Automated License Plate Readers | California Golden Fleece® Award (Summer 2022)
The short version: The Independent Institute called out California's ALPR sprawl with a Golden Fleece Award, confirming what we've been documenting: mass plate surveillance without guardrails.
Our Take
When a free-market think tank and a privacy-focused watchdog land on the same conclusion, pay attention. The Independent Institute's Golden Fleece Award — usually reserved for pork-barrel spending and bureaucratic boondoggles — went to California jurisdictions running automated license plate readers with no real safeguards. Jonathan Hofer's report lays out what we've been saying for years: these systems were adopted fast, funded generously, and regulated barely at all.
This isn't a partisan gripe. The Golden Fleece framing matters because it forces people who don't normally think about surveillance to see ALPR programs the way they'd see any other wasteful, unaccountable government spending — money thrown at a system that vacuums up location data on innocent drivers, stores it indefinitely in many cases, and gets shared across agency lines with little public oversight. Waste and rights violations aren't separate problems here; they're the same problem wearing two different jackets.
Credit to the Independent Institute for putting a research paper trail behind the criticism instead of just vibes. If you want to see how far this has spread beyond California, check our camera map for ALPR locations near you, and if your city council hasn't had this conversation yet, our take-action page has the tools to start it.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Independent Institute, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.