WASHINGTON — U.S. Sens. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., urged Attorney General Todd Blanche this week to provide state and local law enforcement with guidance on how the agencies can prevent the misuse of automated license plate readers (ALPR), with Flock Safety providing the largest network of cameras.
State and local law enforcement’s use of Flock cameras has become a flashpoint in debates over privacy and surveillance. The cameras capture images of vehicles, including their make and color, visible from public roadways that can help police track vehicles and support investigations.
But as the bipartisan senators point out in their letter, sent to Blanche Monday, there is also “great concern” that Flock cameras can be misused, such as law enforcement officers personally using the cameras to track or stalk romantic partners.
“We are deeply concerned about the misuse of ALPR systems and believe that appropriate safeguards are necessary to protect against unauthorized access and abuse, including by individuals who might misuse the technology to stalk and harass their victims,” the senators wrote.
In Alabama, there are more than 2,800 Flock cameras spread throughout the state, according to LPRMaps, a crowd-sourced project tracking the cameras nationwide. The state ranks 14th in the nation for total cameras and sixth by density, according to the same site.
The lawmaker duo cited that Flock has more than 120,000 cameras nationwide in 49 states.
In the letter, Britt and Warnock ask the Department of Justice to provide information on its federal funding, oversight mechanisms for the systems and any policies designed to prevent data from federally funded cameras from getting into the wrong hands.
“We also want to ensure that funding of these technologies is paired with appropriate oversight to ensure that the funding is not used to facilitate such abuse,” the lawmakers wrote.
The pair acknowledges that the license plate readers can be used for “legitimate public safety purposes” but that misuse can undermine those objectives and hurt the public’s trust in the systems.
The senators also highlight at least 50 instances in which law enforcement officers have been charged or accused of misusing the cameras nationwide.
Recently, local police departments in Alabama, including in Springville and Moody, have announced that employees violated their Flock camera policies and are no longer employed with the two departments, according to a FOX 6 report.
The lawmakers said that cases where law enforcement officers have improperly used the cameras to stalk their romantic partners show the need for “strong guardrails and safeguards.” They listed access controls, auditing, supervisory review and meaningful consequences for intentional misuse as ways to rein in camera use in the letter.
The Alabama Policy Institute also shared its concerns with the cameras monitoring Alabamians in an August blog post, urging the Alabama Legislature to establish guardrails around the cameras’ data to “protect our Fourth Amendment rights.”
Britt and Warnock asked the DOJ to respond to their letter by Oct. 21.
A Senate Judiciary subcommittee, of which Britt is a member, will hold a hearing on Flock cameras titled “Always Watching: Flock’s Nationwide AI Surveillance Network” on Wednesday afternoon.