Alasdair Whitney, legislative counsel for the Institute for Justice. “The Fourth Amendment sets a floor, not a ceiling, and Congress has gone beyond it repeatedly and without controversy for wiretaps and bank records. A statute requiring a warrant before the government mines a database of people’s movements is no different in kind,” Mr. Whitney said in written testimony.

He also recommended that Congress prevent state and local officials from using federal funds for ALPR systems.

Benn Jordan, a cybersecurity researcher, told the committee that he and other researchers had discovered that Flock cameras were easy to hack, raising concerns about the data falling into the wrong hands.

“I publicly demonstrated that by pushing the button on the camera three times, I was able to access all of the data or reprogram the device however I wanted in under a minute,” Mr. Jordan said in written testimony. “I’ve even played Doom on a Flock camera.”

The subcommittee also heard from Sheriff Ross Teeple of Pinal County, Arizona, who canceled his department’s contract with Flock because he and his constituents decided ALPR systems endangered constitutional rights.

“If we rely on private camera networks to act as a dragnet, continuously logging the habits of innocent Americans without a warrant, we are paving the way to an AI-driven surveillance state,” Sheriff Teeple said in written testimony. “We must establish clear, statutory boundaries for automated surveillance. We cannot wait for a future Supreme Court ruling to correct AI overreach.”

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