1,750 feet. That's Maryland's privacy line.

Our Take

Maryland drew a clear line: pinpointing someone within 1,750 feet counts as precise location data, and cops need a warrant to buy it. According to the video from Verified Privacy VPN, twelve organizations just filed a complaint alleging seven companies sold that kind of data to police anyway, with two of the named companies denying it. This is the data-broker shell game we keep seeing nationwide — laws get passed, then vendors claim their product technically doesn't meet the legal definition, or they just don't bother checking.

This matters because ALPR networks like Flock Safety feed exactly this kind of granular movement data into a marketplace that increasingly blurs the line between 'public safety tool' and 'surveillance-for-hire.' A warrant requirement is meaningless if a broker can just sell the same location history through a side door. Maryland's 1,750-foot rule is a good benchmark other states should be watching, and so should residents wondering whether their own plate reads are ending up in a database with no judicial oversight at all.

Credit to Verified Privacy VPN for surfacing the complaint and naming names. If you want to see what's actually watching your street, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on unchecked ALPR deployment in your area, our take-action page has next steps.