More ALPR Mission Creep with Rin Alajaji from EFF | Hide & Speak

Our Take

Give credit where it's due: Rin Alajaji at EFF actually did the unglamorous work of reading through the "reason" fields on millions of Flock Safety searches. This is the conversation, hosted by Verified Privacy VPN, that surveillance skeptics have been waiting for — not a hypothetical about what ALPR networks could be misused for, but a documented account of what they're already being misused for. School residency checks. Employment background screening. Noise complaints. None of that is what city councils were told they were buying when they approved a "crime-fighting tool."

This is mission creep in its purest form, and it's exactly the pattern we've been tracking. A network gets sold on child abduction and stolen cars, and within a year it's a general-purpose lookup tool for anyone with a login and a flimsy justification. The video's point about the warrant gap is the sharpest part: your phone's location data gets Fourth Amendment scrutiny, but a nationwide plate-tracking system that logs your movements block by block runs on nothing but an internal audit log nobody outside the department ever sees. That gap is the whole business model.

The Texas and Florida pullbacks, four days apart, are worth watching closely — they suggest the political ground is shifting faster than the industry's talking points. If you want to see whether a camera like this is running in your own neighborhood, check our map, and if you're ready to push back on a city council vote, our take-action page has the tools.