WASHINGTON — Lawmakers in both the U.S. House and Senate are moving forward with legislation designed to restrict law enforcement’s use of automated license plate readers, commonly known as ALPRs, while proposing strict financial penalties for communities that continue to utilize the controversial technology without federal guardrails. The legislative push comes amid a growing national backlash against the widespread deployment of private, artificial intelligence-powered surveillance networks that critics argue are encroaching upon the privacy of everyday Americans.
The legislative announcements follow a hearing held on Capitol Hill by the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on AI, led by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. During the hearing on Sept. 30, 2026, Hawley announced that he is spearheading a bill to establish national guardrails for automated license plate readers, targeting the data-collection practices of private entities that partner with municipal and state police departments across the country.
The growing scrutiny surrounding ALPR technology highlights a mounting tension between modern crime-fighting tools and civil liberties. Over the past year, public pushback has intensified significantly. More than 50 U.S. cities and counties have officially severed ties with Flock Safety, one of the nation’s most prominent providers of automated license plate reader technology. Despite Flock Safety claiming partnerships with more than 7,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, the company has increasingly become a lightning rod for privacy concerns and local protests, with reports of vandalism against ALPR infrastructure emerging across various parts of the country.
The federal legislative efforts draw heavily from ongoing congressional investigations into the industry. In late August, Sen. Hawley launched a formal investigation into Flock Safety, highlighting the sheer scale of the company’s operations.
"Your company boasts more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states and more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month," Hawley wrote in an Aug. 26 letter addressed to Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley. "The overwhelming majority of the Americans captured in those records did nothing wrong."
The core concern centered in the legislation and congressional inquiries is the capability of modern camera networks to harness artificial intelligence, pooling vast amounts of captured imagery and data into a centralized, searchable national database accessible to law enforcement customers. Critics argue that this creates an unprecedented digital dragnet capable of tracking the daily movements of ordinary citizens without individualized suspicion or judicial oversight.
Flock Safety did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the newly proposed legislation and declined an invitation to testify at the subcommittee hearing. However, the company has previously engaged with congressional inquiries. In a Sept. 8 letter to Hawley, Dan Haley, Flock’s chief legal officer, noted that the company is in agreement that the rules protecting American privacy should be established by law rather than left solely to the internal policies of any single private corporation.
"We would welcome the enactment of a coherent federal framework, and we stand ready to work with your office and with Congress on its efforts to help protect privacy without depriving communities of tools that solve crimes and save lives," Haley wrote in the correspondence.
Law enforcement officials themselves are divided over the rapid integration of private AI surveillance networks into everyday police work. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Ross Teeple raised stark warnings about the trajectory of unchecked municipal surveillance contracts.
"If we rely on private camera networks to act as a dragnet, continuously logging the habits of innocent Americans without a warrant, we are paving the way to an AI-driven surveillance state," Sheriff Teeple told the subcommittee. He cautioned that failing to regulate the industry could lead to severe consequences for public safety infrastructure as a whole. "If we allow government-funded private surveillance companies to push this envelope blindly, we risk a sweeping judicial correction that could strip away the legitimate, life-saving aspects of ALPR technology entirely."
Industry observers and cybersecurity experts warn that the scrutiny facing Flock Safety is merely indicative of a broader industry-wide trend toward pervasive, automated monitoring. Benn Jordan, a cybersecurity engineer testifying alongside law enforcement officials during the hearing, described Flock Safety as "a canary in a coal mine" for the broader security technology market.
"Axon and Motorola are actively rolling out the same reckless features that we’re shaming Flock for, and you can expect these same vulnerabilities will continue to happen over and over again when innocent people’s data is traded between private companies and police without any safeguard or protection," Jordan told lawmakers.
The proposed bills in the House and Senate seek to address these concerns directly by withholding federal funding from local communities that fail to comply with proposed federal restrictions on automated license plate readers. As the legislation advances through Congress, it sets the stage for a major legislative debate over the balance between national security, law enforcement capabilities, and the digital privacy rights of citizens in an increasingly automated society.
