20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY APRIL 2-8, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com Is the monitoring of license plates in Monterey County and beyond a boon for policing or another step closer to a mass surveillance state? By Aric Sleeper CANDID CAMERAS They’re watching you—more than 300 automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras in Monterey County alone—snapping point-in-time photos of your vehicle as you drive from home to work and everywhere in between, and storing the data in a cloud for law enforcement agencies, who use the data to track down stolen cars, missing persons and fugitives on the run. The system of interconnected cameras in the county is courtesy of Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company that runs a nationwide network of ALPR cameras used by roughly 5,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. Although law enforcement agencies own the data collected by the cameras, Flock Safety owns the cameras. Law enforcement agencies pay to access the data they collect, which is stored on an Amazon Web Services Government Cloud until it’s deleted, generally within 30 days after its capture. The company states that the cameras only collect license plate numbers and vehicular features such as make, model, color and characteristics like dents, alterations and bumper stickers, and do not More than 300 automated license plate reader cameras have been installed around Monterey County in recent years by the company Flock Safety, in partnership with local law enforcement agencies (including in Pacific Grove, shown above). DANIEL DREIFUSS
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