9. The Surveillance Society: Automatic License Plate Readers
The short version: Utah Law's breakdown of ALPR surveillance adds academic weight to what we've been documenting on the ground: this is a legal and civil liberties problem, not just a tech story.
Our Take
When a law school starts putting out content titled "The Surveillance Society," it's a signal that ALPR sprawl has moved from niche privacy-nerd concern to mainstream legal issue. We appreciate Utah Law tackling this — the more people examining Flock Safety's business model through a Fourth Amendment lens, the better, because right now there's a real gap between what these cameras can do and what courts have actually said is constitutional.
That gap matters. Most ALPR deployments happen with zero warrant, zero individualized suspicion, and often zero public vote. Local police departments sign contracts, cameras go up on utility poles, and suddenly your daily commute is logged in a database that can be queried by hundreds of agencies nationwide. The legal theory that makes this permissible — you have no expectation of privacy in a public parking lot — was never designed to cover a system that tracks everyone, everywhere, forever.
We're glad to see legal educators pushing students to think critically about this instead of treating it as settled law. If you want to see how far this network has spread in your own state, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back at your next city council meeting, our take-action page has the tools to help.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Utah Law, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.