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TL;DR: An investigation has revealed a growing number of police officers using license-plate reader systems to track women they knew personally, turning a tool sold for crime fighting into one that could also enable stalking and surveillance. The problem is not limited to one department or one state. It is showing up wherever these systems are widely deployed and lightly checked.
The main tool being misused is Flock Safety, a network of roadside cameras that scan and catalog billions of license plates each month. The firm says its network spans more than 6,000 communities, with devices designed to capture plates in difficult conditions, including at night and in heavy rain, using computer vision. The result is a searchable, time-stamped record of vehicle locations that officers can query without a warrant.
The technical capabilities are straightforward but powerful. Cameras feed plate data into a centralized system, where officers can search by plate number or, using newer "vehicle fingerprint" tools, by characteristics such as color or bumper stickers.
