From the Boston Tea Party to the Flock camera backlash, 250 years of Americans saying no

A grassroots revolt against automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, has gained momentum across the United States.

ALPRs are AI-powered cameras that capture images of all passing vehicles. The camera systems turn details into datapoints searchable by anyone with access to the information.

Today, there are more than 130,000 ALPRs on U.S. streets. And more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use cameras produced by a single manufacturer, Flock Safety, which says its cameras have helped law enforcement agencies identify and arrest criminals and reduce crime.

But some members of those police departments have abused the data gathered by ALPRs. A police officer in Kansas was sentenced to 18 months probabtion in April 2023 for using Flock camera to stalk his estranged wife. A Florida police officer was fired and arrested in March 2026 for using data gathered by ALPRs to stalk a woman he had previously harassed on a TV set. And activists filed a lawsuit against California police departments in October 2021 for illegally sharing information collected from ALPRs with out-of-state and federal agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Due to public outcry, cities across the U.S. have rejected and canceled contracts with Flock. In September 2026, Florida’s Department of Transportation revoked permits for ALPRs on its highway system.

That has not been enough to quell growing backlash over the cameras. In at least 36 states, opponents of the technology have taken matters into their own hands, destroying or impairing ALPRs rather than wait for local governments to step in.

As a historian of the American Revolution, I see parallels between Americans’ revolt against ALPRs and colonists’ destructive and often violent pushback to late 18th-century British........

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