Brady O'Rourke in Crystal, Minn., holds a sign he made to block the view of a Flock camera, which tracks vehicles driving along the road. It's one of several actions Americans are taking to oppose this police surveillance technology.<\/p>\n
Meg Anderson\/NPR<\/p>\n
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A few times a week, Brady O'Rourke walks to the busiest street near his house in Crystal, Minn., carrying a large metal pole with a bright yellow sign taped to the end.<\/p>\n
It's a roof rake, normally used to scrape snow off a house, but O'Rourke has different plans for this one. At the intersection, he stops at a Flock camera, an automated license plate reader that police use to track vehicles.<\/p>\n
Normally, this camera records everyone who drives down this street. But not right now: O'Rourke lifts his rake into the air and blocks the camera with his sign. He waves at passing cars. Some drivers smile and wave back. A few people honk their horns.<\/p>\n
"I don't want to pay to be surveilled," O'Rourke says. "My tax dollars are funding cameras at the end of my block. I don't want to live like that. I don't think anybody should have to live like that."<\/p>\n
O'Rourke, inspired by a man in Florida who used a pool skimmer to do the same thing, is part of a growing movement against automated license plate readers like Flock.<\/p>\n
This week, Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based maker of the cameras, held its annual conference amid intense backlash.<\/p>\n
According to the company, more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use their technology. More broadly, there are more than 130,000 AI-powered automated license plate readers on American streets, according to DeFlock, an advocacy group that tracks the cameras.<\/p>\n
A Flock license plate reader is seen along a public road, Oct. 16, 2025, in Houston.<\/p>\n
David Goldman\/AP<\/p>\n
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Every month, those cameras capture billions of license plates and other details about cars, including makes, models, colors and any alterations. That allows police to see where drivers have been over time.<\/p>\n
"They monitor, quite simply, when we go to and from work, where we go to the doctor, where we drop our kid off at daycare. What we've enabled in practical reality is law enforcement to go back and look at where any of us was at any given point in time," says Clare Garvie, deputy director of technology law and policy at New York University's Policing Project.<\/p>\n
Police leaders say Flock cameras help them locate stolen vehicles and missing people, and a recent preliminary study suggests that Flock Cameras can deter car theft.<\/p>\n
"There's no question that license plate readers can be very helpful tools for law enforcement," says Jeff Potts, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association.<\/p>\n
But the expansion of the technology \u2013 combined with advancements in AI and the centralization of data in cloud networks \u2014 has increased the risk of abuse, says Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the ACLU.<\/p>\n
And the technology has been misused: Some police officers, for instance, have used it to stalk ex-partners, or accessed the data for immigration enforcement purposes without a local government's consent. A sheriff's office in Texas used it to track a woman who may have had an abortion.<\/p>\n