DeFlock National Week of Action Against ALPRs! Toolkit

We're excited to build the movement against automated license plate readers and other surveillance systems with you! Together, we can end the use of these surveillance tools. Surveillance is not inevitable.

This toolkit is designed to help you start your work to end the use of these cameras in your city, county, and state. The toolkit should offer a strong foundation for the critical pieces that you need to build your local organizing and campaign.

This toolkit is a work in progress. It will be routinely updated and adapted. We welcome your thoughts and feedback.

While important, this toolkit is no substitution for building relationships with others across the country demanding an end to ALPRs in their communities. Our movement is only as strong as our relationships. Please contact us so that we can build a partnership with you.

DeFlock is a community-driven project that maps surveillance devices across the world. We help communities hold their government and surveillance vendors accountable and understand where and how they're being watched.

DeFlock was founded in October 2024 by Will Freeman, a software engineer and privacy advocate. On a road trip from Washington state to Alabama, he noticed hundreds of newly-installed cameras mounted on black poles with solar panels in nearly every town he passed through. Curious about their purpose, he discovered they were Flock cameras used for surveillance. Upset about this trend to blatantly disregard the Fourth Amendment, he created a platform that maps these devices, empowering communities to understand and challenge surveillance practices.

Our mission is simple: to shine a light on the widespread use of ALPR technology, raise awareness about the threats it poses to personal privacy and civil liberties, and empower the public to take action. ALPRs are increasingly being deployed by law enforcement and private companies without the public's full understanding or consent, and they collect vast amounts of data on our movements, often without any real oversight.

The National Week of Action Against Automated License Plate Readers is an opportunity for all of us who oppose surveillance to stand up together and say no! DeFlock has received an overwhelming response to the call for a Week of Action as thousands of people, from coast to coast and across the political spectrum, have already registered.

During the Week of Action, which is from August 16-22, thousands of people in cities across the country will participate in a variety of public meetings, townhalls, and other events intended to raise awareness about the use of ALPRs in their communities, the harms of these cameras, and how we can work together to end their use.

DeFlock will not be calling for one united action during August 16 - 22. We want each participating city to host at least one event to help bring more people into the movement and move your elected officials closer to cancelling any and all contracts for ALPRs. We want you to use the Week of Action to move your local strategy along.

The Week of Action is just the start though. The movement is still growing. We hope that the Week of Action can plant seeds in your community that will spur on the fight to end surveillance.

Automated License Plate Recognition, or ALPR for short, is a group of tech products that, you guessed it, automatically scan and retain the license plate information (and other data!) of passing vehicles. The term ALPR can also mean Automated License Plate Reader: referring to the cameras that collect data for these systems. You have likely heard of or have even seen these ALPRs being set up in communities across the country. Law enforcement agencies, governments, schools, businesses, and neighborhoods pay to have these systems installed with the hope that the data collected can help stop and prevent crime. However, community members and privacy advocates have called the necessity and effectiveness of these tools into question.

Don't let the name fool you: these ALPRs are far more sophisticated than your traditional traffic cameras. Some of these systems are now able to capture and store data about you and your vehicle outside of your plates. This includes your car's make and model, the location and time the picture was taken, scratches and dents, and accessories like bumper stickers and racks. The photos being taken can also be further scrutinized to identify local surroundings, the amount of people in the car, and even the identities of the driver and passengers. This location data also has the potential to reveal further insights about you. Your visits to locations such as religious centers, protests, health clinics, and gun stores are targets to this surveillance and can give insight into your beliefs, politics, and health.

Law enforcement agencies, the most prevalent client of ALPR systems, can then analyze and retain this data for an extended period of time. How long of a period? It varies state to state. New Hampshire, for example, only allows ALPR data to be retained for 3 minutes unless it is a part of an ongoing investigation. However, this is not necessarily the norm. For instance, it was revealed in a recent lawsuit that South Carolina's Law Enforcement Department (SLED) can maintain these ALPR records for up to 3 years, regardless of relevance to an investigation. If that wasn't bad enough, this data is often shared between different agencies between the local, state, and federal levels. This means that ALPR data captured by your local law enforcement could be analyzed by any number of federal agencies.

There are a variety of organizations that create, install, and maintain these systems. While Flock Safety is certainly the most visible of these, it is far from the only manufacturer creating these systems. Other prominent organizations include Vigilant Solutions, Axon, Genetec, Axis Communications, and many others.

As contracts with Flock Safety have become subject to widespread public scrutiny, Flock has become almost synonymous with ALPRs themselves. There have been numerous communities that have successfully advocated their local governments to stop Flock from moving in. However, many other ALPR companies have taken advantage of their relative obscurity to secure comparable contracts without comparable attention. There have even been instances of governments terminating their Flock contracts to only enter into similar agreements with companies like Axon.

Blocking Flock is paramount to preserving the privacy and liberties of every day people. It is also the first step in a larger journey to protect ourselves and our communities. By banding together, we can make it loud and clear to not just Flock, but all these corporations and their collaborators that our data, our privacy, and our stories are not for sale.