The wild wild west of automated license plate readers

Our Take

The Capitol Pressroom's interview with Assemblymember Pamela Hunter gets right to the point with its title: ALPR deployment across New York really is the "wild wild west." Departments and private vendors have been free to install Flock Safety cameras and similar systems with little statewide oversight, no uniform retention limits, and no consistent rules on who can query the data or why. Hunter's push for comprehensive legislation is a sign that lawmakers are starting to notice what residents in camera-heavy towns have known for a while — this technology expanded faster than any policy framework meant to govern it.

That gap matters because ALPR networks aren't just traffic tools anymore. They're databases of where you drove, when, and how often, often shared across agencies and states with minimal audit trails. Without hard limits on retention, sharing, and access, a "public safety" camera becomes a permanent tracking record, and the legislature is the only body positioned to force transparency on how these networks actually operate.

We'll be watching whether Hunter's proposal includes real teeth: public reporting, strict retention caps, and bans on sharing with federal immigration or out-of-state agencies. Credit to The Capitol Pressroom for putting a policymaker on record on this. If you want to see what's already watching your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you'd rather do something about it, our take-action page has tools for pushing your own representatives toward real rules.