{"id":17277,"date":"2026-05-19T07:48:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T14:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/?p=17277"},"modified":"2026-05-19T07:48:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T14:48:26","slug":"the-fbi-wants-to-buy-nationwide-access-to-license-plate-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/2026\/05\/19\/the-fbi-wants-to-buy-nationwide-access-to-license-plate-readers\/","title":{"rendered":"The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Of interest, they actually mentioned the repo men ALPR cameras that have been in use along with law enforcement vehicle ALPR cameras for quite some time. I used to watch a repo man’s YouTube videos back in the 2010’s who talked about the system. He’d cruise parking lots logging vehicles, and the system would flag him with repo candidates. He even looked up where a vehicle was spotted and determined they worked at a mall, and then went and grabbed the vehicle after deducing their work schedule. There is a lot of vehicle tracking beyond just Flock, and I’d think the federal government would give grants to local governments to install and pay for these systems. Our local government has gone nuts with these cameras, but citizens are starting to push back. And soon a lot of these cloud surveillance cameras citizens buy will have AI collecting a lot of information as well, e.g. license plates, facial recognition… The modern surveillance capabilities will be much more severe than what 1984<\/em> portrayed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.404media.co\/the-fbi-wants-to-buy-nationwide-access-to-license-plate-readers\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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By Joseph Cox<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only a couple vendors could likely fulfill what the FBI is after, namely Flock and Motorola.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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Photo by David Trinks<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The FBI wants to buy access to automated license plate readers (ALPRs) nationwide, which would likely allow the agency to track the movements of vehicles\u2014and by extension people\u2014across the country without a warrant, according to FBI procurement records reviewed by 404 Media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The documents show that ALPRs continue to be a sought-after tool for law enforcement, not just for local police and individual communities, but federal agencies too<\/u><\/a>. The news also comes as protests and pushback against ALPRs have spread around the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe FBI has a crucial need for accessible LPRs to provide a diverse and reliable range of collections across the United States. This data should be available across major highways and in an array of locations for maximum usefulness to law enforcement,\u201d a statement of work<\/a>, which describes what data the FBI is seeking access to, reads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALPR cameras generally work by constantly scanning the color, brand, model, and license plate of vehicles that drive by. This creates a timestamped record of where a particular vehicle was at a specific time that law enforcement can then query, effectively letting them see exactly where someone drove across time. The technology has existed for decades<\/u><\/a>, but has become more pervasive in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FBI says it is looking for a vendor that will let it log into a Software-as-a-Service system and then query the collected ALPR data with license plate information, a description of the vehicle, a time or date, and geolocation information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FBI says it is looking for ALPR coverage in the following areas: Eastern 48 (East of the Mississippi River); Western 48 (West of the Mississippi River); Hawaii; Puerto Rico; Alaska; and outlying areas such as Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or Tribal Territories. In effect, the FBI is looking for ALPR data nationwide and even beyond. An attached price template<\/a> indicates the FBI is willing to pay $6 million for each of those broad areas, bringing the total to $36 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Gallery<\/a>
Images: Screenshots from the documents.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The FBI says it intends to award the contract to a single vendor, but if any such vendor is unable to fulfill all of the requirements, the agency may award the contract to up to two vendors. The contract is specifically for the FBI\u2019s Directorate of Intelligence, which oversees the agency\u2019s intelligence mission<\/u><\/a>. The FBI is not only a law enforcement agency, but also part of the Intelligence Community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a limited number of companies that might be able to provide the sort of data the FBI is seeking. One of those is Flock, whose ALPR cameras are stationed in communities all across the country. According to data 404 Media and researchers have obtained through public records requests, Flock has at least 80,000 cameras<\/u><\/a> connected to its national lookup tool. At one point, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a section of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the Secret Service, and the Navy\u2019s criminal investigation arm all had access to Flock\u2019s nationwide network as part of a pilot program<\/u><\/a>. As 404 Media revealed<\/u><\/a>, local police have performed lookups in the Flock nationwide database on behalf of ICE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other is Motorola Solutions, which acquired Vigilant Solutions. Motorola has a massive database of ALPR information built with cameras installed in police officer\u2019s roaming vehicles. An arm of the company that sells to private industry has essentially outsourced image collection to repo men. In 2019, I reported on that part of the business<\/u><\/a>, called Digital Recognition Network (DRN), and was shown how powerful its tracking capabilities can be. 404 Media reported last year<\/u><\/a> that ICE recently invited staff to demos of a Motorola app that let officers scan a license plate and add it to a database of billions of records that show where else that vehicle has been spotted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Josh Thomas, chief communications officer at Flock, told 404 Media in an email \u201cWe\u2019re not going to speculate on prospective deals. But it\u2019s worth noting that we already work with several federal agencies<\/u><\/a>, all of whom are subject to the same obligations, constraints, and transparency mechanisms that apply to every other Flock customer. We also rebuilt our product from the ground up, starting last year, to ensure all local customers could trust that they can use Flock in full compliance with local and state laws. A big part of that is our Audit Assistance tool<\/u><\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither Motorola nor the FBI responded to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of interest, they actually mentioned the repo men ALPR cameras that have been in use along with law enforcement vehicle ALPR cameras for quite some time. I used to watch a repo man’s YouTube videos back in the 2010’s who talked about the system. He’d cruise parking lots logging vehicles, and the system would flag […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17280,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17277\/revisions\/17280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}