Over the past six months, Americans have become increasingly aware of automated license plate readers, used by almost 80 percent of American police departments to trace vehicles and their drivers without the hassle of a warrant. ALPRs perch on power poles and stoplights, quietly encroaching on the most sacred silo of American life—the car. People are pissed.

Like the slew of data centers cropping up across the country, the cameras have inspired fierce bipartisan backlash. As ALPRs proliferate, communities have pressured local lawmakers to rein them in, leading municipalities and counties nationwide to cancel contracts, remove the cameras, or ban them altogether.

Now, a surprising cross-section of candidates—local, national, liberal, conservative—are putting Flock at the heart of their campaigns. With 2026’s midterm elections fast approaching, both Republicans and Democrats in battleground states like Florida, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are wooing voters by promising to place guardrails on unregulated surveillance technologies. Politicians of all stripes suddenly seem to think that they need to get Flock out of here.

“Flock has become a four-letter word.”

ALPR systems like Flock use algorithmically powered cameras to compile searchable databases of the license plate numbers, time, location, make, model, and color of passing cars. Flock CEO Garret Langley claimed in March that his company’s cameras, which make up about 80 percent of the total mapped ALPR cameras in the US, “solved” one million crimes in 2025. (The available evidence doesn’t back up Langley’s numbers.)

Although police can, for example, use Flock cameras to try to track down a missing person or stolen car, reports also abound of cops using ALPRs to stalk their exes, track an abortion-seeker across state lines, and provide information to ICE. The lack of strict standards around their use—and concerns over the erosion of privacy and civil liberties—have become a major concern across party lines as communities debate if, and how, the tech should be used.

A September survey of more than 1,400 adults by the nonprofit National Policing Institute found that public approval of ALPRs depended on the justification: 80 percent approved of their use to find missing children or investigate violent crimes, but about three-fourths disagreed with using the cameras for immigration enforcement or “routine traffic or parking enforcement.” More than half said their support for the systems would increase if their department “adopted safeguards” against abuse.

© Mother Jones