A new online mapping project that visualizes more than 117,000 automated license plate reader cameras across the United States is drawing fresh attention to surveillance technology already woven into daily life in the nation’s capital, where police have spent nearly two decades expanding networks of license plate readers and public safety cameras.
The interactive DeFlock Maps platform depicts a nationwide network of automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras and says more than 6,424 law enforcement agencies share information with one another.
DeFlock counts as a grassroots activist organization that tracks and maps Flock’s cameras to protest mass surveillance.
Its mapping project states that only about 900 agencies maintain public transparency portals and that roughly 530 identify the agencies with which they share data, leaving much of the nationwide sharing network outside public view.
The ACLU has steadfastly opposed the use of such technology and have urged communities to stand against the Flock, the technology corporation that builds and sells ALPR surveillance cameras used by authorities.
“We’ve already seen how this mass surveillance tool can be weaponized and abused by law enforcement,” ACLU officials stated.
In D.C., surveillance technology has steadily expanded since August 2006, when the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) began deploying closed-circuit television cameras throughout District neighborhoods. MPD says the cameras were introduced to combat crime, enhance public safety and assist criminal investigations. The department now publicly identifies dozens of permanent Homeland Security camera locations throughout the District and provides residents with an online application that allows them to search for fixed and mobile police cameras near specific addresses.
An MPD spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but the department has said that ALPRs are “vital proactive investigative tools used exclusively for official law enforcement purposes, such as locating stolen vehicles, recovering weapons, and finding missing or wanted individuals.”
ALPR Central to Modern Policings, Communities Fight Back
Automatic license plate reader technology has become a central component of modern policing nationwide.
“ICE and CBP have repeatedly used Flock to go after immigrants without warrants,” ACLU officials explained. “Kansas police used them to pursue a man who wrote a critical op-ed about the department, while a Colorado police officer wrongfully accused a woman of theft based on a Flock hit and then refused to look at evidence proving her innocence. A mother and her children were held at gunpoint because ALPR cameras wrongly flagged their car as stolen.”
According to a recent market survey prepared for the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, ALPR systems automatically capture, analyze and store license plate information, compare vehicle information against law enforcement databases and generate alerts when a vehicle of interest is detected. Federal researchers say the technology has been part of law enforcement’s toolkit for more than two decades and has become increasingly sophisticated with advances in artificial intelligence and computer vision.
The DHS report says modern platforms can identify vehicle characteristics, compare information against investigative databases and integrate with fixed cameras, mobile patrol vehicles and portable deployments. The survey identified 16 commercially available ALPR systems now marketed to law enforcement agencies across the country.
Congress also is examining potential legal implications of the technology. A Congressional Research Service report published last year explains that ALPR systems capture license plates along with the date, time, location and other information associated with passing vehicles. The systems can compare that information against “hot lists” in real time while also creating historical records that investigators may later search.
The report notes that courts generally have concluded there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a license plate visible on a public roadway. At the same time, it says judges and lawmakers continue to grapple with broader questions involving prolonged tracking, historical databases and whether increasingly comprehensive surveillance could implicate Fourth Amendment protections.
The DeFlock mapping project offers one of the most detailed publicly available visualizations of the technology’s footprint. Along with displaying camera locations, it includes a network explorer intended to illustrate how participating law enforcement agencies share license plate reader information. According to the project, much of that network remains hidden because many agencies either redact their data-sharing relationships or do not publish them.
“This unprecedented spying is terrifying, but there’s good news, too,” The ACLU stated. “Communities across the country are fighting back against these creepy cameras and winning.”
