When the City of Tempe installed 10 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras at road intersections in 2021, it joined over 6,000 communities across the United States using that surveillance technology.

In this college town — home to Arizona State University, the largest public university in the country — thousands of cars zoom through the streets daily, each license plate is automatically scanned and entered into a database owned by a private company — Flock Safety.

However, across Arizona, cities are reviewing their contracts with Flock. The cameras are intended to assist law enforcement, but have drawn scrutiny around privacy from residents. Tempe is one of those cities.

In February, three new ALPR cameras were added at fixed locations in Tempe. The contract is currently under review with the city's Data Governance Committee. Tempe Mayor Corey Woods did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

The committee is still reviewing the contract, Tempe's communication and marketing director, Kris Baxter-Ging, said during a phone call. "This item has not appeared on a Council agenda yet," she added in an email.

"The biggest concern that most people have had," Bobby Nichols, a candidate for Tempe City Council in 2026, said, "is whether ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) can access the Flock security cameras."

According to the contract between the City of Tempe and Flock Safety (obtained from Mr. Nichols) the goals of the cameras are to "assist the Tempe Police Department in fighting crime, pursuing investigations, and ensuring community safety."

The initial contract, signed for one year in 2021, cost $27,750 and the cameras can record up to 30,000 plates each per day. It states that additional cameras may be purchased at any time during the term of contract. According to the City of Tempe, the contract will be active until September 2027.

The cameras record license plates, car make and model, timestamp, color, resident or non-resident vehicle status and damage or alterations to the car. Law enforcement agencies can access the data if they have a contract with Flock Safety. The data from the cameras is stored for 30 days then deleted, according to the company's website.

Pushback

There has been evidence of Flock contracting with government agencies. In October, Democratic U.S. Senator for Oregon, Ron Wyden wrote a letter to Senate committees to inform them that Flock had lied about contracting with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and recommended cities review their contracts with Flock.

Nichols — a Tempe resident of 25 years — had been a strong opponent of Tempe's contract with Flock Safety. The issue has caught the attention of people on both sides of the political aisle as he has gone door-to-door campaigning around the city, he said.

"Even if you're not committing a crime," Nichols said. "They're keeping that data, and they're able to track you. Nobody likes it, everybody is opposed to it."

There are two driving forces against the cameras: worries about constant surveillance and concerns over how the data is being used by law enforcement agencies.

The Fourth Amendment of The U.S. Constitution affirms the right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects and protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Nichols is a democratic socialist and is one of seven candidates running for a city council seat. He said that if elected, working to end the city's contract with Flock will be one of the issues at the top of his agenda. He expects the city to act on the committee's review of the contract.

A current assistant attorney general in Arizona, Nichols can win a seat in the March Primary Election if he is one of three candidates who receive a majority of the vote. Elected candidates will be sworn in for a four-year term in July.

He fears for Tempe's more than 40,000 Hispanic and Latino residents and vulnerable communities that are most likely to suffer the consequences of this "reckless abuse" of data, he said. The data is also subject to public records requests so it can be accessed publicly, he added.

The Tempe Police Department has access to the real-time data, according to Nichols. The Tempe Police Department and the Arizona State University Police Department declined requests for interviews.

Flock Safety

Flock announced in March that it had surpassed $300 million in annual recurring revenue from subscriptions in 2024, with plans to further expand its operation with a $275 million fundraiser. The company is valued at about $7.5 billion. In September, Forbes reported that Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley is hoping to completely eliminate crime in the U.S.

According to the Flock website, the company's licence plate readers do not perform facial recognition or store biometrics, and cannot be queried to find people. Flock also argues that there is no identity inference about who was driving or riding in the data it collects from ALPRs. The cameras are powered by solar energy and batteries that use a cellular network. Flock did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

The number and location of ALPR cameras in Tempe is not clear. The website DeFlock tracks the presence of ALPRs around the world. The organization's database is built from contributions from members of the public who are encouraged to report sightings of ALPRs. It lists the number of cameras in Tempe at 108, although this data could not be verified.

Protests

An investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that Tempe Police were one of 19 police agencies nationwide that searched Flock Safety data during No Kings Protests in October. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a non-profit organization that defends digital privacy and free speech and is headquartered in San Francisco.

Dave Maass is investigations director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the author of the report. The investigation obtained searches logged by more than 3,900 agencies from Flock Safety through public records requests from December 2024 to October 2025. The Tempe Police Department made three searches for "ATL No Kings Protest" — "ATL" meaning attempt to locate — for a red vehicle during a specific timeframe.

There is a search function for agencies to include a reason like "murder" or "car theft." "Protest" does not constitute a valid reason to search up, Maass argued.

"There's no alleged crime," he said. "You're just saying a 'protest' and really that shouldn't be enough."

"The real big picture here is that we have this fundamental change in law enforcement," he said. "Where law enforcement is taking an intelligence gathering role here. Now, federal agencies have seemed to get access to this information."

The cameras are "mass surveillance technologies" and searches like this one is "bringing these red, innocent vehicles into the frame of an investigation," he said. While the nature of protests can sometimes involve crime, the right to protest is protected. The shift from law enforcement entity to intelligence agency is not how criminal justice should work, Maass said.

"This is really a message for agencies," he added. "That this actually does threaten people's democratic rights, but also to people who are attending protests that they may be captured on camera and this stuff may later be used against them."

A Phoenix native now based in California, he also has a strong appreciation for the open road.

"The open road is an inherently American thing," he said. "And the more they put license plate readers on the roads, the more they surveil people on the roads, the more it encroaches on that freedom."

According to Maass, there are ways of limiting the use of ALPRs by agencies. He testified his support in the early stages of California Senate Bill 274 that intended to stop the sharing of license plate data between agencies. California Governor Gavin Newsom eventually vetoed the final bill.

Laws requiring search warrants for the data and reducing the retention period and sharing of the data could make a difference. Also, limiting the reasons people are able to search the system could reduce the number of searches, but none of these measures fully reduce the risk. The data should be dumped unless someone is suspected of a crime, Maass said.

Application of ALPRs

More than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use the real-time data from cameras to track crimes, according to Flock Safety. Tempe's contract with Flock Safety lists applications of use for the Tempe Police Department. The applications include suppressing crime, apprehending offenders, and recovering stolen property. "Homeland security and interoperability with partner law enforcement," is listed too.

The contract also states that the technology will "assist both Tempe and its partner law enforcement investigators in crime analysis and correlations between suspect vehicle location with crime scenes, particularly critical since criminals do not recognize boundaries, and may often live outside the Tempe area." This contradicts the message that the data is not being shared between law enforcement agencies.

Statewide efforts

Katelynn Contreras, a policy strategist for the ACLU of Arizona testified before Flagstaff City Council — another city that considered ending its contract with Flock Safety — in October. The ACLU's stance is to remove the cameras at least until there are transparency guidelines between law enforcement and agencies sharing the data.

The use of ALPR cameras are a mechanism of mass surveillance and therefore a violation of the Fourth Amendment right to privacy, Contreras said on a Zoom call.

"It's constant," she said. "And with the data that is collected from this constant monitoring of tracking vehicles, people are able to build profiles based on an individual's movement."

Contreras also expressed concern at the lack of transparency around how the data is used.

"I think there's a balance that needs to be weighed," she said, "when we're considering an individual's right to privacy and solving crime." She added that there may be a limit to the amount of time the data is accessible for if the cameras are not entirely removed.

Two hours north of Tempe, in Sedona, a protest against the cameras by residents was successful. In September, the Sedona city council voted unanimously to remove the cameras.

"I can't honestly think of any other issue that has probably gotten quite as much attention," Sedona City Councilman Derek Pfaff, said, "At least since I've been on council." In the year since Pfaff was sworn in, Sedona moved to end its contract with Flock.

The movement began on social media after people noticed the cameras and started to question the company behind them. The city council started receiving emails from concerned residents across the political spectrum. They feared an invasion of their privacy and the presence of unwarranted surveillance amongst the idyllic red rocks of their home.

Pfaff didn't personally take issue with the cameras, but the residents that he represents were so clearly opposed to them that he voted to end the contract, he said. Sedona cancelled its contract before the cameras were even operational.

Tempe's contract with Flock states that upon termination of the agreement, the use of flock services will immediately cease. Sedona's successful revolt against Flock Safety is something that Nichols — if elected — is eager to replicate. "If I'm elected before this contract with Flock is terminated," he said. "Terminating it is going to be one of my top priorities."