LP Condemns Warrantless Mass Surveillance as Police Deploy License Plate Readers and Signal Trackers Nationwide

On July 5, 2026, the Libertarian National Committee passed a resolution condemning the government surveillance systems that have quietly been tracking Americans wherever they drive. The Resolution on the Warrantless Dragnet Surveillance of Personal Electronic Devices demands no collection of anyone's movement data by law enforcement without a warrant, and no warrant without probable cause of a specific crime.

The Technology

Police departments around the country have been building out these networks the last few years. The Automated License Plate Reader, or ALPR, photographs every vehicle that rolls past them, and the software behind them reads the plate and logs where it was, on what day and time. Flock Safety goes further. Its cameras record a car's make, color, and any distinguishing marks, then drop all of it into a searchable database that agencies share with one another. Flock currently runs more than 80,000 cameras across over 5,000 communities in 49 states.

Signals intelligence platforms like Leonardo/ELSAG SignalTrace don't need a camera at all. They passively vacuum up the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and RFID signals leaking from common devices, then stitch those emissions into ongoing profiles tied to a phone, fitness tracker, or even your car's key fob. No suspicion required. No probable cause, no judge, no warrant.

And the data is not always as secure as the vendors would have us believe. Cybersecurity researchers discovered that some Flock cameras sat exposed on the open internet with no login at all. So, at least for a stretch of time, anyone could have tracked where a given vehicle had been. Public records requests have also revealed that agencies frequently share captured data with one another, sometimes even after publicly stating they had opted out.

The Math Problem

The LNC resolution highlights a statistical reality that vendors tend to leave out of their sales pitches. When a system scans an overwhelmingly innocent population, even a very low error rate produces a flood of false matches. The vast majority of "hits" flag people who have done nothing wrong. Such profiling translates into wrongful stops and, in some cases, wrongful arrests.

According to reporting by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Arizona police used ALPR technology to surveil protesters exercising First Amendment rights, and one department ran a search using an ethnic slur. In another widely reported case, police in Texas used the network to search for a woman who had obtained a legal abortion in another state.

Bipartisan Consensus

The resolution notes that both major parties have supported the expansion of these systems. Surveillance vendors often claim perpetual licensing rights over the data they capture while training officers to advocate for their products. The arrangement often blurs the line between public safety policy and private sales strategy.

In Arizona, the pushback united some of the most progressive Democrats with the most conservative Republicans, in a real-world example of horseshoe theory. That said, the sustained organizing muscle behind the effort has come in large part from libertarians.

AZLP: The Model for Resistance

The Libertarian Party of Arizona has become a case study in how communities can roll back surveillance programs through open democratic processes. Activists there testified in public hearings, built coalitions across the political spectrum, filed public records requests to expose how the systems were actually being used, and helped develop alternative legislation.

Senate Bill 1111, backed by law enforcement unions, would have codified ALPR use while exempting all captured plate data from public records requests. Privacy advocates opposed it, and the bill was ultimately stopped on the Senate floor.

A rival approach, a striker to HB2917, took the opposite path. The party strongly supported the striker bill's strict boundaries, demanding that mass tracking devices never record citizens traveling to political protests, rallies, or religious buildings. The movement advocates for a zero-tolerance policy on long-term data tracking, demanding that any piece of digital emission or movement data require a targeted warrant based on specific probable cause.

It would require voter approval before any local government or state agency could establish a surveillance network, drawing on the framework of Arizona's Truth in Taxation law. It also incorporated feedback from residents, including members of the What the Flock coalition. The police-backed bill focused on access and standardization while the citizen-driven proposal focused on limiting deployment, restricting data flow, and returning decision-making authority to voters.

Be it Resolved

The resolution resolves that the LNC categorically condemns the deployment of mass surveillance networks and demands that any collection of movement data or digital emissions by law enforcement be prohibited without a targeted warrant issued by a judge on probable cause of a specific crime.

It further directs the party's communications staff and encourages affiliates to educate their communities about surveillance threats, share the resistance models pioneered by affiliates like the AZLP, expose corporate influence operations, and build broad coalitions to restore constitutional protections in the digital age.

The Legal Landscape

The Libertarian position is gaining legal reinforcement. Courts have begun to apply the Fourth Amendment to digital-age surveillance tools, extending the logic of cases involving cell phone location data to the issue of mass location tracking. The Fourth Amendment protects the right of individuals to be secure against unreasonable searches, and a system that logs the movements of an entire population breaks this promise. A free society does not treat every citizen as a suspect by default. The burden of proof belongs to the government.

Readers who want to learn more or get involved can review the full resolution and connect with their state affiliate.