Opposition to license plate surveillance is crossing party lines in Iowa, where police departments have assembled an expansive network of cameras with limited public oversight.
West Des Moines, Iowa—Voters in Iowa may clash over immigration, taxes, and the economy, but concerns about government surveillance are uniting people from across the political spectrum.
An Emerson College poll of 750 likely Iowa voters, conducted from late August into early September, showed 61 percent opposing police use of automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras, with 26 percent in favor.
The pushback grows as police departments statewide increasingly depend on surveillance technology supplied by private firms such as Flock Safety and Motorola Solutions. These cameras capture license plate data and vehicle information, feeding searchable databases that enable authorities to trace motorists’ movements, even for individuals not accused of any crime.
As Iowa heads toward its gubernatorial and congressional campaigns’ final stretch, voters are pressing candidates to say whether they would curb this technology. Jacqueline Thompson, an ordained elder in the Iowa Conference of the United Methodist Church and a self-described centrist Democrat, has harbored worries about government surveillance for years.
“It’s always been important to me [and] I’ve always thought that was a problem,” she said before a campaign rally at a Des Moines senior living community earlier this month. “So, when people started jumping on the bandwagon saying it, I was like, ‘Hello, I’ve been here already!'”
Thompson pointed to two Democratic contenders, Nate Willems, running for Iowa attorney general, and Taylor Wettach, a candidate for state auditor, as people who have captured her attention with their focus on corporate oversight and access to government records.
For Thompson, the renewed focus on privacy is a welcome shift in a political landscape where Democrats and Republicans rarely align. “It’s kind of nice to hear the people come back to the middle [and discuss this],” she said.
Flock Does Not Have Enough Guardrails
Police surveillance technology has spread through Iowa more rapidly than the guardrails designed to regulate it.
A recent study identified at least 62 Iowa law enforcement agencies that accessed other agencies’ Flock databases, including departments without their own camera networks. This means police can search information gathered beyond their own jurisdictions without installing a single camera themselves. The study (led by Megan Graham, a clinical associate professor and director of the Technology Law Clinic at the University of Iowa College of Law) highlighted notable gaps in transparency surrounding ALPRs.
The constitutional questions are already making their way through the courts. On October 1, a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled that a sheriff’s deputy violated the Fourth Amendment by querying a motorist’s location history using ALPR systems operated by Flock Safety and Motorola Solutions without a warrant.
The search uncovered more than 50 records of the driver’s location across several states over a month. In the 38-page ruling, the judge suppressed the resulting evidence, describing the technology as a form of “indiscriminate mass surveillance.” The decision does not bind Iowa, and challenges to ALPR surveillance remain uphill, but it adds to the legal scrutiny of tracking motorists without warrants.
The University of Iowa study also flagged concerns about unauthorized database access, false alerts, and the potential use of locally collected data in federal immigration enforcement.
Flock Safety says it has not given U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Border Patrol direct access to its systems. Yet researchers found that local law enforcement agencies elsewhere in the country had conducted searches on behalf of federal authorities, effectively allowing access without direct involvement.
Taxpayers are footing the bill as well. Cedar Rapids reported operating 76 cameras at a combined average monthly cost exceeding $20,000, according to the study.
Researchers faced difficulty determining the full scope of surveillance across Iowa. Some agencies refused to disclose the number or locations of their cameras, while others withheld records related to unauthorized access or erroneous alerts, citing confidentiality.
The cameras are not limited to Iowa’s biggest cities. Becca Eastwood, deputy policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, said they have spread to large, midsize, and smaller communities, fueling a rising opposition over the past year.
The backlash “has just exploded, like no other issue that I have seen in my time at the ACLU,” Eastwood told Reason in an interview. Candidates running for state and federal offices are increasingly being asked whether they support police departments using ALPR cameras, she said.
Some local governments have already begun rethinking their contracts. Indianola and Waukee paused their Flock camera arrangements, Iowa Public Radio reported in August. Dallas County paused a planned rollout while awaiting guidance from state lawmakers. Ankeny, which operates 16 Flock cameras, is reportedly expected to reconsider a potential contract extension next year.
The backlash also spans the immigration debate. While worries about federal immigration enforcement have drawn attention to the cameras, critics argue that the same surveillance network can be used against anyone, regardless of which party governs.
“This is a nonpartisan issue because people recognize that surveillance can be weaponized against anyone the government wants to weaponize it against,” Eastwood said. “An increase in police surveillance affects certain populations more, right now [but] nobody is immune.”
Politicians Face Pressure To Cut Ties With Flock
The opposition is beginning to compel Iowa’s candidates to stake out positions on a technology that, until recently, drew little attention outside law enforcement and civil-liberties circles.
Among the gubernatorial hopefuls, interviewers from Iowa Radio last month reported that Republican Zach Lahn is advocating for state-level regulation, arguing that broad surveillance of where people go is unacceptable. In contrast, Democrat Rob Sand has supported safeguards on collecting and using license-plate data and said he would sign legislation if privacy concerns persist. He also pointed to the cancellation of some Flock contracts as proof that the market is responding to public worries.
At present, neither stance offers clear guidance on whether police should need warrants to search motorists’ location histories or how far data restrictions should extend.
Ryan Johnson, a libertarian-leaning Republican machinist near Waterloo, said he could tolerate cameras in select places, such as downtown districts or near traffic signals, but objects to their spread into residential areas and public spaces.
“Just having Flock cameras everywhere, [in] residential [areas], putting them at parks and pools, we don’t need that,” Johnson said at a Lahn rally earlier this month.
To date, some of the most tangible changes to ALPR practices have come from Flock itself. In August, the company announced that it would cut its default data-retention period from 30 days to seven and require officers to attach a criminal case number or code to each search. The changes, however, do not require police to obtain a warrant before accessing the records.
Gary and Nancy Guthrie, a Democratic couple attending a Des Moines rally supporting Chris Jones for secretary of agriculture, remain skeptical of the cameras.
“I don’t have a good feel for that,” Nancy Guthrie said. “Personally, I’m very much against Flock cameras.”
For all the attention this issue has received on the campaign trail, Iowa voters have yet to hear much about the specific legal limits candidates would impose on police surveillance.
