The Marshall Project weekly newsletter

Donate This week's art is by Frank Blazquez. Full work below. View in browser By Jamiles Lartey 2026 2026 Community Survey Will you help shape our future reporting and strategies? Give your feedback and help make The Marshall Project better → TAKE THE SURVEY NOW Police departments across Missouri got new rules on Wednesday for the use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs). Officers must state a “legitimate purpose” for searching databases, agencies are required to audit searches monthly, and all records not tied to an active investigation must be deleted within 30 days. Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe, who established the regulations via an executive order, isn’t opposed to the increasingly ubiquitous technology. He called the roadside surveillance cameras an “incredibly effective crime-fighting tool.” But he also said he wants lawmakers to turn the new restrictions into state law, with “very serious consequences” for people who break them. In Wyoming, lawmakers this week considered a substantially more aggressive approach that would ban ALPR cameras from capturing any information other than a license plate, and would require records to be deleted within three minutes if the tag is not found to be relevant to any active investigation or in violation of any law. State Sen. Chris Rothfuss, a Democrat, said the proposed law seeks to prevent law enforcement from having “casual access” to data systems that can track vehicle movements. He characterized the bill as the most restrictive in the country to date. We looked at casual access to ALPR databases, like the ones installed by Flock Safety, in an edition of this newsletter earlier this year. Over the summer, the issue exploded into public view. By August, The Washington Post had found more than 50 cases in which officers accessed the databases for unauthorized purposes — frequently men spying on “their wives, their girlfriends, their exes, their exes’ new partners or women they wanted to meet.” In at least one recent case, an officer tracked a woman on behalf of someone outside of law enforcement. Last month, police officials in San Jose, California, said an officer searched for a woman who had accused his cousin of domestic violence, then shared information about her whereabouts with the cousin. The officer was fired, but not criminally charged, at least in part because California’s laws around unauthorized searches don't currently cover ALPR data. This gap is emblematic of a broader problem governments around the country are now scrambling to address: ALPR networks have sprung up much faster than the rules governing their use. “In something like half of the states, there is no regulation,” Barry Friedman, a New York University law professor who leads the Policing Project, told Vox. “Virtually [no states], in our view, have adequate regulation.” The regulatory landscape is changing quickly, however. This year alone, state legislatures in Washington, Kentucky and Oregon enacted statewide restrictions on the technology. Federal lawmakers are also getting involved. There have been at least six separate bills proposed on Capitol Hill to regulate the technology, including two in just the last week. That push has been bipartisan, but much of the recent focus on ALPRs has been propelled by Republicans, and that phenomenon extends beyond Washington, D.C. In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott barred state agencies from spending money on Flock cameras last month. In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has blocked local police departments from installing ALPRs on state roads, with DeSantis saying the technology had gotten “out of control.” The ban went into effect on Wednesday. Local governments across the country have been considering their own restrictions too, like requiring public approval before police adopt or expand surveillance technology, mandating regular audits and requiring police to document a legitimate reason for every search. The efforts r