The Constitution begins with three simple words: “We the People.” It then declares one of the central purposes of our government is to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Government derives its authority from the people, and it exists not to diminish their freedom, but to preserve it for future generations. That responsibility is as important today as ever.
Artificial intelligence is transforming nearly every aspect of American life. It is accelerating medical breakthroughs, improving public safety and creating opportunities that would have seemed impossible only a decade ago.
Throughout our history, Americans have embraced innovation, which has both strengthened our nation and improved our daily lives. The challenge before us today is ensuring technological progress never comes at the expense of individual liberty. Whether these new capabilities strengthen a free society or gradually erode it depends on the laws written to govern it and the principles we refuse to compromise.
What automated license plate readers do
Automated license plate readers, commonly known as ALPRs and often referred to simply as Flock cameras, bring that challenge into sharp focus. There is no doubt these systems have helped law enforcement recover stolen vehicles, locate missing children and identify dangerous criminals. Those successes deserve recognition, and I have never wavered in my support for the men and women who wear the badge.
Respecting law enforcement, however, has never required embracing or accepting every new surveillance capability.
The government should investigate criminals, not chronicle the lives of innocent Americans.
Imagine if Congress debated legislation requiring the government to maintain a record of where every American drove just in case that information might someday be useful in a criminal investigation. That information would likely reveal where people worshipped, which political meetings they attended, what doctor’s office they visited and who they spent time with.
Americans across the political spectrum would, and should, reject such a proposal because it would represent a dramatic departure from our constitutional freedoms. Yet that is precisely the direction in which advances in artificial intelligence and the rapid expansion of ALPR networks are taking us — not through one sweeping act of Congress, but through thousands of cameras quietly collecting information on millions of everyday Americans going about their daily lives.
The concern is not that these systems can help solve crimes. They can, and they do. The concern is that they collect information indiscriminately rather than selectively. Traditional policing begins with evidence pointing to a suspect and follows the facts wherever they lead. Mass surveillance turns that principle on its head by gathering information about everyone first and deciding later whose movements may become relevant. That is more than a technological shift. It is a fundamental change in the relationship between citizens and government, and it goes to the heart of the Fourth Amendment.
Innocent citizens should not live under mass surveillance
Artificial intelligence has dramatically expanded the reach of these systems. Modern ALPR networks can identify vehicles not only by their license plates, but also by their make, model, color, bumper stickers, roof racks and other distinguishing characteristics. Combined with increasingly sophisticated analytics, those observations can reveal patterns of movement, identify personal associations and reconstruct remarkably detailed accounts of an individual’s daily life. The government should investigate criminals, not chronicle the lives of innocent Americans.
Whenever concerns like these are raised, someone inevitably responds, “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.” That phrase has become so familiar, we rarely stop to consider what it actually means.
The protections guaranteed by the Constitution were never intended only for those accused of crimes. They exist because innocent people should not have to live as if they are under constant observation. We protect our homes, our medical records, our financial information and the secrecy of our ballots not because we are hiding wrongdoing, but because free people do not have to reveal every aspect of their private lives to the government.
Innocent people’s use of public roads should not be used to quietly assemble a nationwide database capable of tracking where they live, work, worship, seek medical care, raise their families or exercise their constitutional rights. This holds true whether the tools to acquire such detailed information are owned by a private enterprise, a government entity or a government entity contracting with a private enterprise.
Technological innovation does not create a license to collect, retain or monetize the movements of millions of law-abiding Americans without their knowledge or meaningful consent. By purchasing, accessing or relying upon such mass-collected road surveillance data, government entities indirectly accomplish what the Constitution directly prohibits. That is not consistent with the values of a free society.
While the recent changes announced by the maker of Flock cameras are allegedly designed to address privacy concerns and multiple documented cases of abuse, these are merely voluntary promises by one company offering ALPR technology. They do not address concerns about the warrantless mass surveillance capabilities of this technology nor are the provisions industrywide. Our constitutional rights should not be subject to the voluntary whims of corporate surveillance companies or a patchwork of local, state and municipal policies across the country.
Congress and our state legislatures should not wait until these systems become so interwoven into everyday life that meaningful reform is impossible. States should establish clear limits on how location data is collected, used, retained, shared and sold while ensuring these technologies remain focused on legitimate criminal investigations rather than on routine surveillance.
Congress should ensure that federal agencies cannot use state or privately operated surveillance networks to circumvent constitutional protections or create a de facto national tracking system that no elected body ever explicitly authorized. Public safety and constitutional liberty are not competing values. Good laws preserve both.
The choices we make today will shape the relationship between liberty and technology for generations to come. Artificial intelligence will continue transforming our world. Our responsibility is to ensure innovation never outruns the Constitution. If we preserve that balance, we will leave our children and grandchildren a nation that is every bit as free as the one we inherited.