Automatic license plate reader cameras — the ones that take pictures of every vehicle that passes by, including make, model and bumper stickers — aren’t inherently an invasion of privacy, according to a federal judge in Norfolk.
That was in response to a lawsuit by local privacy advocates arguing the data collected by the growing network of cameras could be used to deduce a person’s daily movements and routines.
The photos from the cameras are saved in a database searchable by law enforcement officials in Virginia for 21 days.
In Norfolk, these cameras are owned by a company called Flock Safety. And the city has a growing network of them installed along roads and at intersections.
Law enforcement officials say these cameras play a crucial role in public safety, including solving missing persons cases, finding stolen vehicles and lowering homicide rates. Privacy advocates say they violate people’s privacy and Fourth Amendment rights, which protects against warrantless searches.
Hampton Roads residents Lee Schmidt and Crystal Arrington sued over the cameras in 2024.
Federal judge Mark Davis ruled Jan. 27 Norfolk’s Flock cameras aren’t an invasion of privacy but warned this could change as the technology expands.
“... ALPR surveillance could become too intrusive and run afoul of [constitutional privacy standards] at some point,” Davis wrote in the 51-page ruling. “While a definitive answer to that question is elusive, what is readily apparent to this Court is that, at least in Norfolk, Virginia, the answer is: not today.”
Schmidt and Arrington, represented by the Institute for Justice, plan to appeal the decision.
“Although I'm of course disappointed by the court's decision, I remain committed to fighting against this dragnet warrantless surveillance,” Lee said in a press release following the ruling.
The lawsuit claimed the data collected by the cameras could be used to track people going about their daily lives and piece together people’s movements. It dubbed the cameras the city’s “unblinking eyes” and the data they collected akin to a warrantless search.
Scmidt’s car was photographed by Norfolk’s Flock cameras 475 times in four and half months, and Arrington’s was photographed 325 times in the same time span — which the two residents found “creepy,” according to the original complaint filed October 2024. The suit emphasized their concern for how the data could be misused and weaponized.
An investigation by the Associated Press found that the federal government uses automatic license plate readers to target drivers it deems suspicious.
Virginia law limits access to ALPR data to only state officials. But before that law took effect in July 2025, an analysis by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO found that federal agencies tried to access local data from Virginia thousands of times for the purpose of immigration enforcement. Outside law enforcement accessed one small town’s data nearly 7 million times in a year through the town’s Flock network.
And a study from Christopher Newport University found that not all communities are surveilled equally by Flock cameras in Hampton Roads, with ALPR cameras concentrated around Black communities.
Davis ruled that though the cameras captured snapshots of a person’s daily life, they didn’t continuously track people or capture enough data to reconstruct whole routines.
Schmidt’s and Arrington’s cars were photographed hundreds of times, but the photos were taken a few miles and between 40 and 50 minutes apart, leaving sizable gaps in their movements, Davis wrote.
The ruling came with a caveat. Davis warned “as the number and capabilities of ALPR cameras expand, the constitutional balancing could conceivably tip the other way.”
In other words, what's constitutional today may not be constitutional tomorrow as the network of cameras grows.
Local privacy advocate Clayton Tye said Davis’s acknowledgment of a tipping point is encouraging, but “the scale has already been shifted.”
The city of Norfolk had 172 Flock cameras installed in 2024, according to the lawsuit. As of the ruling Jan. 27, Norfolk has 176 Flock cameras. In 2024, Norfolk Police Chief Mark Talbot told the City Council the department planned to acquire more than 230 Flock cameras total.
On Jan. 27, the same day as Davis’s ruling, Chief Talbot told the City Council the department uses Flock cameras and more than 3,000 integrated camera streams to identify suspects and solve cases.
