Electronic Frontier Foundation argues in a September 9, 2026, blog post that police are concealing their use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) from the public, courts and defendants. The post cites recent reporting on Flock Safety policies and says the practice is as wrong now as it was 20 years ago.
Are police telling officers to hide ALPR use?
EFF cites a report from 404 Media on a county in Iowa whose Flock usage policy tells officers: "DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE TO THE OCCUPANTS OF THE VEHICLE." The same policy tells officers to say they used "county resources" in a report rather than admit to using ALPRs.
In Houston, EFF says, officers are told to "be as vague as permissible" about why they use Flock. The reason given is that the searches they run could be obtained through public records requests.
EFF says these practices stop the public from seeing how agencies spend money on surveillance technology. It says they also violate disclosure obligations, let prosecutors hide tactics from judges, and keep defendants from challenging evidence gathered by the tools.
Is this new?
EFF says it is not. It points to AT&T's Hemisphere phone surveillance tool, whose evidence police had to recreate through a subpoena, and to cell-site simulators, also called stingrays. In a 2015 Baltimore case, a judge found that police had used a pen register order to hide a stingray's use from the court. EFF says the case led to a landmark 2015 privacy ruling that police need a warrant to use the device.
EFF also says some cities have covered up their cameras, while others have canceled their ALPR networks. Two states have recently stepped back from ALPRs, the post says, without naming them in its text.
What changes for drivers?
Nothing in EFF's post changes a camera on any street. EFF's account is about how agencies describe their tools, and it does not give a count of agencies that conceal their use. It does not name the Iowa county.
The practical effect for drivers is narrow. If an agency's policy tells officers not to mention ALPRs during a stop, a traffic stop may not say whether a plate reader was involved. EFF's post does not say how common such policies are.
You can ask your local police department whether it uses ALPRs and whether its policies allow officers to mention them during stops. EFF's Atlas of Surveillance lists which local police have contracts for surveillance technology. For agency documents, see published transparency records. To see which cameras are mapped near you, check the camera map.