North Carolina permanently authorized the use of artificial intelligence-powered Automated License Plate Reader cameras on state-maintained highways and roads through a provision in the new state budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n
ALPR cameras, most commonly manufactured by Flock Safety, track the license plate, model, color and other visual characteristics, like bumper stickers or scratches, of each car that passes by them \u2014\u00a0unlike traditional red-light or speed cameras that are triggered by a specific violation. Artificial intelligence technology uses that information to create a profile with identifying information that is then stored in a database officials can use to search for any vehicle. North Carolina law permits law enforcement agencies to store captured scan data for up to 90 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In North Carolina, ALPR systems are already used by 12 police departments, 19 sheriffs\u2019 offices and the State Highway Patrol under a three-year-old State Bureau of Investigation pilot program that had the stated goal of covering every entry point to the state. As of the annually required report SBI gave to legislators on March 15 \u2014 initially only asking for a temporary extension of the program \u2014 17 of those agencies had set up about 140 camera locations that together have captured tens of millions of plate reads.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The budget instead makes the program permanent, opening participation to all North Carolina law enforcement agencies and expanding its reach to all state-owned roads, which encompasses 78 percent of the state\u2019s roadways.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
An expansion of surveillance infrastructure through AI-powered cameras is not unique to North Carolina. States, municipalities and police departments across the country have increasingly entered into partnerships with ALPR companies like Flock Safety, Axon or Motorola Solutions. Flock, which is by far the largest of these companies, has an estimated 120,000 cameras throughout the United States. Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley said he wants his cameras \u201con every corner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Supporters of the measure point to the beneficial uses of ALPR systems, such as tracking stolen cars, locating missing persons and apprehending fugitives. They helped catch a law enforcement officer from Chapel Hill who was arrested in Florida earlier this year for alleged plans to commit a mass shooting in New Orleans, and the Raleigh Police Department reported 227 stolen vehicle alerts generated from three ALPR cameras in state rights-of-way during a period from July 1, 2025, to January 31, 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are driving their vehicles in public,\u201d N.C. Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger (R-Guilford, Rockingham) said. \u201cAnybody who is there is there to see it. I think we’ve always got to be a little concerned about an overuse of technology, but I believe this is an appropriate step.\u201d<\/p>\n
Opponents, like the American Civil\u00a0Liberties Union\u00a0of North Carolina, raise significant concerns about privacy and civil liberties, as these systems continuously record individuals\u2019 movements without a warrant, probable cause or even reasonable suspicion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMass surveillance systems rarely stay limited to their original purpose,\u201d Zac Contreras, a campaigner for the ACLU of NC, said. \u201cWhat begins as locating a missing person quickly expands into informally sharing data with immigration enforcement, abortion-related investigations, political monitoring and broad intelligence gathering.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
An analysis from the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that a significant number of police departments across the country had searched Flock’s network in connection with protest activity, and many grassroots and advocacy organizations have pointed to a case out of Texas wherein law enforcement used Flock cameras to conduct a multi-state search for a woman who drove across state lines and had a self-administered abortion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Given the few regulations these systems currently have, Michael Soyfer, an Institute for Justice attorney representing residents of San Jose, California, and Norfolk, Virginia, in lawsuits challenging their cities\u2019 ALPR surveillance networks, said they are ripe for misuse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s a real chilling effect to this notion that every time you go to a protest or a political rally or a reproductive healthcare facility or a gun show, the government can track you down, can figure out who else went there with you, and can preserve a record of when you were there,\u201d Soyfer said.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The Institute for Justice, a libertarian nonprofit public interest law firm, documented 28 cases nationwide of officers using ALPRs to stalk romantic interests over the past two years. The majority were criminally charged and lost their jobs.<\/p>\n
This month alone, at least six new cases of officers who lost jobs due to alleged misuse of Flock cameras were reported in local media outlets in Illinois, \u00a0South Carolina, Texas, California and Georgia. Under North Carolina statute,\u00a0unauthorized access, retention or disclosure of ALPR data is a Class 1 misdemeanor and the SBI report reiterates that agencies must submit written policies for oversight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tom Bowman, policy counsel for security and surveillance at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said the systems are far from infallible. He pointed to cases of cameras mistakenly identifying a \u201c2\u201d for \u201c7\u201d, or an \u201cH\u201d for an \u201cN,\u201d common mistakes that are exacerbated in conditions like rain, snow or mud. One instance saw cameras in Fayetteville mistakenly identify an innocent woman\u2019s vehicle as being involved in a violent crime, causing her to be arrested and eventually receive $60,000 and an apology from the City.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bowman added that many ALPR systems have begun to incorporate elements of predictive policing, risking bias and over-policing in already overpoliced minority and low-income neighborhoods.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe system might be analyzing driving patterns and then flagging vehicles whose movements it deems suspicious, even in the absence of any specific explainable evidence that indicates criminal activity,\u201d he said. \u201cSo just think \u2014 a system that’s saying \u2018this is a highly unusual route for this specific driver to take\u2019 or, \u2018this route that the driver is taking is often associated with criminal activity\u2019 but we don’t actually have any reason to believe that this person or this individual car is engaged in a new criminal activity. Police may nonetheless initiate traffic stops based on what might be minor infractions, just to basically go fishing, see what they can find.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Concerns have spread, Contreras said, among North Carolina residents about local and state authorities potentially sharing data with federal government agencies involved in immigration enforcement, as license plate data is frequently cited in U.S. Immigration and Customs\u00a0Enforcement records as a tool used to identify and locate targets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Flock Safety states that ICE does not have direct access to its systems or databases unless explicitly permitted by the local agency controlling the specific data. Contreras said it is often difficult to determine who is accessing data points and when, especially when internal logs do not consistently list reasons for data access.<\/p>\n
Grassroots opposition, including crowdsourced mapping projects like DeFlock and incidents of cameras being vandalized or removed, has emerged in multiple states. As public outcry has grown louder, more and more cities and police departments have moved to cancel, deactivate or reject their automated reader contracts over civil liberty concerns, including the Town of Hillsborough last October and the Town of Pittsboro in May.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6\u20133 in the June case Chatrie v. United States that executing a geofence warrant and obtaining mass digital location records from a third-party tech company like Google constitutes a “search” under the Fourth Amendment \u2014 a ruling that Bowman said raises questions for ALPR systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While courts that had previously considered the issue found that drivers did not have a Fourth Amendment-protected interest in ALPR records since roadways are public, Bowman said systems that track a persons\u2019 movements throughout a state and can reconstruct every aspect of those movements over long periods of time are a fundamentally different question, and the precedent set by the SCOTUS ruling could very well be applied in these cases.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAutomated License Plate Readers are extremely powerful surveillance tools, more so than anything the police have been able to deploy on this scale in the past, but in another sense, they’re just the canary in the coal mine,\u201d Soyfer said. \u201cThe future of police surveillance isn’t one tool operating in a silo; it’s a bunch of different tools, all working together with other police databases and information sources, and increasingly analyzed using various software tools, including AI. The surveillance of everyday people is really just going to become more intense unless courts or legislatures do something about it.\u201d <\/p>\n
@sarahhclements<\/a><\/p>\n @DTHCityState<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0city@dailytarheel.com<\/a><\/p>\n