Bipartisan House Amendment Seeks to End Law Enforcement Use of Automated License Plate Readers via Federal Highway Funding Restrictions

A high-stakes legislative battle over the future of American privacy and police surveillance is unfolding in Washington as a bipartisan pair of lawmakers prepares to introduce a sweeping amendment to the federal government’s primary transportation funding bill. The proposed measure, spearheaded by Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican and prominent member of the Freedom Caucus, and Representative Jesús “Chuy” García, an Illinois progressive, seeks to leverage the federal government’s massive spending power to effectively dismantle the nationwide network of automated license plate readers (ALPRs). By prohibiting any recipient of federal highway assistance from using these systems for any purpose other than tolling, the amendment would force states and municipalities to choose between billions of dollars in infrastructure funding and the continued operation of their mass surveillance programs.

The amendment is set to be introduced during a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee markup hearing scheduled for Thursday at 10 a.m. ET. The underlying legislation is a massive $580 billion, five-year reauthorization of federal surface transportation programs, a cornerstone of national infrastructure policy that dictates how federal tax dollars are distributed to state and local transit projects. The inclusion of the ALPR restriction represents one of the most aggressive federal attempts to date to regulate the burgeoning industry of digital vehicle tracking, which has expanded rapidly over the last decade with minimal federal oversight.

The Scope and Mechanics of the Proposed Ban

The language of the amendment is remarkably concise, consisting of a single sentence: “A recipient of assistance under Title 23, United States Code, may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling.” Despite its brevity, the legal and financial implications are profound. Title 23 of the U.S. Code is the primary mechanism through which the federal government funds the construction and maintenance of highways, bridges, and local roads. It covers approximately one-quarter of all public road mileage in the United States, including the Interstate Highway System and major arterial routes where ALPR technology is most densely deployed.

Because almost every state and large municipality relies heavily on federal highway grants to maintain their infrastructure, the amendment functions as a "poison pill" for existing ALPR programs. If adopted, any jurisdiction that continues to use these cameras for criminal investigations, missing persons searches, or general surveillance would lose access to its share of the $580 billion funding pool. Historically, states have been unwilling to forfeit federal transportation dollars, as seen with previous federal mandates regarding the national minimum drinking age and blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) standards.

The Rapid Expansion of ALPR Technology

Automated License Plate Readers are high-speed, computer-controlled camera systems typically mounted on street poles, overpasses, traffic lights, and mobile police cruisers. These systems utilize optical character recognition (OCR) technology to photograph every passing license plate, automatically logging the date, time, and precise GPS coordinates of the vehicle. This data is then uploaded to centralized databases, allowing law enforcement agencies to search for specific vehicles in real-time or conduct "pattern of life" analyses by reviewing historical movement data.

The industry is currently dominated by private contractors, most notably the Atlanta-based company Flock Safety. Flock operates the largest private ALPR network in the country, with tens of thousands of cameras across thousands of cities. Unlike older systems that were often managed locally, modern ALPR networks frequently allow for data sharing across jurisdictional lines, creating a de facto national tracking system. While proponents argue that ALPRs are essential for solving carjackings, locating kidnapped children via Amber Alerts, and recovering stolen vehicles, privacy advocates contend that the technology has transformed American roads into a "dragnet" that tracks the movements of millions of innocent citizens without a warrant.

A Chronology of Controversy and Misuse

The push for federal intervention follows a series of high-profile scandals involving the misuse of ALPR data. In Illinois, a state that has become a central battleground for digital privacy rights, Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias released a scathing audit in August 2025. The audit revealed that Flock Safety had violated state law by providing U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with access to data collected in Illinois, despite state regulations intended to prevent such sharing. In response to the audit, Flock’s CEO, Garrett Langley, acknowledged that previous public statements regarding the company’s data-sharing practices had "inadvertently provided inaccurate information," and the company pledged to pause its federal pilot programs.

Further alarms were raised following a 2023 report by 404 Media, which cited court records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The records detailed an incident in Texas where a sheriff’s deputy utilized Flock’s nationwide database of 88,000 cameras to track a woman’s movements. The justification provided in the deputy’s query was that the woman "had an abortion," highlighting the potential for surveillance technology to be used in the enforcement of state laws that may conflict with the privacy expectations of individuals traveling from other jurisdictions.

In California, the city of San Jose is currently facing a class-action lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice. The lawsuit alleges that the city’s 474-camera network, which captured more than 360 million photographs in 2024 alone, violates the Fourth Amendment rights of residents. Data from the second half of 2025 indicated that police agencies across California queried the San Jose database approximately 15,000 times per day. While San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan has defended the system as a vital tool for public safety, the scale of data collection has fueled the argument that the technology has outpaced existing legal frameworks.

The Bipartisan Coalition and Ideological Convergence

The partnership between Representative Perry and Representative García is a notable example of "horseshoe politics," where the far-right and the progressive left find common ground on issues of government overreach and civil liberties. For Perry and the Freedom Caucus, the opposition to ALPRs is often rooted in a distrust of centralized government power and a desire to protect individual property and privacy rights from federal and state intrusion. For García and the progressive wing, the focus is frequently on the disproportionate impact of surveillance on marginalized communities and the potential for "surveillance capitalism" to erode the rights of the working class.

Privacy advocacy groups have been quick to praise the bipartisan effort. Hajar Hammado, a senior policy adviser at Demand Progress, characterized the amendment as a "commonsense" measure to prevent the United States from sliding further into a "mass surveillance dystopia." Organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice and the EFF have long argued that without federal intervention, the integration of ALPR data into police "fusion centers"—which combine plate data with facial recognition and social media monitoring—will create an inescapable surveillance web.

Legal and Constitutional Implications

The Perry-García amendment represents a strategic shift in how privacy advocates approach the regulation of surveillance. For years, legal challenges to ALPRs have struggled in the courts. Many federal judges have been hesitant to rule that photographing a license plate on a public road constitutes a "search" under the Fourth Amendment, citing the "third-party doctrine" or the idea that motorists have no reasonable expectation of privacy while driving in public.

By framing the restriction as a condition of federal funding, Congress is utilizing its "spending power," a constitutional authority upheld by the Supreme Court in cases such as South Dakota v. Dole (1987). In that case, the Court ruled that Congress could withhold highway funds from states that did not adopt a 21-year-old drinking age, provided the condition was related to the "general welfare" and the "federal interest in particular national projects or programs." The Perry-Garcìa amendment argues that the federal interest in transportation safety does not extend to—and should not be used to subsidize—the warrantless tracking of American citizens.

Potential Impact on Law Enforcement Operations

If the amendment is adopted into the final transportation bill and signed into law, the impact on law enforcement would be immediate and transformative. Police departments across the country would be forced to disable their ALPR systems or find alternative, non-federal funding sources—an unlikely prospect given that most road infrastructure where cameras are placed relies on Title 23 funds.

Law enforcement associations are expected to lobby heavily against the measure. Proponents of the technology argue that ALPRs are "force multipliers" for understaffed police departments, allowing them to solve crimes that would otherwise go cold. They point to data suggesting that ALPRs have been instrumental in recovering thousands of stolen vehicles and identifying suspects in drive-by shootings and hit-and-run accidents. However, the amendment’s sponsors argue that these benefits do not outweigh the systemic risk to constitutional privacy.

Conclusion and the Road Ahead

As the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee begins its markup of the $580 billion reauthorization bill, the Perry-García amendment stands as a major challenge to the status quo of domestic surveillance. The debate reflects a growing national unease with the ubiquity of digital tracking and the lack of transparency in how private companies handle sensitive location data.

While the amendment faces a difficult path through the legislative process—including potential opposition from the tech industry and law enforcement lobbies—its introduction marks a significant milestone. It signals that the era of unregulated expansion for ALPR technology may be coming to an end, as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle seek to reassert the principle that the right to travel freely should not come at the cost of being permanently logged in a government database. The outcome of Thursday’s hearing will likely set the tone for the future of privacy on the American road for years to come.