Understanding The Rise In ALPRs On Highways

An ALPR snaps photos of passing cars. Its purpose is to capture license plates, log location and time, and store the information for possible later use. The cameras may also grab the make and year of vehicles and shots of drivers and passengers. This is useful for tracking a fleeing criminal or locating stolen cars.

No one knows for sure how many are deployed in Indiana, but it’s a lot.
Citizens have reported more than 2,100 cameras to Eyes Off Indiana, which advocates for their regulation. “The real number is probably more like 5,000 or 6,000,” says Walker Lasbury, Eyes Off Indiana’s president and executive director. “There’s no transparency or oversight requirements, so all of our data is crowdsourced.”

You can spot the cameras if you know what to look for. Some ALPR units fit in the palm of a hand, but many are powered by harder-to-hide solar panels (about the size of a desktop monitor). They’re often mounted on preexisting light poles or other public infrastructure. Around the country, clever police departments have put them inside traffic cones or disguised them as cacti. Also, those units that post your speed as you enter a construction zone are sometimes hidden ALPR cameras.

The big dog in the business is Flock. The company deploys its technology to more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies, 6,000 communities, and 1,000 businesses nationwide. A 2023 customer survey estimates that Flock gear solves 700,000 crimes per year, or roughly 10 percent of all reported. ICE has also made use of ALPR networks to track undocumented immigrants.

AI is key. If all these systems did was snap pictures of plates (something Eyes Off Indiana estimates they do more than 12 million times a day in the Hoosier state), the system wouldn’t be particularly helpful. But AI agents can quickly sift through the shots to find a specific plate—say, tied to a robbery or a hit-and-run. They can then track said car from one camera to another in real time. Or, in the case of a stolen car, an ALPR system can alert cops that a hot vehicle is in their area.

This is where the problem begins. Camera data is used to catch crooks. So far, so good. However, the vast majority of those being monitored are just regular folks going about their business, unaware that civil authorities are watching them. And there are no statewide regulations governing how long this data can be stored on police databases, with whom it can be shared, or even how it can be used. “To my knowledge, there’s not any law,” says Samantha Bresnahan, senior policy specialist with the ACLU of Indiana. “There are no guards around the use of ALPRs.”

This information can be stored long-term and collated nationally. On its website, Flock boasts its National LPR Network offers “coast-to-coast reach” by combining data from 5,000 communities and 4,800 agencies nationwide. That database swells each month with the addition of around 20 billion new license plate reads. Theoretically, you could track a criminal, or anyone else, for thousands of miles.

The possibilities for abuse would make George Orwell sweat. Actually, there have already been a few such cases at police departments around the country. In Kechi, Kansas, a cop used ALPR data to track his estranged wife; a cop in Georgia was bribed to run a woman’s license plate through the system; and a policeman in Ohio used it to keep tabs on his ex-girlfriend. In the state of Washington, ALPR data was recently declared public information, which means that stalkers could potentially use it to track their victims.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Suppose an Indiana agency wanted to share its data not just with Flock’s national network but with a private company? There’s no statewide law specifically banning that. If a cop wanted to find out where you go after work, they probably could.

Other surveillance tactics exist too. Ever notice those weird little trailers parked in shopping center parking lots with a camera on a pole? That’s what Flock calls a mobile security trailer, and it tracks activity the same way stationary ALPRs do. According to the company’s site, these can typically be stationed without a permit. Flock sells indoor systems for stores and other public places, surveillance drones, and even microphones that detect things like gunfire, car crashes, and, cryptically, “disruptive community activity.” Also, private companies just cruise around taking pictures of cars in public areas to build their own databases to sell to other companies. All of this data could be combined, allowing someone interested in your life to see it play out in granular detail.

Advocacy groups want ALPR data to be heavily regulated. Bresnahan says the Indiana ACLU wants state rules that limit how long ALPR data can be stored (Lasbury suggests 30 days), restrict use of the information to narrowly defined law enforcement purposes, and ban sharing it with out-of-state agencies, among other rules. “Guardrails that address both retention and oversight are critical,” Bresnahan says. “That includes an independent audit requirement so you know if anybody is abusing the system.”

The ACLU would also like to keep ALPRs out of the hands of private groups.
Think this all sounds like a nosy HOA president’s dream? So does Flock, which features testimonials from “satisfied” HOA customers on its website. Lasbury says nothing is stopping any private citizen from putting an ALPR up. The testimonials laud the cameras for catching burglars, car thieves, and vandals. No word on whether they’ve also been used to search for unapproved backyard treehouses.

Statewide regulations will likely be passed eventually. But right now, oversight of cameras isn’t a top issue for most Hoosiers. Eyes Off Indiana’s online petition has only 1,137 signatures. The topic was raised during recent Indiana General Assembly sessions but didn’t go anywhere. But the idea of being watched 24/7 by the cops, who can then use that information any way they want, would seem to be a nonpartisan issue. “If we can build a coalition and a movement, there’s no way the legislature won’t take this on,” Lasbury says. “We have to get legislation on the table that allows police to do their jobs while also protecting our Fourth Amendment privacy rights.” 

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