{"id":550391,"date":"2026-03-28T12:22:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T12:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/550391\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T12:22:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T12:22:19","slug":"cameras-have-quietly-appeared-in-thousands-of-us-cities-now-their-integration-with-ai-is-sounding-alarms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/550391\/","title":{"rendered":"Cameras have quietly appeared in thousands of US cities \u2013 now, their integration with AI is sounding alarms"},"content":{"rendered":"

For decades, cars dictated urban planning in the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Few could have predicted that they would one day also double as nodes for surveillance.<\/p>\n

In thousands of towns and cities<\/a> across the U.S., automatic license plate readers have been installed at major intersections, bridges and highway off-ramps. <\/p>\n

These camera-based systems capture the license plate data<\/a> of passing vehicles, along with images of the vehicle and time stamps. More recently, these systems are using artificial intelligence<\/a> to create a vast, searchable database that can be integrated with other law enforcement data repositories.<\/p>\n

As a scholar of technology policy and data governance<\/a>, I see the expansion of automatic license plate readers as a source of deep concern. It\u2019s happening as government authorities are seeking ways to target immigrant<\/a> and transgender communities<\/a>, are already using AI to monitor protests<\/a>, and are considering deploying AI systems for mass surveillance<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Eyes on the road<\/p>\n

Using cameras to track license plates dates to the 1970s, when the U.K. was embroiled in a long-simmering conflict with the Irish Republican Army. <\/p>\n

The Met, London\u2019s police force, developed a system that used closed-circuit television cameras<\/a> to monitor and record the license plates of vehicles entering and exiting major roads. <\/p>\n

The system and its successors were seen as useful crime fighting tools. Over the next two decades, they expanded to other cities in the U.K. and around the world. In 1998, U.S. Customs and Border Protection implemented this technology<\/a>. By the 21st century, it had started appearing in cities across the U.S.<\/p>\n

There are different ways for a jurisdiction to implement these systems, but local governments usually sign contracts with private companies that provide the hardware and service. <\/p>\n

These companies often entice authorities with free trials of surveillance equipment<\/a> and promises of free access to their data in ways that bypass local oversight laws.<\/p>\n

AI thrown into the mix<\/p>\n

Recently, AI has been incorporated into these camera systems, significantly increasing their reach<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The vehicle information that\u2019s captured is typically stored in the cloud, creating a massive web of data repositories. If a camera collects information from a suspect\u2019s car or truck \u2013 say, one also listed in the National Crime Information Center \u2013 AI can flag it and send an instant alert to local law enforcement. <\/p>\n

In fact, that\u2019s a selling point of Flock Safety<\/a>, one of the biggest providers of automatic license plate readers. The company uses infrared cameras to capture images of vehicles. AI then analyzes the data to identify subjects and quickly alert local authorities.<\/p>\n

On the surface, automatic license plate readers seem like a logical way to fight crime. More information about the whereabouts of suspects can potentially help law enforcement. And why worry about cameras if you\u2019re following the law?<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Flock told The Conversation that their technology has helped reduce crime, including violent crime, in cities that use their cameras, such as San Francisco and Oakland. <\/p>\n

But there are few peer-reviewed studies on their effectiveness. Those that exist find little evidence that they\u2019ve led to reductions<\/a> in violent crime rates<\/a>, though they seem to be helpful in solving some crimes<\/a>, like car thefts. <\/p>\n

Furthermore, installation and maintenance are costly. <\/p>\n

For example, Johnson City, Tennessee, signed a 10-year, US$8 million contract with Flock<\/a> in 2025. Richmond, Virginia, paid over $1 million to the company between October 2024 and November 2025<\/a> and recently extended its contract, despite opposition from some residents.<\/p>\n

\"Young<\/p>\n

A Houston resident photographs a Flock license plate reader in his neighborhood in October 2025.
\n AP Photo\/David Goldman<\/a><\/p>\n

Erosion of civil liberties in plain sight<\/p>\n

The technology seems to highlight the pitfalls of what scholars call \u201ctechnosolutionism<\/a>,\u201d the belief that complex issues like crime, poverty and climate change can be solved by technology.<\/p>\n

Even more disquieting, to me, is the fact that these camera systems have created a mass location tracking infrastructure knitted together by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

The U.S. doesn\u2019t have a federal law like the European Union\u2019s General Data Protection Regulation<\/a> that meaningfully limits the collection, retention, sale or sharing of location and mobility data.<\/p>\n

As a result, data gathered through surveillance infrastructure in the U.S. can circulate with limited transparency or accountability. <\/p>\n

License plate readers can easily be accessed or repurposed beyond their original goals of managing traffic, meting out fines or catching fugitives. All it takes is a shift in enforcement priorities \u2013 or a new definition of what counts as a crime \u2013 for the original purpose of these cameras to recede from view.<\/p>\n

Civil liberties groups and digital rights organizations have been sounding the alarm about these cameras for over a decade.<\/p>\n

In 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union published a report<\/a> titled \u201cYou are Being Tracked: How License Plate Readers Are Being Used To Record Americans\u2019 Movements.\u201d And the Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/a> has decried them as \u201cstreet-level surveillance<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

A counter-camera movement emerges<\/p>\n

The promise of these cameras was simple: more data, less crime. <\/p>\n

But what followed has been murkier: more data, and a significant expansion of power over the public.<\/p>\n

Without robust legal safeguards, this data can possibly be used to target political opposition, facilitate discriminatory policing or chill constitutionally protected activities. <\/p>\n

This has already happened during the current administration\u2019s aggressive deportation efforts. Automatic license plate reader databases were shared with federal immigration agencies<\/a> to monitor immigrant communities. Recently, Customs and Border Protection was granted access to over 80,000 Flock cameras<\/a>, which have also been used to surveil protests<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s reproductive health care. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade<\/a> in 2022, there were fears that people traveling across state lines to get an abortion could potentially be identified<\/a> through automatic license plate reader databases. In Texas, authorities accessed Flock\u2019s surveillance data as part of an abortion investigation<\/a> in 2025.<\/p>\n

Flock told NPR in February 2026<\/a> that cities control how this information is shared: \u201cEach Flock customer has sole authority over if, when, and with whom information is shared.\u201d The company noted that it has made efforts to \u201cstrengthen sharing controls, oversight and audit capabilities within the system.\u201d But NPR also reported that many city officials around the U.S. didn\u2019t realize how widely the data was being shared.<\/p>\n

In response, some states have sought to regulate the technology. <\/p>\n

Washington state lawmakers are deliberating the Driver Privacy Act<\/a>. The legislation would prohibit agencies from using the surveillance technology for immigration investigations and enforcement, and from collecting data around certain health care facilities. Protests would also be shielded from surveillance.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, grassroots initiatives such as DeFlock<\/a> have also emerged. <\/p>\n

DeFlock\u2019s online platform documents the spread of automatic license plate reader networks in order to help communities resist their deployment<\/a>. The movement frames these systems not merely as traffic technologies, but also as linchpins of an expanding government data dragnet \u2013 one that demands stronger democratic oversight and community consent.<\/p>\n

This article has been updated to include a statement from Flock Safety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For decades, cars dictated urban planning in the United States. Few could have predicted that they would one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-550391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}