There is a system of cameras in the United States that can track your movements from coast to coast using your license plate or a “vehicle fingerprint” that knows your bumper stickers, decals and roof racks.
They’re called automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, and a company called Flock Safety dominates the market.
That growing system has created a growing group of anti-Flock activists in Missouri and Kansas.
“My experience with the Lenexa PD has, I would say, radicalized me against these automated license plate readers,” resident Canyen Ashworth said.
A KCUR investigation discovered Ashworth was tracked by the Lenexa Police Department’s ALPRs after he wrote a column critical of the city’s police.
Using that data and surveillance footage, Lenexa police opened a criminal investigation into Ashworth in 2025, suggesting he was illegally posting memes near city hall.
Lenexa police had a nickname for the suspect: The Paper Hanger.
At the time, the department issued a “BOLO” — police shorthand for “be on the lookout” — for Ashworth.
It turned out that Ashworth was not the man in the video, and nobody was ever charged.
Lenexa police said The Paper Hanger investigation is inactive but “it could be reopened if new evidence is developed,” spokesman Officer Danny Chavez said in an email.
The experience had a lasting impact on Ashworth.
“I started learning more about the cameras themselves, you know, the tool that was basically used to stalk me,” Ashworth said. Now he has joined what is called the DeFlock movement.
Nowhere has DeFlock been more successful than in tiny Weston, Missouri, about 45 minutes north of Kansas City in Platte County.
“I just felt that there wasn't really a reason why all of the comings and goings of all of the residents should be tracked,” Weston resident Katie Currid told KCUR.
After Weston voted to buy two Flock cameras in December for $45,000, Currid and others swung into action.
Just five months later, the Board of Aldermen canceled the Flock contract.
Mayor Kim Kirby said no money was paid, and Weston hasn’t heard from Flock since the cancellation.
“I was disappointed that we weren't able to complete the process, as I felt it would be a beneficial tool for our police department,” she told KCUR.
Currid was anything but disappointed.
“I might trust our police chief and our police department and our small-town police force, but all of these other police forces have access to everything that's going on in our city,” she said.
That is perhaps the biggest concern about ALPRs.
Flock and other ALPR cameras are everywhere
Critics say they are invasive.
“You can know where they go to church, where they go grocery shopping, when they go to the doctors, what doctors they're going to,” said Christie Hebert, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, which has an entire license plate reader project.
She said there aren’t enough guardrails and that individual police officers have too much leeway to query a vast and growing database of vehicle information.
Hebert said that in most investigations, there is time for police to get a search warrant.
“I think that's where you start getting into danger when you just allow individual officers to make decisions about when and how they're going to use this comprehensive searching tool without an impartial third party saying, ‘Yes, there's a good reason to search,’” she said.
Law enforcement officials say there are times that police must act quickly using ALPR cameras, such as finding a child during an Amber Alert or tracking a violent criminal. If the process slows, people are put at risk.
“Cases will take longer to solve, organized retail theft crews will operate with fewer obstacles,” Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel said in an email to KCUR.
Last year, “Flock supported more than 1 million criminal investigations and incidents, assisted an estimated 20% of solved cases in jurisdictions where its technology is deployed, and helped locate more than 10,000 missing persons,” she said.
But Flock camera data can be accessed by any department that pays for a subscription.
“Everywhere I go has Flock cameras,” Currid said. “So, while I am glad that Weston itself doesn't have them, I know that my car’s movements are still being tracked.”
Flock is in 49 states and used by 5,000 agencies, according to the company’s website.
And now federal law enforcement wants in on the Flock action.
The FBI wants to buy access to ALPRs, “which would likely allow the agency to track the movements of vehicles—and by extension people—across the country without a warrant,” according to 404 Media.
A 2024 Congressional Research Service report also found that the Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Marshals Service have all used ALPR data.
404 Media also uncovered that “Flock left livestreams and administrator control panels for at least 60 of its AI-enabled Condor cameras around the country exposed to the open internet.”
Police ALPR abuse
The Institute for Justice says it found at least 18 cases in the U.S. of police using Flock data to “keep tabs on their romantic interests, including current partners, exes, and even strangers who unwittingly caught their eye in public.”
There are plenty of examples in Kansas and Missouri.
- Bonner Springs, Kansas, Det. Kyle Rector allegedly used license plate readers to track his estranged wife and two men he suspected were her new romantic partners. He was charged with multiple crimes in March.
- An unidentified Joplin, Missouri, officer was fired in January for misusing the department’s Flock data. An investigation by the activist group DeFlock Joplin discovered one license plate was searched 395 times.
- Sedgwick, Kansas, Police Chief Lee Nygaard resigned after using Flock cameras to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend more than 200 times over several months.
- Kechi, Kansas, Lt. Victor Heiar pleaded guilty to computer crime and stalking after using Flock cameras to track his estranged wife.
Flock across America
In June, the Dayton (Ohio) Police Department said the city would no longer use Flock’s data after it found more than 7,000 searches relating to immigration enforcement made by outside entities.
The city said the cases were “egregious violations of policy” that prohibited data from the devices from being used for immigration enforcement or shared with agencies “whose primary purpose is to enforce immigration laws,” Fortune Magazine reported.
In Colorado, Kyle Dausman kept getting pulled over in the Denver suburb of Cherry Hills Village after his license plate was mistakenly entered into the ALPR system.
"I continually get pulled over," Dausman said. "I can't really use my truck in any fashion. I believe my safety is at risk. They zipped out of nowhere and immediately got behind me with the lights flashing,” he told KUSA in Denver.
All this has led to some government action.
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a law in March that restricts where and how police can use ALPR data.
In October, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, wrote a harsh letter to Flock CEO Garrett Langley.
“I now believe that abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable, and that Flock is unable and uninterested in preventing them,” Wyden wrote.
Flock’s chief legal officer, Dan Haley, responded by saying he was “disappointed” in Wyden’s conclusion.
“We work to constantly improve and enhance not only the efficacy of our products, but also the compliance, transparency, and public accountability features that protect civil liberties,” Haley told KLCC.
The Institute for Justice sued Norfolk, Virginia, in federal court, charging the city was invading people’s privacy. There are 172 cameras in a city of 230,000 people. That’s one Flock for every 1,300 residents.
“Unlike a police officer posted at an intersection, the cameras never blink, they never sleep, and they see and remember everything,” the lawsuit said.
In January, a federal judge granted the city’s motion for summary judgment.
The court acknowledged there might come a time when ALPR “surveillance could become too intrusive … but when?” U.S. District Court Judge Mark Davis asked.
He answered his own question: “What is readily apparent to this Court is that, at least in Norfolk, Virginia, the answer is: not today.”
The case has been appealed. The Cato Institute, the Innocence Project and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed briefs on behalf of the plaintiffs.
That brings us back to Canyen Ashworth, whose license plate was recorded by Lenexa police’s ALPR cameras some 150 times in less than two years. (Lenexa does not use Flock. The city uses Axon, Genetec and Leonardo.)
“My fear is that we now have this unchecked ability for the government to basically surveil its people on a whim with very little guardrails and essentially zero accountability,” Ashworth said.
