Bipartisan Bill Could End Mass License Plate Surveillance

A Republican Freedom Caucus member and a progressive Democrat just joined forces on something rare in Washington: protecting your privacy on the road.

Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Representative Jesús "Chuy" García of Illinois introduced an amendment Thursday that would prohibit any state or city receiving federal highway funding from using automated license plate readers except for toll collection. Since nearly every municipality in America takes federal road money, the measure would effectively end mass surveillance of drivers nationwide.

The technology in question sounds simple but has quietly become pervasive. Cameras mounted on poles, overpasses, and police cars photograph every passing license plate, logging times and locations into searchable databases shared across agencies and jurisdictions.

The scope is staggering. San Jose's 474-camera network alone captured more than 360 million photographs in 2024. Police searched that database roughly 15,000 times per day in the second half of 2025.

The cameras have been repeatedly misused. Court records revealed that a Texas sheriff's deputy searched a nationwide network of 88,000 cameras to track a woman because she "had an abortion." Illinois discovered that Flock Group, which operates the country's largest camera network, was illegally sharing state data with federal immigration authorities after the company had publicly denied doing so.

The Bright Side

Privacy advocates from across the political spectrum are celebrating this unlikely alliance. When a Pennsylvania conservative and an Illinois progressive agree on limiting government overreach, something important is happening.

Cities like Austin have already shut down their camera programs amid public outcry. The Institute for Justice filed a class action lawsuit against San Jose in April, arguing the surveillance violates Fourth Amendment rights. Dozens of municipalities have banned the technology entirely.

The amendment's single sentence carries enormous weight: it conditions a quarter of all public road funding in America on respecting driver privacy. States and cities would face a simple choice: accept the money and protect privacy, or reject federal highway funds.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will vote on the measure as part of a $580 billion, five-year transportation bill. If it passes, the cameras watching your daily commute could soon go dark.

This isn't about protecting criminals. It's about preventing the government from tracking law-abiding Americans without warrants or probable cause. When politicians from opposite ends of the spectrum stand together for civil liberties, that's democracy working the way it should.