Estimated Time to Read: 12 minutes
Table of Contents
- Introduction to ALPR Surveillance Technology in Texas
- Types of Automated License Plate Readers Used in Texas
- ALPR Expansion in Texas Without Oversight
- ALPR Surveillance and Sensitive Investigations
- Cybersecurity Risks of ALPR Systems in Texas
- Border Surveillance and Lack of Privacy Standards
- Legislative Inaction on ALPR Regulation in Texas
- Conclusion: Texans Deserve Privacy and Transparency
Introduction to ALPR Surveillance Technology in Texas
Across Texas, Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) scan and store the movements of millions of drivers every day. Sold as tools to fight crime and locate stolen vehicles, these devices are now at the center of a sprawling surveillance infrastructure. Data collected on innocent people is quietly shared across jurisdictions, across states, and even into the hands of private companies.
Increasingly, this data is being used in ways Texans never agreed to. From warrantless tracking and debt enforcement to cross-state surveillance of people, themselves, ALPRs have become an active danger to privacy, civil liberties, and public safety.
Types of Automated License Plate Readers Used in Texas
ALPR systems appear in multiple forms. Stationary cameras are mounted on infrastructure and capture cars at fixed locations. Semi-stationary units, like trailers or vans, can be repositioned for events or protests. Mobile systems mounted on patrol cars sweep entire neighborhoods, church parking lots, and protest sites. Private vendor networks, such as Vigilant Solutions or Flock Safety, collect and store billions of plate scans, then sell access to law enforcement agencies.
Each of these configurations feeds into massive databases, some of which are maintained by local governments, while many others are maintained by private companies. In most Texas cities, there are no binding policies governing retention, data sharing, or public transparency; however, since license plates must legally be displayed in public, drivers have no way to opt out.
ALPR Expansion in Texas Without Oversight
The proliferation of ALPRs in Texas is not happening in a vacuum. A grassroots mapping effort called DeFlock has emerged to crowdsource the location of license plate readers across the United States and around the world. Initiated by Will Freeman in Alabama, the DeFlock project documents how many cities are now ringed with surveillance poles, tracking drivers as they enter and exit urban centers.
Freeman found dozens of ALPRs from Flock, Motorola, and Avigilon in a matter of days while driving around Huntsville, Alabama. Using Open Street Map software, the project has cataloged more than 1,700 ALPRs across the U.S. and over 5,600 globally, helping visualize how inescapable these cameras have become. The direction and placement of many ALPRs are strategic, often forming perimeters to monitor traffic into and out of downtown areas.
As DeFlock reveals, traveling without being surveilled is increasingly infeasible in many U.S. cities, a fact already central to a Fourth Amendment challenge to ALPR networks in Norfolk, Virginia. Awareness of camera placement is the first step toward reclaiming local control. The project’s rapid growth highlights a growing resistance to unchecked surveillance, showing that citizens are eager to document and fight back against the expanding surveillance state.
Across Texas, cities and counties have embraced ALPR surveillance technology with minimal scrutiny. The city of Pflugerville grants over 80 external agencies access to its data. League City funds ALPRs for homeowner associations. Baytown works with Flock, which retains data indefinitely. Kyle canceled its contract only after public backlash revealed that officers would collect court fines on the spot and Vigilant Solutions would keep all the data.
In border cities like Brownsville and Laredo, ALPRs work alongside drones, blimps, towers, and facial recognition software. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) virtual reality tours show just how pervasive surveillance has become, even embedding ALPRs in traffic cones. Texans are being watched in neighborhoods, not just at checkpoints.
ALPR Surveillance and Sensitive Investigations
In one of the most alarming examples of surveillance overreach, 404 Media reported that a Texas sheriff used Flock’s ALPR network to conduct a search across 83,000 cameras and over 6,800 networks. The officer cited the reason as: “had an abortion, search for female.” While Flock later claimed the search was initiated as a missing person request from the woman’s family, the audit trail raised serious questions about how expansive surveillance tools are being used and justified.
This incident underscores how sensitive personal decisions, regardless of one’s view on the underlying issue, can become the basis for broad data-mining operations using surveillance tools never intended for such purposes. Whether the concern is about reproductive activity, religious affiliation, or political beliefs, Texans of all ideological backgrounds should be concerned about the precedent being set: mass surveillance can and is being used to track individuals based on subjective rationale or vague search queries like “investigation.”
The deeper problem lies in Flock’s system design, which enables expansive, often informal data sharing with thousands of agencies, including federal entities like ICE. Audit tools can be bypassed or obscured using vague justifications, and oversight is minimal. Worse still, the same network is now expanding into private-sector surveillance partnerships, making data collection and usage even more difficult to monitor.
Cities like Austin and San Marcos have begun pulling back from these contracts, recognizing that the potential for misuse outweighs the limited investigative value. All Texas communities would be wise to follow suit. While the state’s values on issues like life and law enforcement may differ from other parts of the country, the principle here is broader: surveillance tools must be limited and controlled.
Cybersecurity Risks of ALPR Systems in Texas
ALPRs are not just a privacy threat; they are a cybersecurity risk. In 2024, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned of seven major vulnerabilities in Motorola’s Vigilant ALPR systems used across Texas. These included default Wi-Fi passwords, unencrypted data, and unrestricted remote access.
EFF first revealed in 2015 that many ALPR cameras were openly accessible online. In 2019, a Customs and Border Protection contractor was hacked, leaking over 100,000 license plate scans and 184,000 traveler images. Data from ALPRs has been misused to stalk individuals, including by law enforcement officers.
It is simple: agencies should not collect what they cannot protect.
Border Surveillance and Lack of Privacy Standards
While much of the surveillance infrastructure in Texas is driven by state and local agencies, it is inextricably linked to broader national efforts that fuse public and private systems together. The Trump administration’s relationship with Palantir and its ambitions for an AI-powered, centralized national surveillance database represent a troubling federal backdrop that parallels what is already happening in Texas.
Palantir’s Gotham platform, often deployed in predictive policing and immigration enforcement, integrates facial recognition, license plate reader data, social media activity, and geolocation data into threat scores and behavioral profiles. These systems are already being used by ICE and local police departments, including through covert partnerships like the one Palantir ran in New Orleans without public knowledge.
Such systems operate using the same logic as ALPR dragnet surveillance: monitor first, ask later. Flock Safety’s business model and Palantir’s data fusion ambitions align in creating what critics have called a “digital panopticon”, an ecosystem in which everyone is tracked, scored, and sorted based on opaque criteria. Together, these technologies mark the transformation of surveillance from a crime-solving tool to preemptive social control.
EFF and The Rutherford Institute warn that these tools, once sold as safety solutions, are now being used to automate suspicion and erode the line between public safety and political policing. As we’ve seen with the misuse of ALPRs, including in abortion-related investigations and informal data sharing with ICE, any system this powerful and opaque invites abuse. In such a world, freedom becomes conditional and surveillance becomes the default condition of civic life.
Along the Texas-Mexico border, surveillance is not theoretical. It is the daily reality. EFF’s guide to border surveillance shows how towers, blimps, sensors, and ALPRs create a “virtual wall.”
The Government Accountability Office confirmed in a 2024 report that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) failed to comply with all six federal privacy principles. CBP had no internal guidance on data use, retention, sharing, or accountability. These systems are used in neighborhoods, school zones, and farms, often without residents realizing it.
The people being surveilled are not just border crossers. They are citizens, aid workers, families, and everyday Texans.
Legislative Inaction on ALPR Regulation in Texas
Another important policy angle worth considering is the potential applicability of House Bill 4 (HB 4), the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA), passed during the 88th Legislative Session (2023). While the law was not written specifically with ALPR systems in mind, its definitions and provisions appear to overlap significantly with how Flock Safety processes personal data.
Under TDPSA, personal data includes information that is “linked or reasonably linkable to an identified or identifiable individual,” including precise geolocation data, vehicle characteristics, and identifiers such as license plate numbers. Flock Safety, which collects and processes these types of data for sale and use by third parties, could arguably meet the legal definition of a “controller” under the law. The law also restricts the processing of sensitive data without affirmative consent, prohibits profiling that affects decisions related to criminal justice, and establishes consumer rights to request deletion or opt out of data collection entirely.
While there are exemptions in HB 4 for government agencies, Flock often contracts with private entities like HOAs, hospitals, or retail stores. Therefore, private-sector uses of ALPR technology may fall within the scope of the law. A legal gray area remains regarding whether government-contracted surveillance systems operated by a private vendor like Flock are subject to consumer protections.
Currently, TDPSA offers no private right of action, meaning enforcement lies solely with the Texas Attorney General. However, if Flock were found to be processing personal or sensitive data without proper notice, consent, or transparency, the Attorney General could investigate potential violations. Some advocates have suggested amending HB 4 in an upcoming legislative session to explicitly cover license plate and location tracking systems or to create civil enforcement mechanisms so consumers can act directly against companies misusing their data.
Given these overlapping legal definitions and the potential for ALPR systems to fall under HB 4’s scope, this statute presents a significant opportunity for future legislation to place meaningful restrictions on how license plate data is collected, stored, and sold by third-party vendors.
Texas Policy Research previously published an explainer on Geofence Warrants, which explored how the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled geofence warrants unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. This landmark ruling reinforces the core argument made here: modern digital surveillance methods, whether through ALPRs or geolocation data requests, are eroding fundamental privacy protections and must be reined in through clear legislative action.
Just as the Fifth Circuit struck down the use of broad, dragnet-style geofence warrants, Texas lawmakers should likewise act to ban or strictly regulate ALPR data collection, storage, and sharing before more abuse occurs.
Despite widespread concern, thus far, the Texas Legislature has failed to act. Two bills were filed in the 89th Legislative Session earlier this year:
- House Bill 961 – State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian): Would have required warrants and restricted ALPR use to violent crimes.
- House Bill 2083 – State Rep. John Bucy (D-Austin): Proposed a 48-hour data retention limit, a ban on third-party sharing, and private rights of action.
Neither bill received a hearing in the House Homeland Security, Public Safety & Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
Conclusion: Texans Deserve Privacy and Transparency
Texas stands at a crossroads. What began as a tool to identify stolen vehicles and assist local law enforcement has quietly evolved into a vast, loosely regulated surveillance network that compromises privacy, undermines cybersecurity, and enables both government and corporate overreach. Texans are being tracked not because they’ve committed crimes, but because the infrastructure now exists to track them by default.
From Flock’s failure to implement meaningful safeguards, to ICE’s informal access to local surveillance data, to the alarming rise of AI-powered threat scoring and predictive policing platforms like Palantir, the trajectory is clear: without proactive intervention, Texas risks becoming the testing ground for a digital panopticon.
We explored the many dimensions of this growing surveillance threat: constitutional violations tied to travel and immigration enforcement; a complete lack of state and federal data protection standards; systemic audit and cybersecurity vulnerabilities; legislative inaction despite bipartisan concern; and the potential, if not yet fully realized, for HB 4 to serve as a meaningful regulatory tool, if amended.
The time to act is now. Texas lawmakers must:
- Pass legislation requiring warrants for ALPR access
- Impose short, fixed retention limits for data collected
- Prohibit third-party data sharing without an expressed, narrow justification
- Mandate transparency reports and routine audits
- Amend the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act to explicitly include ALPR and geolocation systems and offer a private right of action
This is not about handcuffing police. It is about restoring constitutional boundaries. It is about making sure Texans are not monitored for attending a protest or simply driving through their neighborhood.
We must demand a future where surveillance is the exception, not the rule. Privacy, transparency, and freedom of movement are rights worth fighting for. Texans deserve nothing less. This is not about opposing law enforcement. It is about upholding civil liberties. Texans deserve to move freely, live privately, and exist without being watched by default.
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