We’re celebrating a quarter-millennium of freedom, but the sentiment is hard to believe when there is expanding mass surveillance and open corruption.
Two hundred fifty years ago, the complaint list in the Declaration of Independence included things like soldiers quartered in homes and a government that wasn’t answerable to the people living under it. The founders were worried about being watched, searched, and controlled by people they never chose. That’s why the Fourth Amendment exists. The idea was simple: if the government wants to dig into your business, it needs a reason and a warrant.
Fast forward to today, and you don’t need a soldier in your living room. You need a camera on a pole.
A Shadow From Your Driveway to the Grocery Store#
There’s a real difference between the security that a locked door provides and a shadow that follows you from your driveway to the grocery store. We should be able to go about our day without being “processed and logged” by the cities we live in or visit.
That’s what automated license plate readers (ALPRs) do. The best-known company selling them is Flock Safety, and its cameras have popped up in cities, suburbs, neighborhood associations, and store parking lots all over the country. Every car that drives past gets photographed. The plate is read, logged with a time and location, and stored in a database that police can search. Many of these systems also record the make, model, color, and other details of your vehicle, so “license plate reader” undersells it. We all know they’re recording way more than license plates.
Besides the constant surveillance, it doesn’t sit right with me that our tax dollars are being spent to build the prison warden that watches every street we turn onto. Nobody voted to be tracked. Most people don’t even know the cameras are there.
This Isn’t Hypothetical in Illinois#
In 2025, the Illinois Secretary of State’s office audited Flock and said the company broke state law. Illinois passed a law in 2023 that bans sharing plate reader data for immigration enforcement or for investigating abortions, but the audit found federal Customs and Border Protection had been able to reach Illinois data through a pilot program. It also found there were no real safeguards stopping out-of-state police from searching Illinois cameras. Evanston shut off all 19 of its Flock cameras and terminated its contract, and Oak Park had already cut ties. (NPR Illinois, City of Evanston)
That’s the problem with building a giant database of everyone’s movements. Even if you trust your local police department, you’re also trusting every agency it shares with, every company employee, every software bug, and every future official who decides to use it for something new.
See What’s Watching You#
If you want to know whether these cameras are in your town, DeFlock.org keeps a crowdsourced map of license plate readers across the country. Look up your commute. Most people are surprised.
After that, the practical steps are pretty Midwestern:
- Show up. Camera contracts usually go through city councils and village boards. Those meetings are public, and very few people attend.
- Ask questions. How long is data kept? Who can search it? Is it shared outside the state? What has it actually solved?
- Talk to your neighbors. HOAs and businesses buy these cameras too, and they tend to listen to the people paying dues.
Happy 250th, America. The best way to celebrate freedom is to keep it.
