For Adam Lee Heimerman, an alleged vandal, the reaction to his arrest has been extraordinary. After the 37-year-old congressional candidate from Lenoir City, Tennessee, was arrested at the end of July, internet users donated more than US$14,000 towards his legal defence.
Heimerman is accused of using a shotgun to fire at four automated licence plate readers. According to police documents, the independent candidate, who is running for Congress in November, has admitted to all four attacks. Yet roughly 400 people have contributed to his legal costs. On social media, comments have included “God bless him”, “He has my vote” and “Buy the man a beer”.
The support reflects a broader confrontation taking shape across the United States over Automated License Plate Readers, or ALPRs. What began as a largely technical system used by police to identify vehicles has become the focus of an increasingly emotional dispute over privacy, surveillance and the limits of law enforcement.
The devices are now widespread. According to DeFlock.org, at least 130,000 ALPRs monitor roads in more than 6,000 communities across the US. Since Flock Safety introduced its first devices in 2017, their numbers have multiplied, with police departments making up most of the company’s customers.
The cameras are small and often inconspicuous, mounted on poles or buildings beside roads and entrances. They photograph passing vehicles, generally around the clock. Software extracts the licence plate, converts its letters and numbers into machine-readable text and feeds the information into a nationwide database.
The system can record much more than a registration number. Information such as the vehicle manufacturer, model, colour and distinctive features, including stickers and dents, can also be identified, often with the help of artificial intelligence. The process takes fractions of a second and is repeated hundreds of millions of times each day.
According to The Washington Post, Flock cameras register roughly 20 billion licence plates every month. Flock Safety, which has received around $1 billion in venture capital, operates through subscription models that allow customers to use the cameras and data analysis. Police departments can conduct nationwide searches with a few clicks, generally without judicial authorisation.
For years, concerns about such indiscriminate mass data collection were concentrated largely among privacy advocates and civil-rights campaigners. Then a series of misuse scandals brought the issue into the wider public debate.
Research by The Washington Post found that investigations or proceedings had been initiated in at least 50 cases involving police and security officers accused of misusing ALPR systems. In many cases, officers used the technology to monitor current or former partners, their new partners or women in whom they were interested.
In Georgia, police chief Michael S. repeatedly searched his former partner’s number plate through Flock, making around 600 searches over several months. After the conduct became known, he was arrested in November 2025 and had to leave his position. Five months later, he was found dead at his home, apparently having taken his own life.
In Kansas, a police chief who had tracked his former girlfriend through Flock approached her while she was intimate with another man. In Texas, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office conducted a nationwide search across more than 83,000 Flock cameras for a woman suspected of having had an abortion. The search was initially justified on the grounds that officers were looking for a woman who might have been injured. Investigative records, however, showed that evidence relating to the abortion was being gathered and that those involved had discussed possible prosecution with the district attorney’s office.
Political activity has also entered the dispute. According to analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, police departments made hundreds of searches in 2025 connected with the “50501”, “Hands Off” and “No Kings” protests, all directed against US President Donald Trump. Search justifications included terms such as “No Kings” and “Protest”. The system also accepted explanations such as “hehehe” and “miscellaneous”.
The consequences extend beyond individual cases of misuse. Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told SPIEGEL that ALPRs are gateways into a wider surveillance network, saying the cameras are used not only to combat crime but also to track people behaving entirely lawfully.
The American Civil Liberties Union has raised a different concern: that mass surveillance could alter behaviour even without direct misuse. Chad Marlow, the organisation’s Flock expert, told SPIEGEL that the greatest danger was that people might begin avoiding politically unwelcome events because they fear being identified.
Some participants in anti-Trump demonstrations are already masking their faces or leaving their mobile phones at home to reduce the possibility of identification.
Public opinion appears to be shifting. In a nationwide YouGov poll conducted at the beginning of this week, 46 per cent of respondents said they opposed the use of such cameras in their communities, while 38 per cent supported them. A year earlier, the balance was almost reversed: 33 per cent opposed the cameras and 45 per cent supported them.
The political response has followed. With congressional elections approaching on 3 November, politicians from both major parties have expressed anger over the systems. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have introduced bills and amendments that would require judicial approval for certain surveillance techniques and prohibit federal agencies from using systems such as Flock.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, launched an investigation into Flock Safety at the end of August, seeking greater information about the company’s business practices.
Flock Safety is attempting to respond with tighter safeguards. On 13 August, founder and chief executive Garrett Langley announced on the company’s website that law-enforcement agencies would be required to use tools designed to detect misuse.
Under the proposed measures, officers conducting searches would generally have to enter the code of an associated case, except in emergencies. Unusual searches could result in access being suspended while an investigation takes place. The default data-retention period would also be reduced from 30 days to seven.
Whether such self-regulation can protect Flock Safety from tougher legislation may depend heavily on Donald Trump, who has yet to take a position. The president has said he will announce his stance “in the coming weeks”.
For now, however, the promised reforms have done little to stop the backlash. New thefts and acts of sabotage have been reported in recent days.
Across the country, the argument over ALPRs is therefore no longer confined to privacy campaigners, police departments and technology companies. Cameras designed to record vehicles have become a contested symbol of how far surveillance should reach into everyday life — and of how quickly public acceptance can change when the systems designed to provide security become associated with intrusion, political monitoring and abuse.
