Link: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/require-police-get-warrant-search-alpr-data

Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are mass surveillance. They photograph every passing car and log where and when it was captured, building a searchable record of where nearly everyone drives. Cities should not buy them, and cities that already have them should shut them down.

Where these systems still operate, courts and state legislatures must reduce their harms by (among other things) requiring police to get a warrant before searching stored ALPR data. A warrant requirement would not make mass surveillance acceptable, but it would require police to justify a search to a judge before accessing records of people’s movements. Without this independent judicial check on police power, officers have been searching this data for improper reasons (many exposed by EFF) that violate our fundamental rights.

I'm against mass surveillance even with a warrant. I should not be recorded under suspicion of commuting a crime when I'm in public, full stop. Being in public does not make you a criminal and I should not have to trust these cameras aren't being breached or misused. Fuck this warrant noise, how about we don't build mass surveillance at all?

The EFF agrees with you (just to make it clear for those who read only the title and not the first paragraph of the post text).