A growing backlash against automated license plate readers is spreading across Texas, putting cities and counties in the middle of an increasingly difficult debate over public safety, privacy and government surveillance.
Over the past two years, at least 15 Texas cities, counties or law enforcement agencies have suspended, restricted or canceled their use of cameras operated by Flock Safety, one of the nation’s largest providers of automatic license plate reader technology.
The list includes Austin, Bandera, Bastrop, Lago Vista, San Marcos and Wylie, along with Burnet, Hood, Guadalupe, Kendall and Hays counties. Law enforcement agencies in Lufkin and Magnolia have also limited or ended their use of the technology.
And the list could continue growing.
Bastrop and Liberty Hill city councils are scheduled to consider the future of their Flock agreements this week, while League City voters will weigh in on the technology in November.
The growing resistance comes as communities wrestle with a fundamental question: How much surveillance should governments be allowed to conduct in the name of public safety, particularly when the overwhelming majority of people whose movements are recorded are not suspected of committing a crime?
Pflugerville ends Flock agreement
Pflugerville became one of the latest cities to act when its city council voted unanimously last month to terminate its agreement with Flock.
The decision came after city officials learned that 459 outside agencies had accessed Pflugerville's automatic license plate reader data, despite the city having authorized only 83 agencies.
Over a six-month period, those outside agencies conducted more than 1.6 million searches of Pflugerville's data.
The Pflugerville Independent School District subsequently suspended its use of Flock cameras on district property.
The controversy illustrates one of the central concerns surrounding the rapidly expanding technology. A city may purchase cameras for its own police department, but the information collected can potentially become part of a much larger network accessible to agencies far beyond the community where the cameras are located.
Harris County is now preparing for its own discussion. County Judge Lina Hidalgo called for a special meeting of the commissioners court over the weekend to address privacy concerns surrounding automatic license plate readers.
Harris County commissioners have approved more than $2.8 million in ALPR contracts with Flock Safety and Motorola's Vigilant Solutions.
What Flock cameras collect
Flock's solar-powered, wireless cameras are designed to photograph vehicles as they pass and collect license plate numbers, location information and other identifying characteristics.
Artificial intelligence analyzes the information, which is uploaded into a centralized searchable database that law enforcement agencies can use during investigations.
The technology can compare vehicles against local and national crime databases and immediately alert officers when a vehicle associated with a wanted person, stolen car or other law enforcement interest passes a camera.
Flock has also expanded beyond license plate readers. Its newer technology includes facial recognition capabilities, while the company has moved into drone-based surveillance as well.
Those capabilities have made the technology attractive to police departments. They have also intensified questions about how much information governments and private contractors should be allowed to collect about people going about their everyday lives.
Unlike a traditional police investigation focused on a particular suspect, a network of ALPR cameras can record the movements of thousands or millions of motorists regardless of whether they are suspected of wrongdoing.
Critics contend that widespread collection raises Fourth Amendment concerns and point to the lack of comprehensive state or federal statutory safeguards governing how information about innocent motorists is retained, protected and shared.
Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, introduced legislation that would establish additional safeguards and require federal law enforcement agencies to obtain warrants before accessing or querying certain collected data.
Self has said that "narrow, targeted uses" of ALPR technology could comply with the Fourth Amendment, but that "most ALPRs do not meet this standard."
Allegations of misuse add to concerns
Privacy concerns have been compounded by allegations that individual officers have misused license plate databases.
Law enforcement personnel have been accused of abusing ALPR information in Baytown, Katy and Pasadena, as well as within the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office.
One of the most significant recent cases occurred in Lufkin.
Police Chief Travis Brazil suspended the department's use of Flock cameras last month after an officer was arrested and accused of using the system more than 10,000 times to track an ex-girlfriend, members of her family and other people with whom she had relationships.
The case gave critics a concrete example of the potential consequences when a powerful surveillance database is accessed for purposes unrelated to legitimate law enforcement investigations.
Austin presents another complication.
The city halted its Flock program in June 2025, but the Austin Police Department has reportedly continued using cameras installed within the city by the Texas Department of Public Safety.
At the same time, Austin Transportation and Public Works has recommended using ALPR technology for parking enforcement.
That proposal has generated another debate over whether technology promoted as a crime-fighting tool could eventually become a routine method of enforcing civil violations.
Texas lawmakers banned red-light cameras in 2019 following years of controversy, including arguments that automated traffic enforcement had become a revenue-generating mechanism for local governments.
Police defend technology as valuable tool
Law enforcement organizations, however, argue that abandoning ALPR technology would remove a highly effective investigative tool at a time when criminals routinely travel between jurisdictions.
Police have used ALPR networks in Texas and across the country to identify suspects, recover stolen vehicles and locate missing people.
This year, the technology assisted law enforcement in finding suspects following a shooting spree in Austin and helped authorities locate a missing teenager and her alleged kidnapper in San Antonio.
Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn recently described the technology as "one of the best law enforcement tools we've ever had."
The Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas has also urged lawmakers not to broadly restrict police access to the systems.
In a recent letter to lawmakers, CLEAT described ALPRs as "a highly effective and invaluable tool" for combating crime, recovering stolen vehicles, assisting with Amber Alerts, apprehending dangerous offenders and investigating crimes including homicides and robberies.
The organization draws a distinction, however, between using cameras for criminal investigations and employing them for revenue-generating enforcement.
Responding to Austin's parking enforcement proposal, CLEAT said it does not support using ALPRs for that purpose.
"Law enforcement officers need LPRs as they are a highly effective, invaluable tool for investigations and real-time crime sprees. By no means would we advocate that they should be used as revenue generators of any kind," a CLEAT spokesperson said.
The organization warned that removing the technology altogether would harm public safety and police morale.
Abbott restricts grant funding
Public pressure has increasingly reached state government as well.
Polling has shown nearly 64 percent of likely Texas voters oppose placing automatic license plate readers at public intersections.
At the end of August, Gov. Greg Abbott directed state agencies to specify that certain public safety grants provided to cities cannot be used to purchase Flock cameras.
The state's own involvement with the technology, however, complicates the issue.
Texas' Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority has reportedly used at least $30 million generated through a $1 annual insurance fee paid by Texas drivers to purchase Flock equipment.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers last month heard arguments over allowing automatic license plate readers as part of efforts to crack down on speeding in construction and school zones.
Dallas illustrates the competing pressures facing governments.
Dallas police stopped using 321 Flock cameras purchased through state grants, but the city voted last week to maintain a separate $1.5 million agreement with the company. Police confirmed that more than 300 Flock cameras will continue operating in Dallas.
Debate is becoming bigger than Flock
Flock has become the public face of the controversy largely because of the size of its network, but the underlying debate extends beyond one company.
Other companies provide similar license plate recognition and surveillance systems, meaning a city can cancel its Flock contract without necessarily ending automatic vehicle tracking.
Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union recently warned that communities should not assume residents will gain greater privacy simply because officials replace Flock with another ALPR provider.
That distinction could become increasingly important as more Texas governments reconsider their contracts.
The emerging debate is no longer simply about whether license plate readers help police solve crimes. There is considerable evidence that they can.
Instead, Texas officials are increasingly being asked to decide what rules should accompany that capability: who can search the information, how long it should be retained, when a warrant should be required, how access should be audited and whether data collected in one community should be available to hundreds of agencies elsewhere.
Those questions are likely to become more pressing as ALPR systems are combined with facial recognition, artificial intelligence and other surveillance technology.
For cities and counties across Texas, the decision may ultimately be less about choosing between public safety and privacy than determining whether governments can preserve the investigative benefits of the technology while establishing safeguards strong enough to prevent a crime-fighting tool from becoming a system of mass surveillance.
