LIVE | More law enforcement accused of misusing license plate reader technology

Our Take

Another day, another local newsroom catching wind of what we've been tracking for a while: cops treating license plate reader data like a personal lookup tool instead of the narrowly-scoped investigative aid it's sold as. FOX 5 Atlanta deserves credit for putting this on air and asking the obvious question — if the technology keeps getting "misused," maybe the problem isn't a few bad actors, it's a system with almost no real guardrails.

This is the pattern we see over and over. Flock Safety and its peers promise narrow, crime-fighting use cases to win over city councils, then once the cameras go up, access logs reveal officers running plates for personal disputes, curiosity, or favors for people outside their own jurisdiction. Audits are rare, oversight is usually self-reported, and the public almost never finds out unless a reporter or a whistleblower forces the issue. Multiply that by the thousands of ALPR cameras now bolted to poles across the country and you've got a surveillance network with the accountability of a suggestion box.

If you want to see how close this creep is to your own neighborhood, check our camera map — it's a lot more extensive than most people assume. And if a story like this makes you want to do something besides shake your head, our take-action page has concrete steps for pushing back at the city council level, where these contracts actually get decided.