Flock license plate reader cameras draw praises, privacy concerns

Our Take

Dakota News Now's report out of Sioux Falls follows a script we've seen play out in city council chambers across the country. Chief Jon Thum touts Flock's ability to recover stolen vehicles, and that's real — ALPRs are good at flagging plates tied to specific crimes. But "it helped solve a case" is doing a lot of work in these local news segments, and it rarely comes with a follow-up question about how many plates get scanned, stored, and shared to get that one hit.

That's the trade nobody on the police side wants to spell out on camera: every driver in Sioux Falls, guilty of nothing, gets logged into a searchable database just for existing on public roads. The footage is retained, it's queryable by other agencies, and once that data-sharing pipe is open, local control over who sees it starts to erode. Civil liberties advocates aren't being alarmist by pointing that out — they're describing exactly how these networks are built to function.

If you're in South Dakota or anywhere else wondering whether these cameras have shown up near you, check our camera map and see what's already watching your commute. And if your city council hasn't had a public debate about retention limits, audit logs, or out-of-state data sharing, our take-action page has what you need to start pushing for one.