Earlier this year, Al Schad took an interest in digital privacy and security. Inevitably, they came across a technology that has found itself at the center of bipartisan uproar: Flock Safety cameras.
Schad, 32, checked DeFlock, an open-sourced website that maps Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers, and saw several in University City, a suburb of St. Louis, where they live.
"Wow, I don't like that," Schad, who uses they and them pronouns, recalled thinking.
With their partner, Schad created DeFlock U City, one of many grassroots efforts created in recent months as residents, civil liberties groups and now lawmakers across the Midwest grow increasingly concerned about plate readers, also known as ALPRs. Flock, the leading provider of ALPRs in the U.S., claims it scans 20 billion plates monthly across every state except Alaska.
"The safest data is the data that never exists in the first place," Schad said. "The key flaw with Flock is that it just generates an ungodly amount of data."
Volunteers have documented thousands of cameras across the Midwest, with clusters in areas like St. Louis; the Kansas City metro area; Des Moines, Iowa; and Omaha, Nebraska. But in recent months, Flock has found itself in an unusual position, especially in Missouri — at the center of bipartisan fury.
The technology has helped police solve crimes and find missing people. In August, for example, the sheriff in Cass County, Missouri, south of Kansas City, said a camera identified the vehicle of a shooting suspect and led to his arrest. But critics of the technology point to documented abuses — such as Kansas and Missouri officers who have used it to stalk ex-wives — and said as the technology grows, regulation and safeguards are crucial.
Becca Eastwood, deputy policy director at the ACLU of Iowa, said there has rightly been a lot of focus on abuses of the system and mistakes that have led to traumatic law enforcement interactions. Equally scary, though, is the system working as intended, she said.
"Simply by going about your business in public now," Eastwood said, "means that you are entered into a government database, and your movements can be searched."
A 'patchwork' of laws
Iowa is among more than 20 states that have little to no statutes governing automatic license plate readers, according to the Policing Project at the New York University School of Law.
Until recently, Missouri also had no regulations. But in mid-September, Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed an executive order directing the Department of Public Safety to establish safeguards for state-funded agencies using automated license plate readers.
"The unchecked collection and indefinite storage of location data belonging to law-abiding citizens raises substantial, valid constitutional and privacy concerns," Kehoe said in a statement.
In an accompanying statement, Mark James, the state Department of Public Safety director, said he looked forward to collaborating with law enforcement and legislators to put the order into action. House Speaker Jon Patterson, a Republican from Lee's Summit, said the General Assembly must now create "clear, permanent protections" in state law.
In Nebraska, where nearly 30 agencies have used ALPRs, state law requires reports on its use to a commission, but does not require regular audits of officers' searches. Its law, like California's, penalizes misuse with civil damages, according to the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association, a federally funded nonprofit.
Kansas' law does not provide drivers with "meaningful protections," according to a 2025 report on plate readers by the ACLU of Iowa and the University of Iowa's Technology Law Clinic.
"Unfortunately, by safeguarding secrecy about the location of ALPRs, it does the opposite," the report said of Kansas' law. "The law directs records requesters to send requests for ALPR information to the agency with the ALPR system, and it says that agencies do not have to disclose records that contain 'captured license plate data' or would reveal the locations of ALPR cameras."
The ACLU of Kansas has urged Kansans to tell cities to terminate their Flock contracts, in an effort to end "this mass warrantless surveillance."
And in a lawsuit, Mason Grimmett from Wichita, Kansas, is challenging the city's "indiscriminate and warrantless" surveillance of anyone who drives past its more than 100 cameras.
"Whether he is going to work, the YMCA, a union meeting, a gun range, visiting a family member in a nursing home, his doctor's office, attending meetings with lawyers, City Council meetings, or Sunflower Privacy Alliance meetings — of which he is a member — he is being surveilled, tracked, cataloged and databased," Grimmett's attorneys wrote.
The ACLU of Iowa report noted the "patchwork" of state laws governing ALPRs, saying regulation has not kept up with the technology.
"To uphold Iowans' rights and prevent unreasonable government intrusion into their lives from ALPR use, timely, proactive statewide protections are needed," the authors wrote.
Support for regulation
Support for regulating automatic license plate readers is growing.
Both gubernatorial candidates in Iowa, Democrat Rob Sand and Republican Zach Lahn, have said they support state regulations of ALPRs.
Likewise, the gubernatorial candidates in Kansas, Republican Ty Masterson and Democrat Cindy Holscher, told The Topeka Capital-Journal they support guardrails to protect Kansans' privacy.
During the 2026 legislative session, Iowa lawmakers introduced six bills, though none made it over the finish line, said Eastwood of the ACLU of Iowa. The only law pertaining to ALPRs in Iowa — where about 60 government agencies use the cameras — is a maximum 30-day data retention period.
New Hampshire, which has one of the strictest laws, requires data be deleted after three minutes with exceptions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In response to criticism, Flock last month announced it was cutting its default data retention period from 30 days to seven.
In Missouri, state Rep. LaKeySha Bosley, a Democrat from St. Louis, introduced a bill last session that would have limited police use of the data to criminal investigations and cases of missing or endangered people. It would have prohibited using it for "general surveillance" or immigration enforcement.
Bosley's bill, which did not get a hearing, would also have set out penalties for accessing the data without permission. That would have included a misdemeanor for first-time offenders.
State Rep. Raychel Proudie, a Democrat from Ferguson who is favored to become the next 14th District senator, told St. Louis Public Radio that officers who misuse the system should be charged with a felony and have their state licenses revoked.
"It's such a massive, massive violation," Proudie said on the "Politically Speaking" podcast.
State Rep. Jeff Vernetti, a Republican from Camdenton, Missouri, introduced a 2025 bill that would have banned the installation or use of automated license plate readers across the state. State Sen. Mike Moon, a Republican from Ash Grove, introduced a Senate version of it.
Vernetti's bill didn't get far, but he expects dozens of ALPR bills to be introduced during the 2027 session now that concerns about the cameras have gained substantial traction.
Officers who misuse the system should face a felony and be barred from working in law enforcement, said Vernetti, who has talked to officers about the issue.
"You need to make it very easy to remove someone that violates people's inherent privacy rights," he recently told The Midwest Newsroom.
Flock said the company supports legislation that "puts strong privacy, transparency and accountability guardrails in place while preserving law enforcement's ability to use technology responsibly to keep people safe."
'Woeful lack of safeguards'
Stronger guardrails for using automatic license plate readers is needed, privacy experts say.
Neil Richards, a