Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) build a searchable map of everywhere a driver goes, fed into databases that police, ICE, and private vendors can query after the fact. Networked across a city, ALPRs are purpose-built to track everyone regardless of suspicion. ALPRs are not a surveillance tool that can be made safe with the right policy or feature update—they are irredeemably harmful.

EFF's position is that ALPR mass surveillance—the indiscriminate, continuous collection and retention of location data on every driver, regardless of suspicion—should not exist. Because it nonetheless does, EFF also urges courts and state legislatures to impose strict, enforceable restrictions, such as warrant requirements and deletion deadlines.

EFF's position is that ALPR mass surveillance—the indiscriminate, continuous collection and retention of location data on every driver, regardless of suspicion—should not exist. Because it nonetheless does, EFF also urges courts and state legislatures to impose strict, enforceable restrictions, such as warrant requirements and deletion deadlines. EFF applies every tool available to eliminate ALPR surveillance and the harm it enacts.

The Case Against ALPRs

A note about scope: This post addresses ALPR mass surveillance. It does not address the wider universe of automated traffic enforcement (ATE) such as conventional red light and speed cameras that solely ticket a specific violation, without retaining or networking data on uninvolved drivers. But lawmakers and purchasers should guard against efforts by vendors to piggyback on ATE contracts to market ALPR mass surveillance systems.

ALPRs are frequently marketed as a narrow tool for specific purposes, such as recovering stolen vehicles. But in practice, these sensors sweep up data on every driver who passes a camera, and store it in searchable databases. That indiscriminate collection and retention is precisely why ALPR-fed surveillance systems can be easily weaponized against immigrants, political dissidents, and other targeted communities as ICE and other federal agencies escalate their assault on civil liberties. There is no configuration of an ALPR network that eliminates this risk, because the risk is the mass surveillance itself, not a misuse of it.

Of course, ALPRs cause other predictable harms. Innocent drivers are recurringly arrested and menaced by police because of ALPR errors. Officers regularly abuse ALPR systems to stalk past and potential romantic partners. Creating any database of personal information—including ALPR surveillance databases—inherently creates risk of data theft and subsequent harm to data subjects. And ALPR surveillance of protests and targeting of activists chill participation in First Amendment-protected dissent. But even if these downstream harms could all be prevented (and they likely can’t), ALPRs would remain an intolerable form of mass surveillance.

Fighting on Every Front to Eliminate ALPR Surveillance

At the city level, EFF works with community members and decision makers to outright refuse ALPR purchasing. ALPRs are not inevitable. The same decision mechanisms used to facilitate runaway surveillance purchasing in U.S. localities can be turned against these systems to dismantle them.

EFF also pushes state legislatures to establish strict state-level limits on ALPR surveillance, such as data-deletion rules and use restrictions. Building such constraints into statute can mitigate the harms of existing ALPR systems.

In courts across the country, EFF files amicus briefs arguing that warrantless police searches of ALPR databases violate the Fourth Amendment. In California state court, EFF and the ACLU of Northern California are suing on behalf of two community groups, SIREN and CAIR-CA, arguing that the San Jose Police Department's practice of letting officers search stored plate data—to the tune of over 100,000 times a year—without a warrant violates the California Constitution. We’ve also sued to block California law enforcement from sharing ALPR data with federal and out-of-state agencies, in violation of a California statute.

A big part of EFF’s work is exposing the harms of ALPR surveillance. Our investigative team tirelessly collects information about how law enforcement uses ALPRs with public records requests, sues to enforce such requests, and publishes reports about them. We’ve also successfully lobbied for a State Auditor investigation of law enforcement’s use of ALPRs.

Coordinated Action Against Mass Surveillance

EFF practices integrated advocacy because all of these tools work best together. City refusals, statehouse restrictions, impact litigation, and investigative activism are different levers EFF pulls toward the same end: eliminating ALPR surveillance, and building the durable public power needed to keep it off our streets. A council vote against a Flock contract and a warrant argument in Santa Clara County Superior Court are both, at their core, the same fight: rejecting mass surveillance infrastructure outright, and using every venue available to eliminate its harmful presence and consequences.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in July issued a proposed policy statement “concerning the suppression of accuracy in artificial intelligence systems.” We urge the FTC to withdraw this misguided proposal and instead focus on its core strengths and mission to protect consumers. 

The new proposed policy builds on, and directly references, the Trump administration’s  “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government” executive order—a nightmare for civil liberties that seeks to strong-arm AI companies into modifying their models to conform with the its ideological agenda. In recently filed comments, EFF,  Public Knowledge, and Fight for the Future call for the FTC to stop its unconstitutional efforts to regulate lawful speech, override state laws, and intimidate AI developers into ideological alignment with the Trump administration.

The government may not install itself as the arbiter of truth.

In the joint comments, we outline three critical flaws within the latest proposed policy. First, it violates the First Amendment. The policy calls for the Commission to become the judge of which AI outputs meet an undefined standard of accuracy. Installing the FTC as the authority of this sort of viewpoint-based judgment is a prior restraint on speech. Additionally, the policy’s proposed solution to address speech concerns compounds, rather than properly limits, the likely harms to speech. As we say in our comments: the government may not install itself as the arbiter of truth. 

Second, it exceeds the FTC’s legal authority by claiming that its federal regulatory rules can override, or “preempt,” laws in states that have passed to regulate artificial intelligence use. This is clearly an attempt to target state laws the administration disagrees with. For example, the policy specifically criticizes Colorado's automated decisionmaking law, which applies when automated technology is used to consider consequential decisions such as those around employment, access to housing, health care, and insurance. We noted to the FTC that characterizing this law as one that requires AI companies to “suppress accuracy,” or encourages deception, is itself inaccurate. In any case, the FTC lacks the authority to put its rules in place over state law, unless Congress directly delegates it that power. It has been given no such power here.

Third, the policy is vague and sets the stage for improper jawboning of AI developers and companies that use AI tools (deployers). Jawboning is a term for situations in which the government urges private companies or people to censor another's speech. The proposal, as written, creates an enforcement regime that would put a thumb on the scale in favor of certain partisan speech and ideals. This will lead companies to censor only what the administration interprets as biased or untruthful. Yet, in our filing, we note that the FTC itself can't define an objective standard for what “bias” means, conceding the “exact line of what constitutes bias may be difficult to draw.”

There is work the FTC should be doing to protect consumers in the age of AI. In our comments, we conclude by saying:

[We] implore the Commission to focus on its core strengths and the mission for which it is so urgently needed—promoting structural market competition and protecting consumers from real unfair and deceptive acts and practices—in both the burgeoning and critically important AI industry and across the broader technology marketplace.

EFF and our partners have always urged the FTC to police genuine deception in technology markets. We have also consistently opposed government efforts to dictate what private speakers may say. That’s why we urge the FTC to withdraw this proposal. 

You can read our full comments here.