To: Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Warren Davidson
Stop the Flock: Demand Transparency for License Plate Surveillance Cameras
There's a camera on a pole near my house. It's not there to catch red-light runners — it's there to read license plates, log them, and store where drivers were, every time they pass.
These are automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras, most commonly made by Flock Safety, and they're now active in more than 5,000 U.S. communities, with well over 120,000 units installed nationwide. Most residents never voted on them, never saw the contract, and have no idea what happens to the data after their plate gets read.
Here's what we already know, from the departments' own numbers: LAPD conducted an internal audit of its own camera system and found a 32.3% false-positive rate — nearly 1 in 3 alerts were wrong. That's not an activist's estimate. That's the department's own audit. A wrong "match" doesn't stay abstract — it means a real person getting pulled over, searched, or questioned for a car they don't own.
The cameras themselves are usually owned by a private company, not the city. Local governments pay an ongoing subscription for access to the data — meaning a private business, not just elected officials, controls a growing record of where cars in a town go. And because location data collected commercially can often be bought by government agencies without a warrant, this same information can end up changing hands in ways most residents are never told about.
This is already changing, because people are speaking up. Nearly 100 cities and counties across 28 states have canceled or rejected Flock contracts since 2021, and the pace is accelerating. Every one of those decisions started the same way: residents asking questions publicly, in front of the people who could actually act on them.
We're asking for three specific things:
- Public disclosure — Require any city considering or renewing an ALPR contract to publicly release the full contract terms and the system's documented false-positive rate before any vote.
- Independent oversight — Require regular, public, independent audits of any active license-plate-reading program, with results reported to residents.
- Close the data-broker loophole — Support federal legislation requiring a warrant before any government agency can purchase location data that would otherwise require one to collect directly.
We're not asking anyone to ban this technology outright. We're asking for the basic transparency and oversight that should come with any system that tracks where people go.
Why is this important?
This isn't about one person. This is about We the People of the United States — and we don't want it.
We didn't vote for a camera on every corner. We didn't agree to have our movements logged, stored, and sold. We didn't sign off on a private company profiting off tracking where our families drive, every single day, with no oversight and no accountability to the people paying for it.
And the numbers back up what we already feel in our gut: LAPD's own internal audit found their camera system was wrong nearly 1 in 3 times. That's not a fluke — that's a system operating on our streets, making mistakes about real people, with almost nobody watching to make sure it's used the way it was promised.
We are not anti-safety. We are not anti-technology. We are Americans who believe that any system with this much power over our privacy needs real transparency, real oversight, and real accountability — not a rubber stamp and a subscription fee.
This is already working. Nearly 100 cities and counties across 28 states have already canceled or rejected these contracts since 2021 — because residents like us stood up and said something. That number grows every time one more person adds their name.
If you've ever driven past one of these cameras and felt that same uneasy feeling — you're not alone, and you're not overreacting. Join us.
We the People built this country on the idea that power answers to us, not the other way around. It's time these cameras did too.
Stop the Flock. Add your name.