alt.hn

5/21/2026 at 12:58:18 PM

A Bipartisan Amendment Would End Police License Plate Tracking Nationwide

 https://www.wired.com/story/a-bipartisan-amendment-would-end-police-license-plate-tracking-nationwide/

by cdrnsf

5/21/2026 at 4:47:13 PM

This is pretty deceptive. A legislative action is "bipartisan" when it has significant, material support from both parties. This is a performative throwaway amendment by a single Democrat who's retiring in a few months and a single fringe-y Republican iconoclast. The districts of both representatives (Chicago for Garcia, and Harrisburg for Perry) flatly oppose it, as do their state governments.

In reading this piece at Wired, would you reach that conclusion? Or would you think instead that there is a real chance the federal government might stick a thumb in the eye of every law enforcement agency in the country by blanket-banning ALPRs?

If you really want to end ALPRs where you live, organize and pass an ordinance. It is extremely doable.

by tptacek

5/21/2026 at 4:34:52 PM

When reasonable restrictions are needed, I particularly dislike unreasonable ones that make a show but wouldn't pass.

> A recipient of assistance under Title 23, United States Code, may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling

This one-liner amendment is its own poison pill: it will also outlaw traffic enforcment, cameras used to ticket people who run red lights or speed, since neither are tolling.

Sponsors from both parties, but the effect is anti-Democratic. Currently per rough search:

- 9 states prohibit speed and red-light cameras - 8 Republican (and Maine)

- 5 states expressly permit speed cameras - 4 Democrat (and Tennessee) (CA permitting red-light)

Obviously this reduces revenues (in democratic cities) and also drives police/traffic employment. Perhaps ICE abuse and union employment motivates the Democratic sponsor (Jesus "Chuy" García - parents are Teamsters, himself in a retail union). I would have encourage him to permit the use for tolling AND traffic enforcement.

by w10-1

5/21/2026 at 4:42:34 PM

> This one-liner amendment is its own poison pill: it will also outlaw traffic enforcment, cameras used to ticket people who run red lights or speed, since neither are tolling.

How did traffic enforcement work before these systems?

by JohnMakin

5/21/2026 at 4:47:45 PM

Worse and more racistly.

by tptacek

5/21/2026 at 7:20:22 PM

If "worse" means "far less frequently", yes. It required salary hours devoted to watching a single traffic light, or running a particular speed trap.

A city parking lot near me just switched to license-plate readers, and operates far later than local on-street parking - meaning they'll catch almost all parking violations there, and lure in unsuspecting people who think it isn't taking tolls that late.

by IAmBroom

5/21/2026 at 7:31:40 PM

I don't like them, I get why everyone hates them so much, but they do displace human quota-driven traffic enforcement that was heavily racially biased.

As I get older, I have less and less patience for the traffic libertarian I used to be. Lax traffic enforcement kills a huge number of people in the US; it's the single largest component of our reduced life expectancy.

(To be clear, for other readers, we are talking about red light cameras, not ALPRs. ALPRs like Flock generally can't be used for traffic enforcement!)

by tptacek

5/21/2026 at 5:54:39 PM

Traffic cameras and automated ticketing systems should be unconstitutional. If you are facing legal consequences for something, you have the constitutional right to face your accuser. Obviously that precludes any and all automated systems.

The only reason they aren't deemed unconstitutional is because technically they don't quite meet the qualification for being legal action as they are "merely" fines. Even though if you ignore the fines you face legal consequence.

If a jurisdiction wants to ticket drivers, they should be constitutionally mandated to have a person with authority out on the street writing tickets. It should not be acceptable for an automated system to hand out monetary and legal damages entirely unsupervised and unaccountable. That flies directly in the face of constitutional rights.

by vitally3643

5/21/2026 at 6:25:59 PM

If you have to shakily walk backwards into a D- explanation of the concept of a civil offense, maybe you shouldn't remark on the constitutionality of enforcing them.

by enragedcacti

5/21/2026 at 7:06:27 PM

>If you are facing legal consequences for something, you have the constitutional right to face your accuser. Obviously that precludes any and all automated systems.

Usually they work around that issue by having a cop manually review the footage after.

by gruez

5/21/2026 at 6:30:49 PM

>>The only reason they aren't deemed unconstitutional is because technically they don't quite meet the qualification for being legal action as they are "merely" fines. Even though if you ignore the fines you face legal consequence.

YES, and,

It is not just the legal consequence of the fines for speeding. When you get a ticket, you get points against your license, and end up paying more in insurance, often for up to seven years.

If they want actual automated enforcement, make it a toll, like a congestion fee.

It is free to drive at the basic speed (e.g., 65mph on the highway), but higher speeds cost more, up to a limit where it becomes a criminal offense requiring an actual Law Enforcement professional involved. The speeds could even be adjusted for time of day, weather, and traffic. So, you want to go faster, stay in the fast lane, and pay $X/mph/mile.

With the average speeds on highways often over 75MPH, collecting $0.10/mph/mile over the limit would result in good revenues.

by toss1

5/21/2026 at 7:02:54 PM

> When you get a ticket, you get points against your license, and end up paying more in insurance, often for up to seven years.

AFAICT this not the case in the vast majority of states that allow automated enforcement. Of the three I saw in that list that do: California replaced theirs with purely civil penalties earlier this year, and Arizona and Oregon require law enforcement officers to manually review and sign off on the ticket and offer legal avenues for you to respond.

https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/red-light-running/safety...

by enragedcacti

5/21/2026 at 4:46:38 PM

Maybe it's the point. Maybe the idea is to make it obviously not pass, frame the entire idea as unreasonable, and thus prevent the topic from being discussed again for long enough. Deliberately throw the unwanted baby with the proverbial bathwater.

by nine_k

5/21/2026 at 5:50:41 PM

I don't know about this framing. It's a reasonable thing to accept a small theoretical increase of traffic accidents resulting from less enforcement (which could be compensated for in other ways) to lose a massive, invasive surveillance state mechanism from a nation that is becoming increasingly hostile to its own citizens.

In fact, the traffic argument was the original poisoned pill - once those went in, everyone was fine with the gains, until LEO's and the government, assisted by nearly unregulated private companies were like "well, we already have the data..."

by JohnMakin

5/21/2026 at 4:47:36 PM

Yep.

by tptacek

5/21/2026 at 7:42:27 PM

Is this actually only one sentence? "...may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling." So if an agency uses readers for tolling, does that disallow the use of the data for other things? Splitting hairs, but...

by softboyled

5/21/2026 at 4:32:36 PM

This feels like too far the other direction. I am of the opinion that the following are all reasonable, and I think most people would agree with me:

* Toll enforcement (the only thing allowed by the law)

* Speeding enforcement

* Parking enforcement

* Real-time alerting for vehicles that could be pulled over if you knew nothing other than the vehicle's identity. Stolen, unregistered, uninsured, amber-alert, etc. [1]

I think the following are all unreasonable, and I think most people would agree with me:

* Selling the data for any commercial purposes (perhaps with the exception of aggregated statistical data)

* Mining the data "suspicious patterns of activity".

I think the following is reasonable, but some people may disagree:

* Retaining the data for a limited time, so that if a crime is reported involving a specific vehicle, you can look back for sightings of the vehicle contemporaneous with the crime to help catch the bad guys.

Given my thoughts on what is and is not reasonable, I think the ideal policy is one that focuses on limiting retention, limiting sharing, and limiting the types of queries that can be performed on the data. Something like:

* Can retain the data for 90 days. Data that is evidence of a specific crime can be kept longer with the evidence file for that crime, and destroyed when the investigation is done.

* Can use the data where knowing a series of (time, place) pairs for a vehicle is probable cause of an infraction (or toll due). This covers speeding and parking and tools and red lights and registration/etc, but doesn't allow looking for suspicious patterns of activity.

* Can query the data for sightings of a specific vehicle with reasonable suspicion that the vehicle was involved in a crime. Need to keep records of these queries to identify abuse. Maybe need to notify owner when such a query is made.

* Can not disclose the data to third parties, except in the case when they agree to follow all these same rules (so you can share with other departments or law enforcement service providers, but that doesn't enable an end-run around the rules)

[1]: And I think it's important here that if data about a vehicle be eligible to be pulled over knowing nothing but it's license plate is out of date or otherwise wrong, then someone gets in serious trouble. Otherwise nobody is incentivized to keep their database up to date.

by repiret

5/21/2026 at 4:43:11 PM

Just this morning I listened to an EFF podcast episode (Effector) about how license plate readers tend to suffer from mission creep. They might be deployed for one of the "reasonable" purposes you list but when the tool is available to lawenforcement it almost always becomes used for more and more purposes, like the example given in the article about tracking a woman who had an abortion.

The problem with these types of tools are that they provide a foothold into absolute enforcement, not just for current laws you find reasonable, but for all future laws from all future administrations which may not be reasonable.

Why should these cameras used for speeding enforcement today be used to track down protesters the admin decides to label as terrorists or legal immigrants who attended a pro Palestine rally tomorrow? They shouldn't.

What would stop that from happening? Nothing.

by fitblipper

5/21/2026 at 4:54:05 PM

As usual, it's a question of balance. In a country where people trust the government enough, or at least trust the system of checks and balances that must keep the government at bay, the idea of the benefits provided by proper use of the cameras outweighs the fear of the scope creep.

In a country where people expect the government to act unreasonably and to flout legal constraints, the fear of the scope creep and total surveillance outweighs the perceived benefits of legitimate use.

By answering this question, it's easy to determine how people feel about their country :-/

by nine_k

5/21/2026 at 6:32:53 PM

Look at what is happening in the UK where they "trust their government".

You have 10k+ arrest a year for social media posts. I'm sure most people also thought the initial legal precedent was reasonable.

by siren2026

5/21/2026 at 5:15:59 PM

USC 1983 prevents that from happening.

by polski-g

5/21/2026 at 7:24:53 PM

Might be nitpicking, but USC 1983 does not prevent anything, it is an attempt at restitution after the fact, and even then, when qualified immunity in play the efficacy of even that is questionable.

What does it cost a police force to abuse this technology? Maybe down the road they'll have to spend an afternoon in court explaining how they were just following orders or they were doing as directed by the department's policies at the time. What does it cost a citizen? Beyond the legal costs, it could cost their job when they don't show up because they were unjustly arrested, it could be a chilling effect on their speech when they see their politically active neighbor targeted.

I stand by my statement that nothing prevents the creep from happening. There is no realized cost to those who make it happen.

by fitblipper

5/21/2026 at 5:12:46 PM

Not that I like surveillance capitalism but...

If a ALPR search was gated by a search warrant, upon probable cause by witness and signed by judge, I would have much less concern. Its still surveillance capitalism, but that at least would be due process.

by mystraline

5/21/2026 at 6:31:30 PM

Nope, this is the start of what will then be "if you have nothing to hide, then don't be afraid". "Do it for the childrens" etc.

This will ALWAYS lead to full tracking by slowly boiling the frog.

by siren2026

5/21/2026 at 4:54:38 PM

> I am of the opinion that the following are all reasonable

I'm not. Tolls are fine since the "enforcement" there is of a known cost that you have to pay to use the road.

But I don't think speeding laws, or indeed any traffic laws that allow people to be fined or punished just because they broke some administrative rule, should exist at all as they exist now, let alone be enforced by automated cameras.

Even with cameras, it's obvious to anyone who drives that such laws are not even close to being actually enforceable as they're written. Raise your hand if you've gone faster than the posted speed limit on a US road, along with probably 95 percent or so of all the other cars on that road. Raise your other hand if you've not come to a complete stop at a stop sign because you can see that there are no other cars coming. And so on.

Such laws should not exist because "enforcement" becomes an arms race between the police and the citizen. It would be better to get rid of them and make things like speed limit signs, etc., advisory--you can't be ticketed just for not obeying them, but if you get in an accident and it's found that you weren't obeying a sign, you're presumed to be at fault. Then this whole issue would evaporate. The cameras could still be there--and their footage would be admissible evidence in any dispute about an actual accident. But they couldn't just trigger an automated ticket to be sent to you if no accident took place.

by pdonis

5/21/2026 at 6:51:55 PM

> I am of the opinion that the following are all reasonable, and I think most people would agree with me:

Absolutely not. The 4th Amendment, among others, are intended to make law enforcement more difficult. The alternative is tyranny. The power that these cameras provide is far beyond what they seem, and police have shown zero ability to be trusted with this sort of thing, and deserve zero benefit of the doubt, or trust to maintain logs only for x days, or not to use them for stalking people.

We optimize for law enforcement efficiency at our peril.

by Refreeze5224

5/21/2026 at 6:34:20 PM

>> * Can retain the data for 90 days. Data that is evidence of a specific crime can be kept longer with the evidence file for that crime, and destroyed when the investigation is done.

This gives me "minority report" vibes.

by siren2026

5/21/2026 at 5:48:52 PM

You're out of touch. People hate speed cameras.

by jollyllama

5/21/2026 at 5:58:25 PM

Punishment should never be automated.

by jtbayly

5/21/2026 at 6:18:24 PM

See this is exactly how we got here.

You multiply the "well we should allow it for uses X Y and Z" takes by every issue and the end result is that there's just enough political will to let the government walk all over everyone and everything else.

You have to draw a line in the sand otherwise you get the political equivalent of everyone littering "a little" and the cumulative result is things being crappy.

by cucumber3732842

5/21/2026 at 4:36:53 PM

I disagree with you

by fusslo

5/21/2026 at 2:37:50 PM

If a single car manufacturer decides to capture license plate data from their customers ' cars' cameras, then we're back where we started.

by zulux

5/21/2026 at 2:46:29 PM

Many states already ban the private collection of license plate data.

by ortusdux

5/21/2026 at 3:16:31 PM

Which states are those? I'd like to read the statutes.

by tptacek

5/21/2026 at 4:08:25 PM

https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/automated-...

A friend entertained the idea of a startup focused on a social dashcam site, where users can upload clips of bad drivers tagged with their license plate number, and smart dashcams can alert to bad drivers in real time. They got as far as asking a lawyer before it fell apart.

by ortusdux

5/21/2026 at 6:35:15 PM

Yikes. This smells a bit like Stasi-style surveillance. Unofficially encouraged by authorities. Rewards or social pressure or ideology turned a significant % of East Germans into Inoffizieller Mitarbeiters ("unofficial collaborators" or informants). Bad drivers today. And then ...

by emptybits

5/21/2026 at 6:27:54 PM

I'm glad they did the research on this lol I thought about this a decade ago when I was doing a lot of driving and always thought it'd be something I'd explore. Good to know it's against the law

by chankstein38

5/21/2026 at 4:02:30 PM

There's a nice list here with references to statutes: https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/automated-...

by EvanAnderson

5/21/2026 at 4:39:29 PM

Just so we're clear, across all these statutes, the term "private" means "for private use". State and local governments can engage private firms to collect data in all of them.

by tptacek

5/21/2026 at 2:50:42 PM

I did not know that. I do wish I lived in one.

by xbar

5/21/2026 at 3:49:30 PM

One just needs to store personal data on license plates then. Handy.

by tokai

5/21/2026 at 4:27:05 PM

Not at all, even if the data collection is exactly the same. "Where the authority comes from" matters a lot, probably much more than the actual collection itself.

by jrm4

5/21/2026 at 7:28:57 PM

Strongly disagree. The existence of such a collection is a loaded gun for police abuse. It doesn't even require mission creep; simply sifting through the ream of data under an actual warrant "coincidentally" looking for a different POI is going to happen.

by IAmBroom

5/21/2026 at 5:56:35 PM

IMO, it's too focused.

Because of the global jurisdictions involved, and because of the immense, pressures against this from the governments and their private owners, we need an international information bill of rights. It needs to be adopted by every country that values humanity, privacy, and freedom. Its scope would encompass things like ALPRs.

No, I don't think it will be possible in the current climate.

by imglorp

5/21/2026 at 7:26:01 PM

Or ever.

Even "freedom of speech" is a fairly understandable, and more basic, right, and it is definitely a non-starter internationally.

by IAmBroom

5/21/2026 at 3:18:33 PM

If we accept that ALPR have a place in society, the data needs the same level of narrow scope and judicial process that other personal tracking data has. I don't care what the precedent is for regular cameras: AI-enabled facial/ALPR tracking is highly invasive action by the government and should be regulated as such.

You want to search a database? Go to a judge, give your probable cause, get approval. No exceptions and no automated aggregation of tracking across jurisdictions.

by unethical_ban

5/21/2026 at 4:00:24 PM

That’s all well and good, but making that dataset also means it will be leaked

by ghthor

5/21/2026 at 5:57:18 PM

I would prohibit even more but it's a start. Mass surveillance needs to end. America is supposed to be the land of the free.

by josefritzishere

5/21/2026 at 2:11:28 PM

I like this proposed policy and I'll happily take the win if it passes but I see two subtexts here and neither is good:

First is that local and state governments have been deploying 1984 for enforcement of petty matters for which dispensing "real" enforcement labor can't be justified economically politically a or both. The feds are fine with this because they can get at that data. What they're not fine with is that it's pissing people off. The feds are worried that this could turn into court and legislative precedents that make things harder for them. For example the DEA doesn't want their flagship I95 surveillance corridor to get nerfed because NYC went too far with it's own pet project and laws got made in response. They'll happily tell the states "no you can't do this thing we do" in order to preserve their own ability to do the thing.

Second is that the feds don't like that the public is becoming soured on the regulatory hackjobs of the 1970s that were hailed as great successes at the time. As the country becomes more divided people are realizing that the current "have the feds grand fund everything at least in part" paradigm results in strings that nobody wants being attached to everything. So doing one little thing that everyone agrees on is seen as a way to say "look we can do good with this power we really shouldn't have in the first place".

by cucumber3732842

5/21/2026 at 4:00:26 PM

The question is not how you go about banning the use of this particular tracking. The only question to ask is how you can weaponize this tracking for your own political gain.

by sixothree

5/21/2026 at 3:08:09 PM

All those cameras you see on top of intersections? Yeah those - are going to be used for this instead of flock in a few years. They're letting flock take the public hit, it's all going to move.

by saltyoldman

5/21/2026 at 5:26:51 PM

Those cameras are used to detect the presence of a vehicle so the signaling software controlling that intersection knows whether to e.g. enable or skip the left-turn arrow on the next cycle. They likely do not have the resolution to read a license plate, nor any storage capacity or ability to transmit images.

All that could be changed/upgraded of course.

by SoftTalker

5/21/2026 at 4:54:50 PM

What an appalling development. I rely on these for safety in my neighborhood.

by baggy_trough

5/21/2026 at 5:15:15 PM

As Ben Franklin said:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

You are giving up your right to privacy for some modicum of security that they train AI on and gets added to a national database.

by titaniumtown

5/21/2026 at 5:41:45 PM

The liberty is not essential and the safety is not little or temporary.

by baggy_trough

5/21/2026 at 6:30:50 PM

lol wow yours must have weapons mounted to them or some sort of portal they take the bad folks in or something. It's crazy "liberty is not essential" but then to someone suggest that the safety is permanent because people :O would be ON CAMERA doing something! Pretty wild to see someone so empty headed on HN.

by chankstein38

5/21/2026 at 7:30:44 PM

Your ad hominem insult is not helpful.

by IAmBroom

5/21/2026 at 6:47:09 PM

Are you aware that police use these cameras to track and arrest criminals?

by baggy_trough

5/21/2026 at 5:17:42 PM

Yes, I want bad drivers added to a national AI-powered database. There are 44,000 car-related deaths per year. Those people should be: in prison for vehicular manslaughter, paying much higher insurance premiums, and/or be banned entirely from driving.

by polski-g

5/21/2026 at 3:00:35 PM

This would be terrible — as written, the bill would also ban red light and speeding cameras. These are some of our most effective tools for traffic law enforcement; for instance, speeding cameras in NYC resulted in a 94% (!!!) reduction in speeding where they're installed [1].

I want to see Flock banned as much as the next person, but we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater here.

[1] https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pr2025/nyc-dot-speed-camer...

by jakelazaroff

5/21/2026 at 3:30:38 PM

Funny, I have exactly the opposite point of view. I hate the red light and speeding cameras because they catch normal people who don’t bother hiding their license plates (or have license plates at all). And I don’t mind Flock and its ilk for catching more serious criminals. Basically I’m optimizing for the 90% case. Law abiding drivers who make the occasional mistake when driving.

by qwerpy

5/21/2026 at 3:42:28 PM

The problem is that a private company holds onto the data forever. Then the government can ask the private company for that data without a warrant. With the number of Flock cameras (I'm upset at how many have popped up near me), it's turning into a record of all of your movements. And that record lasts forever and can be queries at any time.

You mentioned "more serious crimes", but what about the case where LEOs in Texas track women who go to get an abortion in another state? Or police officers who stalk their exes? Or an oppressive government that wants to know who went to a protest? Once the tool exists you can't assume it's only going to be used in a way you like.

by water-data-dude

5/21/2026 at 4:25:02 PM

In the US, there are around 40k deaths from motor vehicle crashes per year [1]. Who do you think is behind the wheel for most of those?

The point of these cameras is not to "catch" people speeding or running red lights, but to prevent them from doing it in the first place; the idea is that normal law abiding drivers are more likely to drive carefully if they are likely to be fined for their mistakes. Optimizing for the 90% case would mean supporting their rollout.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

by jakelazaroff

5/21/2026 at 7:46:22 PM

If you are driving around without a license plate, you have other (law enforcement) problems

In Aotearoa I noticed the same effect in tye early 1990s with "speed cameras", as we called them

It took six months, but the change in traffic flows was dramatic, and good.

by worik

5/21/2026 at 5:04:44 PM

> I hate the red light and speeding cameras because they catch normal people who don’t bother hiding their license plates (or have license plates at all).

The same cameras could also alert the police down the road about a car with unreadable or missing license plates.

by orthoxerox

5/21/2026 at 3:40:43 PM

[dead]

by Braxton1980

5/21/2026 at 3:07:44 PM

There is zero chance this happens. Chuy Garcia is already out the door; this is his last term. This is purely performative; the only reason it's surviving on the front page (where "proposed legislation" is by longstanding precedent off-topic) is because Wired wrote a whole clickbait story about it.

Garcia's own municipality, with a progressive mayor, vehemently disagrees with this proposed amendment. So does the blue state he represents.

by tptacek

5/21/2026 at 4:26:16 PM

GOOD. Those cameras are absolutely an infringement on 5th Amendment rights.

by jrm4

5/21/2026 at 4:00:07 PM

Speeding cameras are automated speed traps.

by brudgers

5/21/2026 at 7:32:36 PM

Not a very revelatory deduction.

by IAmBroom

5/21/2026 at 7:49:27 PM

[delayed]

by brudgers