Cops Track Exes Using License Plates #shorts

Our Take

Worldwide Wave Media's clip lands on something we've been saying for a while: give someone a database of everyone's comings and goings, and sooner or later they'll use it for reasons that have nothing to do with public safety. Flock-style ALPR networks were sold to city councils as tools for finding stolen cars and wanted felons. In practice, any officer with a login can punch in a plate and pull a timeline of where that car has been parked, day after day — including outside an ex's house.

This isn't a hypothetical edge case. Audits in multiple jurisdictions have already turned up officers running plates on romantic partners, exes, and people they had personal beef with, because the guardrails on these systems are often just an honor code and a log file nobody reviews until a scandal breaks. The chilling part is how ordinary this is: no judge signs off, no warrant is needed, and the person being tracked has no idea it's happening until it shows up in a messy custody fight or a restraining order filing.

Stories like this are exactly why we built a public map of ALPR locations — so residents can see how thick this web actually is in their own neighborhood instead of taking a vendor's word that the data is 'only used for serious crimes.' If that sounds like your town, check the map and see what you can do about it at take action.