The activist Electronic Frontier Foundation reviewed millions of data searches in 2024 and 2025 and found sev- eral “related to political demonstrations,” including gather- ings related to No Kings and the animal rights organization Direct Action Everywhere. The Washington Post recently reported some 46 complaints have been filed alleging that police officers improperly accessed the Flock license plate database. The New York Times reports ALPR
data also has been used to track indi- viduals looking to obtain an abortion, as well as those possibly subject to immi- gration enforcement. In all, over 50 police departments
in recent months have announced they will either suspend participa- tion in the Flock program or cancel it altogether, due to surveillance and pri- vacy concerns. Asked by Newsmax to comment on
the wave of criticism from civil rights activists, a Flock spokesperson stated the company views public safety and privacy as complementary objectives. “To this day,” the company stated,
“Flock remains committed to transpar- ency, accountability, and local over- sight in every community we serve.” What makes ALPRs different from
other roadside detection devices — speed or traffic light cameras, for exam- ple — is that they are triggered by every passing car whether an infraction has occurred or not. The license plate numbers, along
with make and model of the vehicle, are converted to digital information and uploaded into a vast national database that includes the time and location where the image was recorded. If a plate number is on a “hotlist” of
Police at the more than 7,000 agencies that use Flock
say the ability to locate vehicles at specific places and times is critical and has helped solve tens of thousands of crimes. But civil rights organizations say those claims have
not been independently verified, and they are sounding alarms nationwide over privacy violations. Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel for the ACLU, tells Newsmax the growing surveillance concerns are genuinely bipartisan and cut across party lines. “I think what we’re really seeing is a nationwide pushback not just against Flock, not just against automatic license plate readers, but really against mass government surveillance,” he says.
One response has been the creation
Feds Keep Their Eye on Game
P
resident Donald Trump hailed this summer’s World Cup soccer
competition as “one of the greatest events of any kind ever held.” It was also the most heavily surveilled ever. Authorities say mass surveillance
was the only way to protect millions of fans in 16 cities across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The No. 1 threat police and intelligence agencies were focused on: domestic drone attacks. Privacy activists reported
the widespread use of biometric tracking, AI cameras, and automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The $1 billion security effort led
to the seizure of over 700 drones operating in restricted air space. That includes 98 seized in Miami, 77 in Atlanta, and 63 in Dallas. Department of Homeland
vehicles that authorities suspect were involved in crimes — as was Routh’s black Nissan, for example — police receive an alert. The information used to remain in the Flock Safety
Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Newsmax that “every single one of those had the potential to be a terrorist act.” — D.P.
database for 30 days, but in August Langley dropped that to one week to help curtail abuse. If police mark the data as potential evidence, it can be preserved longer. Police departments that want to access the national
database must meet one condition: They must agree to upload their ALPR to cloud storage, where it will be acces- sible to other agencies using the network.
of
DeFlock.org — a crowd-sourced smartphone app depicting the street map location of ALPR cameras nation- wide.
Many users who download the app
discover their ordinary pattern of life will take them by several of the cam- eras daily. The pushback against Flock and
other ALPRs now appears to be in full swing. Texas GOP Rep. Keith Self has introduced a bill in Congress that would require federal agencies to obtain a warrant before they can access the Flock network. Several state legislatures are con-
sidering legislation that would require regular audits of the Flock database to detect any misuse or abuse of the data collected.
Currently, nine states forbid the
use of ALPR data for immigration enforcement. And while dozens of departments have suspended its use, the number of new departments join- ing the system still reportedly exceeds those bowing out by a 7-1 margin. So far, courts have appeared reluc- tant to rule that uploading a vehicle’s
license plate data captured while it’s traveling on public thoroughfares is a violation of individual privacy. But there are signs that could change. Marlow notes the Supreme Court’s recent Chatrie v. United States decision recognized that individuals do have a reasonable expectation that their location data is pri- vate. How far that protection extends, however, remains to be seen.
OCTOBER 2026 | NEWSMAX 15
PLATE/FLOCK SAFETY / DRONE/
ISTOCK.COM/BLACKLIGHT_TRACE
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