{
  "id": 15675611,
  "title": "Require Police to Get a Warrant to Search ALPR Data",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/19/require-police-to-get-a-warrant-to-search-alpr-data",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-10-19T23:28:38.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "EFF Deeplinks",
    "slug": "eff-deeplinks",
    "url": "https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/require-police-get-warrant-search-alpr-data"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are a form of mass surveillance that captures every passing car's plate, recording where and when it was captured. This creates a searchable database of nearly everyone's driving habits. Cities should not invest in these systems and should shut them down where they already exist. When ALPR data is stored, courts and state legislatures must impose warrant requirements to reduce the potential harm. This would necessitate police obtaining a warrant from a judge before searching the stored data, rather than allowing officers to search without justification.\n\nWithout a warrant requirement, officers have been searching stored ALPR data for improper reasons that violate fundamental rights. These searches have included profiling Romani people, monitoring protesters, investigating an abortion, finding immigrants for deportation, tracking a man who complained about a deputy, stalking romantic partners, and even without any stated reason. A warrant requirement would force law enforcement to justify such searches, ensuring that sensitive location records are not accessed without cause.\n\nBefore officers can search a person or their property, the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause, meaning a fair probability that the search will uncover evidence of a crime. The warrant must also describe with particularity what will be searched, preventing officers from conducting fishing expeditions. Officers should not be the ones determining whether a search is justified. Thus, warrants are essential for many types of police surveillance, including wiretaps, cell phone searches, and obtaining historical cell phone location records. Stored ALPR data reveals private details about individuals' lives, such as where they go, when, and with whom. Therefore, police searches of stored ALPR data should also require a warrant.\n\nAn Oklahoma federal judge recently agreed with this stance. A lawsuit filed by EFF and the ACLU of Northern California challenges San Jose, California's practice of searching stored ALPR data without a warrant. The city's police department conducted 261,711 searches of ALPR data between June 5, 2024, and June 17, 2025, averaging about 692 searches per day. The unchecked power to search ALPR data leads to abuse. For instance, in September, San Jose's police chief revealed an example where an officer used the ALPR system to track a woman accused of domestic violence against his cousin, then shared her location information with her alleged attacker. This abuse would have been prevented by a warrant requirement.\n\nSimilar problems occur nationwide. For example, more than 80 law enforcement agencies searched the Flock network using terms that unfairly stereotype Romani people, often without naming a crime. A warrant requirement would have prevented such searches. Protest surveillance is another issue; over 50 agencies ran hundreds of protest-related searches of ALPR data in 2025. In some cases, these searches lacked probable cause and targeted protected speech. Additionally, a Texas sheriff's office searched over 83,000 Flock cameras across multiple states, including for reasons like \"had an abortion, search for female,\" which would not have been granted a warrant in a state where abortion is legal. Lastly, some police departments search stored ALPR data for immigration investigations, even in sanctuary cities like San Francisco, violating California law.",
  "summary": "This post was co-written by Andi Cao , an EFF legal intern. Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are mass surveillance. They photograph every passing car and log where and when it was captured, building a searchable record of where nearly everyone drives. Cities should not buy them , and cities that already have them should shut them down. Where these systems still operate, courts and state…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}