Traffic cameras are an enigma: public safety versus privacy

July 28, 2026

As if the current serious political divide in our country and the attempts of the radical left to turn America into Cuba or Venezuela aren’t enough for the country to deal with, we now are becoming aware of a movement among governments and law enforcement agencies to post surveillance and ALPR cameras around their areas.

And we know that there are some present in our area.

The public is told that these devices help protect citizens and help to identify law breakers. There are reportedly tens-of-thousands of AI (Artificial Intelligence) cameras mounted on utility poles and other support elements across the country. 

Perhaps the most abundant type of these cameras is the ALPR (automated license plate reader). These enable law enforcement to identify vehicles whose drivers have broken laws or perhaps caused accidents.

That sounds like a good idea, and it can certainly help to identify people involved in law-breaking and other negative behavior. But there is a good bit more to the story.

As this relatively new activity spreads across the country, it is raising major privacy concerns, as these cameras operate in AI-powered networks that track and record public movement.

These cameras capture vehicle license plates and vehicle details like the make, model, and color. They also record timestamps, exact locations, and unique vehicle elements like bumper stickers or dents, all of which can aid law enforcement to identify those who have broken laws. 

This data is saved in searchable cloud databases and retained for 30 days or longer. These databases provide authorities with a great deal of information for every vehicle and its owner/driver, and that includes both those who are involved in wrongdoing and everyone else, as well.

As you might imagine, this has sparked intense debate between public safety advocates and civil liberties groups who are concerned with citizen’s privacy rights. And, there is the concern regarding local surveillance data potentially feeding into wider federal immigration or law enforcement tracking networks.

And, it must be said that the problems with having all this information stored are two-fold: First, while those who have access to the information could misuse it, most will not. But that possibility exists, and it appears there is not adequate protection against that at this time.

Second: As Americans, we have a healthy list of inalienable rights that are guaranteed to be protected by our government. One of those is our privacy, although it is not phrased that way in the Bill of Rights.

Among the guarantees is in the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Amendment does not use the word "privacy," but protects against unreasonable government searches and seizures. And privacy can be invaded by unreasonable searches. Legitimate searches require a warrant to be issued for probable cause.

Critics warn that the ease of cross-referencing and sharing data with other agencies across the country negates traditional Fourth Amendment privacy safeguards, putting our privacy at risk.

Civil rights groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), argue that logging the movements of everyday citizens who are not suspected of any crime is nothing more than un-American mass surveillance.

On its website (aclu.org), the ACLU, in its usual mode, said the following: “Automatic license plate reader (ALPR) companies like Flock Safety are quietly trying to build a nationwide mass surveillance system. If there are Flock cameras in your city, they are tracking, logging, and sharing your movements without a warrant. But we're not powerless. More and more communities are rejecting these creepy cameras — and yours can be one of them!”

At this point, that perspective is more a gross exaggeration than a true picture of what is happening. In other comments, the organization implies that this is an effort by the Trump administration to identify and locate its enemies, rather than the result of technological evolution. 

However, the ACLU comment did note the displeasure among the people. The ALPR cameras, crowdsourced tracking maps, such as DeFlock, have led to the cancellation or suspension of camera contracts in at least 30 local municipalities. And the number of others who are concerned is growing.

The other side of this issue is that police departments tell us that this technology is an effective background tool necessary for tracking stolen vehicles, amber alerts, and solving violent crimes. These are certainly valuable and legitimate uses of this technology, and we should welcome these efforts to track and arrest criminals, and have evidence that can be presented against their crimes.

However, just like data centers, and AI -- both of which offer great advantages to the country, but which also contain highly problematic features -- we must find a way for these assets to be used to their highest level of efficiency, but at the same time making sure that the availability of so much personal/private information is only accessed for legitimate and legal purposes.

This will not be an easy task. And the emotional reaction by many, such as the ACLU’s political-infected perspective, will hinder that effort. 

Government encroachments on liberty, in the name of fighting terrorism

These days talk of government excesses is routine. A list of recent infractions contains things like the Internal Revenue Service using its resources to persecute applicants for non-profit status and the National Security Agency collecting data on every American’s phone calls and email.

Government excesses have been growing for a long time, and since 19 Muslim terrorists hijacked four airliners and successfully crashed three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the U.S. has been taking strong measures to detect potential terrorist threats, and these are by far the most threatening excesses.

The first of these was the USA Patriot Act, created and passed less than two months after the 9-11 attacks, and signed into law by President George W. Bush. Things have not improved since that fateful law passed.

The problem with such measures is that while they may or may not help prevent a terrorist attack, they present a frightening opportunity for government abuse. Americans are rightly distrustful of such mechanisms, and our Constitution prohibits our government from adopting liberty-crushing measures like these.

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) was passed and signed into law by President Barack Obama, and greatly expanded the power and scope of the federal government to fight the War on Terror, including codifying into law the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without trial. Including US citizens. Under the new law the US military has the power to carry out domestic anti-terrorism operations on US soil under the broad new anti-terrorism provisions provided in the bill.

This is not the first time such extraordinary misuse of the military has been considered. In 2002 a similar discussion arose, but was ultimately quashed by Mr. Bush.

Those features in the NDAA are unacceptable, even in the name of fighting terrorism. Prior to the NDAA the Posse Comitatus Act prohibited Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. Americans also enjoyed the protections of the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The intention was to prevent precisely what the 2012 NDAA enacted into law.

Nevertheless, Mr. Obama signed the NDAA into law, saying, “I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”

However, according to Michigan Democrat Senator Carl Levin, Mr. Obama demanded that American citizens be included under the detention law and that the President of the United States have exclusive authority to invoke the statute. “The language which precluded the application of Section [1021] to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved…and the administration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section,” Sen. Levin said after the NDAA was signed into law.

Critics all across the political spectrum rightly opposed the NDAA because of elements in section 1021.

While many government excesses and cases of misbehavior go along uninterrupted, a federal judge appropriately put a stop to the offending elements of the 2012 NDAA only months after it took affect.

Federal Judge Kathleen Forrest granted a preliminary injunction striking down those sections of the NDAA that sought to provide the president the power to indefinitely detain citizens without benefit of their rights.

Judge Forrest concluded that Section 1021 “…failed to ‘pass Constitutional muster’ because its broad language could be used to quash political dissent.” In a statement clearly directed to lawmakers, she added, ”Section 1021 tries to do too much with too little – it lacks the minimal requirements of definition and scienter that could easily have been added, or could be added, to allow it to pass constitutional muster.”

The Obama administration, however, then fought successfully to appeal Judge Forrest’s injunction, and a 2013 version of the bill contains the same intolerable provisions as the 2012 version, and was also signed by President Obama.

Despite Mr. Obama’s comforting words, despite the bi-partisan opposition to section 1021, Mr. Obama demanded that language exempting America citizens and lawful residents from the provisions of Section 1021 be removed, he fought for and won keeping the Section alive in the 2012 version, and signed the 2013 version with those provisions contained in it.

No matter how much you may trust Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama, or any future president, no president can be allowed to have the absolute authority provided in the NDAA to detain citizens without due process, or to set the US military against the people. No individual can be allowed that authority. Ever!

There goes “innocent until proven guilty,” a major protection for citizens against tyranny. Erik Kain, writing on Forbes.com, says: “We’re talking about the stripping away of our most basic freedoms. We’re talking about a potential state that can call me a terrorist for writing this blog post and then lock me up and throw away the key.”

A majority of the US House and Senate approved these measures. Is this what you expect of your elected representatives?

Federal government willfully breaches constitutional protections

On Aug. 16, 2012, Chesterfield County, Virginia police, Secret Service and FBI agents arrived at Brandon Raub’s home, asking to speak with him about his Facebook posts. Mr. Raub, a decorated Marine who has served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, uses his Facebook page like millions of other Americans, to post items and comments, including his political opinions.

Without providing any explanation, levying any charges or reading him his rights, law enforcement officials handcuffed Mr. Raub and transported him to police headquarters, then to John Randolph Medical Center, where he was forcibly detained in a psychiatric ward for a week against his will.

For having the temerity to express his opinions Mr. Raub was kept in custody for an evaluation based on the opinion of one Michael Campbell, a psychotherapist hired by local law enforcement that had never interviewed Mr. Raub, but somehow felt he was capable of determining that the former Marine might be a danger. Psychiatrists at the mental institution, however, found nothing wrong with him.

According to The Rutherford Institute, which is representing the former Marine, in a hearing on Aug. 20 government officials pointed to the Facebook posts as the reason for incarceration. While Mr. Raub stated that the Facebook posts were being read out of context, a Special Justice ordered that he be held up to 30 more days for psychological evaluation and treatment. But Circuit Court Judge Allan Sharrett ordered his immediate release a short time later because the concerns raised by the officers were “so devoid of any factual allegations that it could not be reasonably expected to give rise to a case or controversy.”

When the government’s case came before U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson in Richmond, Va., he dismissed it.

Mr. Raub then sued the officers for taking him into custody without sufficient cause and for his subsequent mistreatment. A request by the offending officers to dismiss the case against them has been rejected.

“Brandon Raub’s case exposes the seedy underbelly of a governmental system that continues to target military veterans for expressing their discontent over America’s rapid transition to a police state,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute.

“While such targeting of veterans and dissidents is problematic enough, for any government official to suggest that they shouldn’t be held accountable for violating a citizen’s rights on the grounds that they were unaware of the Constitution’s prohibitions makes a mockery of our so-called system of representative government. Thankfully, Judge Hudson has recognized this imbalance and ensured that Brandon Raub will get his day in court,” he said.

Judge Hudson has ordered limited discovery allowing Rutherford to demand what information federal and local authorities knew about Mr. Raub before he was detained for a mental evaluation.

The Institute called the decision a victory for free speech and the right to be free from wrongful arrest and presented facts indicating that the involuntary commitment violated Mr. Raub’s rights under the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

The complaint alleges that the attempt to label Mr. Raub as “mentally ill” and his subsequent involuntary commitment was a pretext designed to silence speech critical of the government.

A Richmond Times-Dispatch story noted: “Much of the information about Raub’s alleged mental condition was developed after his arrest and emergency mental assessment, but [Judge] Hudson notes in the opinion [allowing the suit against law enforcement officials] that “there is no indication that any defendant was aware of the specific contents of (emails and statements Raub was making) before Raub’s arrest."

Attorneys from The Rutherford Institute charge the seizure and detention were the result of a federal government program code-named “Operation Vigilant Eagle” that involves the systematic surveillance of military veterans who express views critical of the government, according to information on the Institute’s Web site.

Of “Operation Vigilant Eagle” the Wall Street Journal reports that “the Federal Bureau of Investigation [in 2009] launched a nationwide operation targeting white supremacists and ‘militia/sovereign-citizen extremist groups,’ including a focus on veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to memos sent from bureau headquarters to field offices,” and that “a similar warning was issued … by the Department of Homeland Security.”

So, the FBI and Homeland Security view military veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan like white supremacists and extremist groups, and then on flimsy or non-existent evidence, take them into custody and confine them for mental evaluation?

It will be interesting to see how the government and these agents defend their action at trial.

Many, perhaps most Americans, are well served by state and local law enforcement that behave within the law and respect the privacy and freedom of those they serve until evidence is presented warranting arrest. However, those who initiated and carried out the persecution of Brandon Raub, including the psychotherapist, deserve to be strongly disciplined and perhaps fined and criminally charged for their illegal and unconstitutional behavior, and when the case is resolved, maybe they will be.

Such a resolution would likely get the attention federal officials who improperly unleash the force of government against innocent citizens, and restore respectful treatment of citizens by the government that exists to serve them.

Privacy under attack? Stop-and-frisk vs. NSA surveillance

As Americans, we each have a guaranteed right to privacy. The online legal site FindLaw explains it this way: “The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects personal privacy, and every citizen's right to be free from unreasonable government intrusion into their persons, homes, businesses, and property – whether through police stops of citizens on the street, arrests, or searches of homes and businesses.”

That seems plain enough, but how one interprets the word “unreasonable” provides ample opportunity for mischief, as well as for good law enforcement.

As for good law enforcement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has credited the City’s stop-and-frisk policy with helping drive crime to record lows since the policing policy was implemented in 1994, with the murder rate falling by an astounding 82 percent by 2009.

New York’s stop-and-frisk policy seeks to prevent crime before it happens by deploying officers with pinpoint precision to critical street segments in high-crime areas where they interact with individuals displaying suspicious behavior: they approach, question, and sometimes frisk the individuals. That practice has led to fewer people, such as members of street gangs, risking arrest by carrying a weapon on their person, and with fewer gang bangers carrying weapons, there are fewer spur-of-the-moment shootings in New York, and correspondingly fewer deaths.

You might think that, given the obvious level of success in reducing the murder rate in the Big Apple, such a policy would fall outside the Fourth Amendment’s proscription against “unreasonable” searches. But you would be wrong, according to U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin, who believes that the policy indeed does violate the Fourth Amendment protection.

Mayor Bloomberg believes that the judge's decision will cause a reduction in the use of stop-and-frisk, which would reverse crime reductions and make his city a more dangerous place. And data indicates he is correct. In 2011, guns were used in 61 percent of all homicides, but in black neighborhoods 86 percent of young black males died from gunfire. Stop-and-frisk reduced the total number of deaths by reducing the number of guns on the streets.

The challenge to the policy arose because officers stop minority residents at a rate disproportionate to their number in the general population. But those stops are not disproportionate to the minority resident population in the crime-ridden neighborhoods or disproportionate to the number of crimes minorities commit in those neighborhoods.

As we have seen recently, there is the possibility that authorities may lose perspective and become abusive in the use of policies like this one, but supervisors are charged to competently manage their operation. And due to the depths of its crime problem when the policy was implemented, New York police applied stop-and-frisk more aggressively than other cities. But whether or not the City is too aggressive ought not be decided without considering its unique circumstances and surprising rate of success in reducing murders.

An opposite approach to systematically and thoughtfully targeting areas where crimes mostly occur and populations that most often commit them like New York City is doing is the blanket, indiscriminate, suspicion-less spying on telephone, email and other private communications and activities of millions of Americans by the National Security Agency.

The government’s spying on Americans is so egregious – eavesdroppers broke privacy rules or overstepped their legal authority thousands of times every year – it’s no wonder the administration wants to arrest and try Edward Snowden for making the information about its spying public.

Where New York police might appear to have been over-aggressive in implementing stop-and-frisk, the federal government’s policy itself is over-aggressive by design. Surely, observers familiar with the Fourth Amendment’s restrictions on searches would be unable to conclude anything other than that NSA spying is precisely why there is a Fourth Amendment.

As reported in The Washington Times, “A Top Secret internal NSA audit, leaked by Mr. Snowden to freelance journalist Barton Gellman earlier this summer and published online by The Washington Post Thursday night shows that, in the 12 months prior to May 2012, there were 2,776 incidents of ‘unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications’ — those between Americans or foreigners legally in the United States.”

“Most were unintended,” according to The Post. “Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure.” Even if the problems were unintended, sloppiness certainly is no excuse: The infringements are no less wrong, no less a breach of individual privacy, and no less intolerable.

The larger the scope of a program, the greater the chance that something will go wrong, and the more opportunities there are for something to go wrong. Congressman Peter King (R-NY) defends the program, saying that the situation is being blown out of proportion, that the rate of error is miniscule.

Maybe so; however, since the NSA program seeks to find a few fake grains of sand on a beach, and involves millions upon millions of records. For every million records, ten thousand mistakes can be made, affecting the privacy of ten thousand Americans, and the success rate is 99 percent.

Even if such gargantuan programs are run efficiently and competently, they are examples of unjustified government excess, and should not be allowed.

Data mining breeches our Founder’s concept of liberty and privacy

Collecting data from phone calls of Verizon customers is one thing. Collecting email information on millions of Americans is something else. Both of these activities stir concern and break the bounds of constitutionality, but the invasion of privacy is far greater in the collection of email data.

Phone call data consists of phone numbers, dates and call duration, but not the conversation itself. Email data, on the other hand, not only has email addresses and date information, but the actual message as well, which often includes names and attached text and media files.

The potential for misbehavior is enormous, particularly with email data, given the nature of the information available to prying eyes. Some comfort may be taken from the idea that intelligence personnel who use this information are not susceptible to political influences unlike, say, Internal Revenue Service workers. That does not relieve the concern for our privacy, however.

Hardly anyone doesn't want to the government to find plotting terrorists or discover terrorist plans before they are acted upon, even if it involves tapping phones, capturing emails or other covert measures. But the routine collection of massive amounts of data in the hopes of finding a couple of useful pieces of information is over-the-top and unjustified. Its use has increased since the practice was first introduced after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and has increased exponentially under the Obama administration, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The way it is supposed to work is that when the government has reason to believe that one or more individuals – like let’s say Irv Huffington or Ahmed Ali-Yahoo – may be planning an attack, it goes to court to seek an order allowing it to tap their phone or take whatever actions it proposes to do. It doesn't simply start collecting the records of millions of people hoping to find the Huffington or Ali-Yahoo needle among millions of data bits in the haystack.

Here's what the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

That language is precise and unambiguous. It does not allow judges to give anyone, or anyone to just take the information of millions of Americans in the hope of finding something hidden away among huge collections of data.

In order to get permission to breech a citizen's privacy, the government must request permission by offering a compelling reason and support that assertion under oath, describing explicitly the place and persons under suspicion. Nowhere in the 4th Amendment is the term "fishing expedition" mentioned or implied, nor is there language allowing nosing around in the private lives of millions of citizens who empower the government because it makes things easier, and it does not depend upon what the meaning of "is" is.

The Founders viewed "general warrants," or dragnet searches such as we are witnessing today, as tyrannical. That view is not mitigated by the advent of terrorist acts that kill dozens, hundreds or thousands, nor by the amazing technological advances since the mid-18th century; general warrants still are tyrannical.

The United States has Constitution protections for a reason: because the Framers understood from first-hand experience how government can slither into impropriety, tyranny and oppression unless it is clearly and firmly prevented by statute from doing so. The U.S. Constitution was created not to limit what the people may do, but to limit what the government may do.

We are told, and many of us believe, that in order to be safe in these perilous times, we must give up much of our liberty and privacy for security, but Benjamin Franklin expressed this idea about that: Those who willingly give up liberty for security will have neither, and deserve neither.

It is a point of shame for the citizens of the United States that so many Americans have no functional knowledge of the principles upon which our nation was created or of the meaning or power of the US Constitution. That is a prime reason that so many on the political left are able to mis-think so many things with such great success. 

As a nation we have grown lazy and tone deaf as our government has grown to gargantuan proportions and ridiculous levels of expense, and burst through the top and sides of the constitutional box our much-smarter-than-we-are Founding Fathers built for it.

When they look out on the US landscape and see that some things that aren't working well, they think becoming more like left/liberal Europe is the answer, without even the suspicion that the reason things aren't working is because they have been trying for decades to become more like Europe and less like the United States of America, which under the US Constitution became the freest, most prosperous and most successful nation in human history, while liberal socialist and communist governmental models have always failed.