Protecting privacy. Preserving progress.

No. We believe ALPR technology is an incredibly powerful tool for solving crimes, recovering stolen vehicles, and locating missing persons. When used properly, it can save lives and support legitimate law enforcement work. Our concern is not with ALPR itself, but with how it’s managed. Storing location data on millions of innocent people for months or years, without oversight or limits, crosses a constitutional line. We support clear rules that keep this technology effective, accountable, and rights-respecting.

No—because the risks of keeping that data far outweigh the rare cases where it might help. ALPR data almost never solves cold cases. The overwhelming majority of scans have no connection to any crime, and data older than a few weeks is almost never useful. Meanwhile, long-term retention creates real dangers: misuse by officers, unauthorized sharing, data breaches, and the quiet expansion of mass surveillance. Police can still retain plate records tied to active investigations through a written request. But storing everyone’s movements “just in case” turns a public safety tool into a tracking system for millions of innocent people. Tracking every car with GPS would help solve crimes too, but we don’t allow that because it violates basic rights. This is no different.

Requiring a warrant may sound like a safeguard, but it still allows the government to stockpile location data on millions of innocent drivers. Once that data exists, it can be leaked, misused, or quietly repurposed, no matter how strict the access rules are. A warrant controls who can look—but not what is stored, how long, or what might happen to it later. Deletion prevents those risks by removing data that is not tied to an active case. It also discourages lazy investigations that rely on broad data mining instead of focused leads. ALPR is most effective in real time or shortly after a crime occurs. If a case emerges, police can request that specific records be preserved. But by default, deletion after 30 days is the strongest protection for both public safety and civil liberties.

“Nothing to hide” has never been the standard for constitutional rights. You protect your home, your phone, and your personal information not because you are hiding crimes, but because privacy is part of basic security. ALPR data is the same. Once long-term location records exist, they can be and already have been misused, including officers looking up an ex-partner’s movements, checking who visits certain clinics or churches, or monitoring political activity out of curiosity. These abuses happen precisely because the data is there. Protecting privacy is not about hiding something; it is about preventing powerful tools from being turned against innocent people.

A single image in public is not the issue. The problem is scale. Some cities have ALPRs at nearly every intersection, making it almost impossible to drive without being recorded. That creates a detailed, long-term map of a person’s movements, far beyond what anyone reasonably expects when they leave home. In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court held that long-term location tracking is a search under the Fourth Amendment, even when each individual moment occurs in public. ALPR networks can replicate that same level of intrusive tracking if no limits are in place.

Your phone collects data because you choose to carry it and can control, limit, or turn off those services. ALPR tracking is different: it is done by the government, requires no consent, and cannot be opted out of. You can leave your phone at home; you cannot avoid driving past government-run cameras placed at every intersection. And unlike private phone data, ALPR records can be pooled, shared, or searched by agencies without you ever knowing. The issue is not the technology; it is involuntary, government-run location tracking with no clear limits.