How New State Laws Are Limiting What Police Can Do with Your License Plate Data

• A new Connecticut law taking effect October 1 limits how long police can keep data from automatic license plate readers to 21 days and bars sharing it with immigration enforcement.
• Connecticut joins Washington, New Mexico and Kentucky as states that have enacted limits on license plate reader data in 2026, while Indiana, Nevada, Ohio, Utah and Virginia lawmakers have said they will take up the issue next session.
• The cameras, widely sold under the Flock Safety brand, photograph every passing vehicle’s plate regardless of suspicion, and several cities have already begun canceling their contracts over the same privacy concerns driving the new state laws.

Your License Plate Gets Photographed More Than You Think

Every time a driver passes one of the automated cameras now mounted on light poles, highway overpasses and neighborhood entrances across the country, a system reads the plate, timestamps the location and logs it into a searchable database, whether or not that driver has done anything wrong. A new Connecticut law taking effect October 1 is the latest attempt by state lawmakers to put limits on what happens to that data after it is collected, and it lands as a growing number of states move in the same direction.

Connecticut’s law caps how long law enforcement agencies can retain license plate reader data at 21 days for routine use, bars using the data for immigration enforcement, and prohibits using it to investigate abortion access or transgender health care. It also restricts sharing the data with out-of-state agencies, limiting automatic sharing to Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island unless another state’s agency provides written assurance it will follow Connecticut’s own restrictions.

How the Technology Works

Automatic license plate readers, most commonly sold under the Flock Safety brand, combine a camera with software that converts every plate it photographs into searchable text within seconds. Unlike a speed camera or red light camera, which only activates when a vehicle breaks a specific rule, a license plate reader captures every vehicle that passes, continuously, building a location history for any plate an officer later chooses to search. A single camera can log tens of thousands of vehicles a day, and networks of them, stitched together across a city or county, can reconstruct where a specific car has been over weeks or months.

That capability is exactly why the technology has drawn both police support and growing legislative pushback in the same year. Departments credit the cameras with recovering stolen vehicles and locating suspects in hit-and-run cases within hours rather than days. Privacy advocates and, increasingly, state lawmakers point to documented cases of the same data being queried by agencies outside its original purpose, including instances where local police department searches were later linked to immigration enforcement activity in jurisdictions that had no local law against it.

Which States Have Acted

Connecticut is the fourth state to enact specific limits on license plate reader data in 2026. Washington’s law permits use of the data for a defined list of purposes, including stolen vehicle recovery, missing persons cases, active warrants and felony investigations, while restricting broader use. New Mexico bars sharing the data for immigration enforcement or reproductive health investigations and requires a written declaration before any out-of-state sharing. Kentucky limits who can receive the data at all, permitting disclosure only to law enforcement, insurers investigating fraud, and financial institutions handling repossessions or loan verification.

Missouri took a different path, with Governor Mike Kehoe issuing an executive order establishing safeguards on how state agencies use the technology rather than waiting for legislation. Lawmakers in Indiana, Nevada, Ohio, Utah and Virginia have told advocacy groups and reporters they intend to take up similar bills in their next legislative sessions, suggesting the current four-state list will grow in 2027.

Cities Are Pulling Cameras Even Without a State Law

Legislation is not the only force shrinking the footprint of these camera networks. A number of city councils and police oversight boards have voted to cancel existing Flock Safety contracts entirely, citing the same data-sharing concerns driving the state laws, without waiting for their state legislature to act. Other departments have kept their contracts but adopted internal policies restricting who inside the agency can query the system and for what purpose, an approach privacy advocates generally view as weaker than a binding state law. A policy like that can be reversed by a new police chief or city administration without any legislative process.

A Case That Shows Why Lawmakers Got Involved

The dispute driving these new laws is not theoretical. In California, where state law already restricts sharing license plate data with federal immigration authorities, a police department in Chico granted Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol direct access to its local camera network earlier in 2026, a decision that surfaced only after public records requests and local reporting brought it to light. The episode became a reference point for legislators in other states writing their own bills. It demonstrated how a single department’s internal policy choice could route a driver’s location history to federal agencies even in a state that had already tried to prohibit exactly that outcome through statute.

That gap between what a state law says and what an individual department actually does is a recurring theme in the debate. A law like Connecticut’s new 21-day retention limit is enforceable against the agencies it covers, but enforcement relies on those agencies configuring their systems correctly and on oversight catching violations after the fact rather than preventing them in real time. Several of the state laws passed in 2026 include new audit or reporting requirements specifically aimed at closing that gap, requiring departments to document who accessed the data and why.

What This Means for the Average Driver

None of these laws stop license plate readers from photographing a vehicle. What changes is how long that photograph and its associated data can sit in a database, who is allowed to search it, and where it can be sent. A driver in Connecticut, Washington, New Mexico or Kentucky now has a legal framework limiting how that data can be used against them for purposes unrelated to the crime the camera was installed to catch. A driver in a state without such a law has no such guarantee, and the data from a single trip can, depending on local policy, be retained indefinitely and shared broadly.

Drivers who want to know what their local agency does with this data are not without options. Most states have public records laws that allow a resident to request a department’s license plate reader policy, including retention periods and a list of agencies with data-sharing access, even in states without a dedicated ALPR statute. Some departments publish this information voluntarily on their websites, a practice that transparency advocates have pushed as a baseline standard no matter what state law demands.

What to Do

Drivers concerned about how their local police department uses license plate reader data can file a public records request asking for the agency’s data retention policy and its list of data-sharing partners, a request most state public records laws require the department to answer within a set number of days. Residents in states actively considering legislation, including Indiana, Nevada, Ohio, Utah and Virginia, can track bill status through their state legislature’s website and submit public comment at committee hearings, the stage at which these bills are most often amended. For drivers who want to understand how the technology affects them personally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Brennan Center for Justice both maintain state-by-state trackers of license plate reader laws that are updated as new legislation passes.

Sources:

• CT Mirror: CT Laws Oct. 1: AI, Flock Cameras, Immigration, Distracted Driving
• Multistate Insider: Automatic License Plate Readers Face Growing State Restrictions in 2026
• Brennan Center for Justice: Automatic License Plate Readers, Legal Status and Policy Recommendations
• ChicoSol News: Chico PD Granted ICE, Border Patrol Access to Its ALPR Data