The policeman uses the Flock Safety license plate reader system. Many left-leaning states and cities are trying to protect their residents’ personal information in the face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, but a growing number of conservative lawmakers also want to limit the apply of surveillance technology. (Photo courtesy of Flock Safety)
As part of the deportation effort, the Trump administration has ordered states to turn over personal information from voter rolls, driver’s license documents and programs such as Medicaid and food stamps.
At the same time, the administration is trying consolidate fragments of personal information held by federal agencies, creating a single source of information about people living in the United States.
Many leftist states and cities are trying to protect their residents’ personal information in the face of an immigration crackdown. But a growing number of conservative lawmakers also want to limit the apply of surveillance technologies such as automatic license plate readers, which can be used to identify and track people.
Conservative-led states such as Arkansas, Idaho AND Montana last year passed legislation aimed at protecting personal information collected through license plate readers and other means. They joined at least five leftists states — Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Washington — which have specifically blocked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from accessing their driver’s license data.
Additionally, Democrat-led cities in Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Texas AND Washington last year they terminated their contracts with Flock Safety, the largest supplier license plate readers in the USA
The Trump administration’s goal is to create a “surveillance network across the country,” said William Owen, communications director for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a nonprofit that advocates for tighter privacy regulations.
We are entering an increasingly dystopian era of advanced technology.
– William Owen, communications director for the Surveillance Technology Project
“We are entering an increasingly dystopian era of high-tech surveillance,” Owen said. Intelligence sharing between different levels of government, he said, “enabled ICE to bypass sanctuary laws and seize local police databases and surveillance tools, including license plate readers, facial recognition and other technologies.”
Montana’s modern law prohibits government entities from accessing electronic communications and related materials without a warrant. Republican state Sen. Daniel Emrich, the bill’s author, said that “the most important thing on which our entire justice system rests is the principle against unlawful search and seizure” – a right enshrined in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“It’s hard to find people who are constitutionally grounded and understand the need to keep Fourth Amendment rights intact at all times, for any reason — with minimal or no exceptions,” Emrich said in an interview.
ICE did not respond to Stateline’s requests for comment.
Automatic license plate readers
Recently, cities and states have been particularly concerned about the apply of automatic license plate readers (ALPR), which are high-speed cameras and computer systems that capture information about the license plates of passing vehicles. These readers are placed on police cars and streetlights, or can be hidden in construction barrels and power poles.
Some cameras collect data that is stored in databases for years, which increases the number of data worries among privacy advocates. One report of the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive think tank at New York University, said the data could be vulnerable to hacking. Different agencies have different rules regarding how long data is retained, According to to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, a law enforcement advocacy group.
Supporters of the technology, including many law enforcement officials, say the technology is a powerful tool for tracking crime suspects.
Flock Safety says so has cameras in over 5,000 communities and is connected to over 4,800 law enforcement agencies in 49 states. The company claims its cameras perform more than 20 billion license plate readings per month. It collects data and passes it on to the police, who apply the information to locate people.
Holly Beilin, a spokeswoman for Flock Safety, told Stateline that while local police agencies may work with ICE, the company has no contractual relationship with it. Beilin also said many liberal cities and even sanctuary cities still contract with Flock Safety. She noted that cameras have been used to solve some high-profile crimes, including identifying and leading police to the man who committed them, Shooting at Brown University and behind schedule last year he killed an MIT professor.
“Agencies and cities can largely use this technology in ways that are consistent with their values. So they don’t have to share data out of state,” Beilin said.
Answer to the question about data apply
But critics like American Civil Liberties Unionclaim that Flock Safety’s cameras will not only “give even the police chief in the smallest town access to an extremely powerful driver monitoring tool,” but also that the data is being used by ICE. One news service, 404 Mediaobtained records of these searches and found that many of them were conducted by local officers on behalf of ICE.
Last spring, the Denver City Council voted unanimously to terminate its contract with Flock Safety, but Democratic Mayor Mike Johnston unilaterally extended the contract in October, arguing that the technology is a useful tool in the fight against crime.
The ACLU of Colorado has emphatically done so he opposed the camerasclaiming that last August, Denver Police Department audit logs show that there have been more than 1,400 searches for ICE since June 2024.
“The conversation has really intensified because of the federal landscape and the focus not only on immigrants and the functionality of ICE right now, but also on the side of actually trying to limit or eliminate protections around access to reproductive care and gender-affirming care,” Anaya Robinson, director of public policy at the ACLU of Colorado.
“When we limit the rights and access of a particular community, it is only a matter of time before that erosion begins to affect other communities.”
Jimmy Monto, a Democratic city councilman in Syracuse, New York, led accusation of eliminating the Flock Safety contract in his city.
“Syracuse has a very large immigrant population, a very large new American population, refugees that have resettled here and been resettled. So it’s a very sensitive issue,” Monto said, adding that license plate readers allow anyone to look at the data to determine someone’s immigration status without a warrant.
“When we contract with someone to collect data on citizens living in a city, we have to be very focused on what exactly that person is doing, and at the same time we give the police the tools they need to solve homicide problems, right?” Monto said.
“Obviously, if license plate readers are helpful in that way, I think the scope is appropriate. But we need to be sure that’s what we’re using it for and that the companies we’re working with are acting in good faith.”
Emrich, the Montana lawmaker, said everyone should be concerned about protecting their constitutional rights to privacy, regardless of their political views.
“If the government obtains data in violation of constitutional rights, it can violate a whole host of individuals’ constitutional rights by prosecuting people who may or may not be protected under those same constitutional rights,” he said.
Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at: schatlani@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by state linewhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes the Ohio Capital Journal and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
