Anger mounts in US over vast network of car license plate cameras

A growing movement is challenging the widespread deployment of license plate reader cameras across the United States, citing significant privacy concerns. The surveillance startup Flock has rapidly installed more than 100,000 of these cameras nationwide, partnering with police departments, homeowners' associations, and businesses.

Opponents argue that the technology, which captures still images of vehicles, stores data for up to a month, and can share it across state lines, poses a threat to American privacy and civil liberties. They fear it enables unwarranted tracking of individuals. "For practically any crime that has a connection with a vehicle or a vehicle involved, we will at least query the database to see if there's anything there," stated Jon Bridges, a police official in Richmond, Virginia, highlighting the technology's utility in investigations.

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I’m not really as scared anymore.

This opposition has manifested in various forms, including online activism and physical vandalism. A young individual known as Nomark, who claims to have disabled around 30 cameras, offers guidance to his 500,000 Instagram followers on how to render the devices useless. While acknowledging the illegality of such actions, like-minded individuals nationwide have followed suit. The online anti-Flock movement is gaining traction, with crowdsourced maps of cameras and shared methods for blocking lenses being common. The Facebook group DeFlock America has amassed over 600,000 members, with daily growth.

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For practically any crime that has a connection with a vehicle or a vehicle involved, we will at least query the database to see if there’s anything there.