Will Freeman wants people to know they’re being followed.

His desire to shed light on the proliferation of license plate readers in his neighborhood of Huntsville, Alabama, gave birth this year to the idea of ​​a crowdsourced database where people around the world can download the location of the drives. The database, called DeFlock, also offers users the ability to list camera manufacturers for greater transparency.

“Everything you see out there is a very small percentage of what actually exists,” Freeman said of the thousands of cameras listed in his project.

Over the past decade, license plate readers have become a useful tool for law enforcement across the country. But privacy advocates have sounded the alarm about the technology, alleging that the cameras track people without their consent and that the data stored on them can be vulnerable to bad actors.

Freeman has about 20,000 data points waiting that he plans to add to the global map. DeFlock, first reported by 404 Mediacomes as more local governments and even private property owners turn to surveillance technology to combat crime.

Freeman’s idea for greater technological transparency began with a handful of waterproof pages he published in his Alabama neighborhood.

“The pages said ‘license plate reader’ with an arrow pointing up,” Freeman said. “They were all taken down within a few days.”

Undeterred, Freeman did what any software engineer would do when faced with such an obstacle: he put the project online. “There are people who defend their existence, but I don’t think it’s worth it,” he said of license plate readers.

In Riverside County, more than 1,600 automated license plate readers dot intersections and roadways. The cameras detect millions of vehicles over a 30-day period and are intended to help police search for stolen vehicles or assist in other investigations. License plate readers are also located in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Boston and other major cities.

Riverside County has contracted with Flock Security to establish its license plate reader network. The county public transparency portal provides a snapshot of the system. Los Angeles installed approximately 100 license plate readers in the San Fernando Valley in October for about $500,000 in hopes of fighting crime. License plate readers are made by Motorola Solutions and, like most others, can detect a vehicle’s make, model and color, while also recording the GPS location, date and time.

The camera alerts police if it captures a reported stolen vehicle, but police departments also store a voluminous amount of data on every other car on the road. Critics say data can fall into the wrong hands or be subject to abuse.

“We’ve seen law enforcement officers themselves use the data for their own purposes,” said Dave Maass, director of investigations for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This should scare everyone, because the direction we take in our lives is none of the government’s business.”

A 2020 California audit noted that the Los Angeles Police Department, Fresno Police Department, Marin County Sheriff’s Office, and Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department inappropriately stored images of vehicles that were not part of a police investigation.

A police officer could theoretically track where a person is going without needing a search warrant or subpoena thanks to data collected by automated license plate readers, Maass said.

In 2022, the Wichita, Kansas Police Department was forced to revoke access to its license plate reader network after a police lieutenant allegedly used the system to stalk his ex-wife, according to report from the KWCH news channel.

California law dictates how long data is retained and how it is shared by law enforcement. Unless it is used as part of a criminal investigation, information captured by a license plate reader is not stored with any personally identifiable information, said Sgt. David Chi of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Last year, California’s state auditor found that only a few law enforcement agencies that use license plate readers had privacy policies in place.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials have relied on license plate readers more frequently as the technology has improved.

“We call it ‘catch ’em now or catch ’em later,'” Chi said, referring to how the technology can be used. A camera could alert police as soon as it records the vehicle of a person wanted in an investigation or authorities could review footage captured in a case, he said.

But privacy advocates worry that the cameras could be used by police or others with access to surveillance networks to track a person for noncriminal activities.

It could be someone going to a clinic to access an abortion or perhaps a political rally, said Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the security and surveillance project at the Center for Democracy and technology.

The use of cameras has already expanded outside of police departments.

A Southern California homeowners association pooled resources and welcomed the installation of license plate readers in their neighborhood to deter crime.

“It’s the kind of thing where there’s a lot of power to get information about what people are doing, where they’re going, who they’re interacting with, and very little to stop the government from using that information,” he said. declared Laperruque.