ALPR Legislation Tracker
Federal and state laws, pending bills, retention limits, data-sharing restrictions, warrant proposals, oversight requirements, and other developments affecting automated license plate reader use.
Reviewed and updated October 3, 2026
Tracker Snapshot
What agencies should know now
ALPR regulation remains a state-by-state patchwork. Current legislative activity focuses less on the camera itself and more on retention, sharing, query authority, sensitive uses, oversight, and accountability.
Retention
Enacted limits range from minutes for non-hit data to weeks or months, with several pending bills proposing new statewide caps.
Data Sharing
Cross-jurisdiction and federal access are major legislative flashpoints, especially where state law restricts immigration or healthcare-related use.
Warrants
Warrant proposals are emerging for historical database queries, even though courts have not broadly extended Carpenter to ALPR data.
Federal Funding
H.R. 10221 would condition federal spending on restrictions affecting covered ALPR and biometric-surveillance systems, including connected services and data arrangements.
Flock announces new retention, sharing, access, and accountability safeguards
On August 13, 2026, Flock Safety announced a seven-day recommended ALPR retention period and a seven-day default for new law-enforcement customers, Evidence Mode for preserving identified records in active investigations, offense-based sharing controls, mandatory Audit Assistance and case codes for law-enforcement customers by year-end, proactive account lockouts, and mandatory multi-factor authentication. Existing customers will retain their current locally approved retention periods unless they change them.
Retention
The announcement distinguishes routine retention, preservation of identified evidence, and longer retention selected by an agency under its own policy.
Sharing
Offense-based controls may allow an agency to limit partner access by investigative purpose rather than treating sharing as a single on-or-off decision.
Accountability
Audit Assistance, automatic lockouts, case codes, and MFA address important risks but do not replace agency authorization, supervision, periodic audits, or misuse response.
Missouri Executive Order 26-18 establishes interim statewide ALPR safeguards
Governor Mike Kehoe issued Executive Order 26-18 on September 16, 2026. Effective immediately, and to the greatest extent permitted by law, the order directs Missouri state agencies, boards, commissions, and local law-enforcement entities that receive state funding and use ALPR technology to implement minimum standards until a permanent legislative framework is enacted.
30-day deletion rule
Captured license-plate and vehicle images generally must be permanently deleted within 30 days. Data may be retained longer when directly linked to a specific active criminal investigation, an active life-safety emergency, or when necessary to comply with a court order.
Purpose and vendor limits
ALPR access is limited to the administration of criminal justice and bona fide lifesaving efforts. Missouri-generated data must remain government property, and covered vendors are restricted from accessing, selling, sharing, commercializing, or leveraging it for non-law-enforcement purposes.
Auditability and misuse
Every query must record the user identity and an active case number or specific law-enforcement justification. Personal use, stalking, unauthorized sharing, and non-criminal-justice hot-list additions trigger disciplinary proceedings, criminal referral where appropriate, and reporting to the Department of Public Safety for possible officer-license discipline.
Federal ALPR proposals
No comprehensive federal ALPR statute was identified through October 3, 2026. The measures below are proposals, not operative restrictions. The October 2 Ban Flock Act was announced with draft text; bill numbers were not confirmed in the sources reviewed for this page.
H.R. 10221 — Flock-Off Act
Would prohibit federal funds from being used to purchase, install, maintain, operate, or upgrade covered automated license plate reader and biometric-surveillance camera systems. The proposal also reaches connected contracts, subscriptions, cloud services, databases, and data-sharing arrangements.
Introduced Sept. 2, 2026 · House OversightH.R. 9800 — Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act
Would bar federal agencies from purchasing, deploying, operating, accessing, or contracting for Flock Safety-type ALPR cameras and other covered mass-surveillance technologies, and would restrict certain federal funding for state/local acquisition or operation.
Introduced July 21, 2026H.R. 9716 — PRIVACY Act
Would require federal law-enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before accessing or querying ALPR and other surveillance data collected by state/local systems.
Introduced July 15, 2026H.R. 10366 — NO FLOCK Act
Would condition apportioned federal surface-transportation funding on states adopting specified restrictions on ALPR use. Bill text and status →
Introduced Sept. 14, 2026H.R. 10606 — FLAFO Act
Rep. Steube's proposal would restrict federal agencies' warrantless access to networked ALPR systems and condition certain DOJ grants on comparable safeguards, subject to exceptions. H.R. 10606 and FLAFO are one bill. Sponsor's summary and draft →
Introduced Sept. 24, 2026Ban Flock Act
Sen. Sanders, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, and Sen. Merkley released a proposal to prohibit federal ALPR use and restrict federal funding to state and local governments using ALPR. Confirm formal bill numbers and text before citing it as filed legislation. Announcement →
Released Oct. 2, 2026Perry/García ALPR Amendment
Amendment 221 to the BUILD America 250 Act would have limited ALPR use by Title 23 highway-funding recipients to tolling. It failed 20–44 in committee on May 21, 2026.
Not enactedCORCA — H.R. 2853 / S. 1404
Organized-retail-crime legislation that would create a federal coordination center capable of drawing on ALPR, facial-recognition, and other data. The House bill passed May 12, 2026; the Senate bill remained pending.
Expansion of federal useCongressional Research Service
CRS IF13068 (2025) and R48160 (2024) provide federal background on automated license plate readers, law-enforcement use, privacy, and related Fourth Amendment issues.
Federal research backgroundState framework explorer
Select a state for a concise operational summary of enacted law or other current statewide ALPR frameworks based on research reviewed October 3, 2026.
Washington — SB 6002 (2026)
New statewide framework restricting ALPR use, retention, placement, sharing, and operational reliance.
California — Civil Code § 1798.90.5 et seq.
California regulates ALPR operators and end users through privacy, security, use-policy, and data-sharing requirements.
Virginia — Va. Code § 2.2-5517
Use is limited to defined purposes such as active criminal investigations, human trafficking, and stolen vehicles/plates.
Illinois — 625 ILCS 5/2-130
Current law focuses on sharing and confidentiality restrictions. The 90-day archive / 5-year destruction schedule is not current Illinois law; it appears in pending SB 3257.
Maine — 29-A M.R.S. § 2117-A
General-use prohibition subject to narrow law-enforcement and transportation exceptions.
New Hampshire — RSA § 261:75-b
Use is restricted to law-enforcement officers and is subject to state attorney-general audit.
Arkansas — Act 668 / SB 446 (2025)
Expanded permitted use to certain private landowners, leaseholders, and commercial businesses alongside government users.
Idaho — S. 1180 (2025)
Authorizes ALPR use for specified public-safety and traffic-related purposes while barring routine traffic enforcement and political/non-law-enforcement use.
Montana — SB 282 (2025)
Not ALPR-specific. Restricts state/local government purchase of sensitive personal data, including geolocation data, from data brokers without a warrant, consent, or investigative subpoena.
Missouri — Executive Order 26-18 (2026)
Effective September 16, 2026, Executive Order 26-18 establishes minimum ALPR safeguards for Missouri state entities and local law-enforcement entities that receive state funding and use ALPR technology while the state develops a permanent legislative framework.
Connecticut — SB 397 / Public Act 26-14
The 2026 act regulates use and retention of ALPR-derived data. Its enacted vehicle-data provisions took effect October 1, 2026. Check the act's definitions, exceptions, and applicable effective dates before changing policy. The enacted act arose from SB 397, not HB 5449.
New Mexico — SB 40 / Driver Privacy and Safety Act
Chapter 20 of 2026 regulates ALPR use and data sharing, including limits on access for purposes outside the state's authorized framework. Review agency and vendor sharing practices against the enacted text.
Kentucky — HB 58 (2026)
Establishes ALPR use and data rules, written public law-enforcement policies, and provisions for transportation, insurance, and collateral-recovery uses. Captured plate data generally may be retained beyond 90 days only under specified investigative or preservation exceptions.
Active, pending, and recently concluded state bills
Use the filters to review legislation identified in the tracker research reviewed October 3, 2026. Status should be re-verified before reliance.
| State | Bill | Key proposal | Status as of Oct. 3, 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colorado | SB26-070 | Would regulate government access to databases containing historical location information, including vehicle-location information, subject to exceptions; would also restrict sharing and create compliance and enforcement requirements. | Lost / not enacted in 2026 session |
| Colorado | SB26-071 | Surveillance-technology oversight proposal covering law-enforcement technologies, including ALPR-related concerns. | Postponed indefinitely May 6, 2026 |
| California | SB 274 | Would have imposed additional statewide ALPR privacy, security, sharing, audit, and retention requirements, including a 60-day limit for specified non-hot-list information in the enrolled measure. | Vetoed; veto sustained Mar. 2, 2026 |
| Illinois | HB 5151 | Would create a standalone ALPR statute addressing authorized uses, retention, prohibited uses, reporting, admissibility, penalties, and private enforcement. | Re-referred to House Rules Committee Apr. 17, 2026 |
| Illinois | SB 3257 | Would allow ALPR detection records to be retained for five years, archive records after 90 days absent specified investigative or trial needs, restrict access to archived records, and bar out-of-state searches of records archived after 90 days. | Re-referred to Senate Assignments May 22, 2026 |
| Illinois | SB 3816 | Would create a separate ALPR System Act governing authorized uses, retention, prohibited uses, reporting, penalties, and private enforcement. | Re-referred to Senate Assignments May 22, 2026 |
| Minnesota | HF 3856 / companion | Would prohibit state/local government entities from using ALPR while separately regulating private use. | Referred to Judiciary Finance & Civil Law Mar. 2, 2026 |
| New York | S9890 / A10808 | Would prohibit government use of ALPR systems or captured plate data except for specified limited purposes. | Companion bills in Senate and Assembly committees |
| South Carolina | S. 447 | Would define ALPR terms, limit authorized users and purposes, require documented law-enforcement purposes and audit logs, and generally limit law-enforcement retention to 90 days unless tied to an ongoing investigation. | Senate Judiciary favorable report Apr. 8, 2026 |
| South Carolina | H. 4013 | Would regulate authorized ALPR users and purposes, require agency policy, audit trails, confirmation before stops, and generally cap law-enforcement retention at 90 days unless part of an ongoing investigation. | House Education & Public Works Committee |
| New Jersey | A2594 / S3035 | Current-session carry-forward measures would criminalize unauthorized law-enforcement access, require annual agency reporting and audits, and establish a two-year retention-and-purge framework for stored ALPR data. | Introduced Jan. 13, 2026; in committees |
| New Jersey | A5481 | Would require government entities and covered vendors to delete stored ALPR data within 180 days, subject to discovery obligations. | Introduced Sept. 14, 2026 |
| New Jersey | A5483 | Comprehensive proposal with a two-day default deletion requirement, specified preservation exceptions, access logs, and annual audits. | Introduced Sept. 14, 2026 |
| Pennsylvania | SB 933 | Would create a process permitting ALPR deployment on state-owned highway infrastructure. | Senate Transportation Committee; no later action identified |
Bill numbers and status reflect research reviewed October 3, 2026 and should be verified on the relevant legislature’s official website before use.
Funding and right-of-way decisions
These actions are distinct from enacted statewide ALPR statutes and may depend on agency implementation.
Texas — state funding for Flock cameras
Contemporaneous reporting describes Governor Abbott’s August 2026 pause in state funding for Flock cameras. The underlying directive was not located in this review; agencies should confirm its precise scope and implementing grant guidance. Texas Tribune report →
Florida — state-highway permits
Contemporaneous reporting describes Florida DOT’s late-August 2026 revocation of ALPR equipment permits in state-highway rights-of-way and a removal directive. The underlying agency order was not located in this review. This concerns state-highway siting, not every Florida ALPR deployment. News report →
What agencies should be watching
Across enacted laws and pending bills, the same governance issues appear repeatedly.
1. Shorter retention periods
Legislation increasingly limits how long non-hit or non-evidentiary detections can remain searchable.
2. Cross-jurisdiction sharing restrictions
States are limiting access by federal or out-of-state agencies, particularly for immigration, reproductive-health, or other protected-purpose investigations.
3. Historical-search warrant proposals
Some proposals would require judicial process before law enforcement may query historical ALPR data beyond an initial time window.
4. Audit trails and independent review
Access logs, state registration, random audits, reporting, and independent oversight are becoming recurring statutory features. Vendor anomaly detection does not replace an audit required by statute, attorney-general guidance, local policy, contract, or agency procedure.
5. Sensitive-location and purpose restrictions
Schools, healthcare facilities, houses of worship, courts, First Amendment activity, and other sensitive contexts are receiving express legislative attention.
6. Independent confirmation before enforcement action
At least one enacted framework expressly bars relying on an ALPR match alone as the basis for a vehicle stop without independent confirmation.
Regulation follows the technology, not the brand
Current ALPR statutes and bills are generally drafted by function rather than vendor name.
Flock Safety
Named frequently in 2026 legislation, audits, litigation, and public controversy because of its market presence and network scale.
Leonardo / ELSAG
No specific bill, audit, or lawsuit naming Leonardo, ELSAG, or Plate Hunter was identified in this research pass. That limited search result does not establish that none exists; vendor-neutral laws may apply to those deployments.
Other ALPR Providers
The same retention, sharing, warrant, placement, oversight, and prohibited-purpose rules may apply to Motorola/Vigilant, Rekor, Genetec, PlateSmart, Perceptics, Jenoptik, Axon, and other systems.
Legislation is evolving alongside litigation
These authorities provide legal context for the statutory themes tracked on this page. They are classified to distinguish direct ALPR decisions from analogous constitutional doctrine and statutory-access litigation.
Commonwealth v. McCarthy
A limited bridge-camera deployment did not reveal enough movement to constitute a search on the facts presented. The court nevertheless recognized that a sufficiently extensive ALPR network could raise a different constitutional question.
United States v. Martin
The court declined to extend Carpenter’s location-data reasoning to the approximately 188-camera Flock network presented on that record. The decision should be read in light of the network, query, retention, and evidentiary facts before that court.
Schmidt v. City of Norfolk
The district court granted summary judgment for Norfolk. The Fourth Circuit appeal may further address camera density, gaps in coverage, retention, outside-agency data, network access, and retrospective searching.
Javorsky v. Flock Group Inc.
The litigation alleges improper federal and out-of-state access to San Francisco ALPR data under California law. Its significance here concerns statutory compliance, access controls, and sharing practices rather than a final constitutional holding.
Carpenter v. United States
Carpenter addressed historical cell-site location information, not ALPR. It remains important to questions involving aggregated, persistent, retrospectively searchable records of physical movement.
United States v. Jones
Jones involved physical installation and use of a GPS device. Its concurring opinions supply foundational concepts concerning prolonged electronic monitoring and aggregation.
Chatrie v. United States
Chatrie concerned geofence-derived phone-location information, not ALPR. It is relevant by analogy when a search begins with a location or event and examines multiple unknown devices or vehicles before identifying a suspect.
Keep the three resources distinct
The Legislation Tracker identifies enacted laws, pending proposals, and the judicial context surrounding them. ALPR and Vehicle Intelligence explains the technology and agency-governance framework. The Case Law Center provides the full analysis of individual decisions.
Primary legal sources and current reporting
Primary legislative and executive-order sources were used to re-check current legal status. Vendor statements remain identified as vendor representations, and independent reporting is used only for current context that is not yet reflected in primary legal sources.
- GovInfo — H.R. 10221, Flock-Off Act (introduced September 2, 2026; referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform).
- U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie — Flock-Off Act announcement and summary (September 2, 2026).
- GovInfo — H.R. 9800, Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act (introduced July 21, 2026).
- U.S. Rep. Keith Self — PRIVACY Act announcement (July 15, 2026).
- Colorado General Assembly — SB26-070 (status: lost).
- Illinois General Assembly — HB 5151.
- Illinois General Assembly — SB 3257.
- Minnesota Legislature — HF 3856.
- New York legislative portal — A10808.
- South Carolina Legislature — S. 447.
- South Carolina Legislature — H. 4013.
- Pennsylvania General Assembly — SB 933.
- Missouri Secretary of State — Executive Order 26-18 (effective September 16, 2026; interim ALPR standards for state entities and state-funded local law enforcement).
- Missouri Governor's Office — ALPR Executive Order announcement (September 16, 2026).
- Flock Safety — Privacy, Accountability, Security, and Transparency Safeguards (August 13, 2026; vendor source).
- GovInfo — H.R. 10366, NO FLOCK Act.
- Rep. Steube — H.R. 10606 / FLAFO Act and draft text.
- Sen. Sanders — Ban Flock Act announcement (bill number not confirmed here).
- Senate Judiciary — September 23 ALPR oversight hearing.
- Connecticut General Assembly — SB 397 / PA 26-14.
- New Mexico Legislature — SB 40.
- Kentucky Legislature — HB 58.
- Illinois General Assembly — SB 3816.
- New York Senate — S9890 / A10808 companion bills.
- New Jersey Legislature — A5481; A5483.
- ShieldPST.ai Police Technology Case Law Center.
- ShieldPST.ai ALPR and Vehicle Intelligence.