A Bipartisan Amendment Would End Police License Plate Tracking Nationwide
A Bipartisan Amendment Would End Police License Plate Tracking Nationwide
两党修正案拟在全美范围内终结警方车牌追踪
US lawmakers plan to introduce an amendment Thursday at a House committee markup hearing that would prohibit any recipient of federal highway funding from using automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling—a sweeping restriction that, if adopted, would bring an immediate end to state and local ALPR programs across the United States.
美国立法者计划于周四在众议院委员会的审议听证会上提出一项修正案。该修正案将禁止任何联邦公路资金的接收者将自动车牌识别系统（ALPR）用于收费以外的任何目的。如果该修正案获得通过，这项广泛的限制措施将立即终结全美各州及地方的 ALPR 项目。
The amendment, obtained first by WIRED, is sponsored by Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican and Freedom Caucus member, and Representative Jesús “Chuy” García, an Illinois progressive whose state has become a flash point in the national fight over ALPR misuse.
该修正案由《连线》（WIRED）杂志率先获得，由宾夕法尼亚州共和党众议员、自由核心小组成员斯科特·佩里（Scott Perry）和伊利诺伊州进步派众议员赫苏斯·“楚伊”·加西亚（Jesús “Chuy” García）共同发起。加西亚所在的伊利诺伊州已成为全国范围内关于 ALPR 滥用争议的焦点。
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will mark up the underlying bill—a $580 billion, five-year reauthorization of federal surface transportation programs—at 10 am ET on Thursday.
众议院交通与基础设施委员会将于美国东部时间周四上午 10 点对相关基础法案进行审议，该法案涉及 5800 亿美元的联邦地面交通项目五年期重新授权。
Neither Perry nor García’s offices immediately responded to WIRED’s request for comment.
佩里和加西亚的办公室均未立即回应《连线》杂志的置评请求。
The amendment runs a single sentence: “A recipient of assistance under Title 23, United States Code, may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling.”
该修正案仅有一句话：“根据《美国法典》第 23 篇获得援助的接收者，不得将自动车牌识别系统用于收费以外的任何目的。”
The amendment is brief, but its reach would be vast. Title 23 funds roughly a quarter of all public road mileage in the US, including most state and county arteries and many city streets where ALPR cameras are becoming ubiquitous. Conditioning that funding on a ban of the technology would, in practical effect, force any state, county, or municipality that takes federal highway money (essentially all of them) to either remove the cameras or restructure their use around tolling alone.
该修正案虽然简短，但影响深远。《美国法典》第 23 篇资助了美国约四分之一的公共道路里程，包括大多数州和县的主干道以及许多 ALPR 摄像头日益普及的城市街道。将联邦资金与禁止该技术挂钩，实际上将迫使所有接受联邦公路资金的州、县或市政府（几乎涵盖所有地方政府）要么拆除摄像头，要么将其用途仅限于收费。
The amendment’s cosponsors, Perry and García, represent opposite ends of the House’s ideological spectrum but converge on a surveillance concern that has gathered momentum in legislatures and city halls across the US as ALPR networks have quietly become a pervasive layer of American road infrastructure.
该修正案的共同发起人佩里和加西亚代表了众议院意识形态光谱的两端，但在监控担忧问题上达成了一致。随着 ALPR 网络悄然成为美国道路基础设施中无处不在的一环，这种担忧在全美的立法机构和市政厅中日益高涨。
ALPR cameras—mounted on poles, overpasses, traffic signals, and police cruisers—photograph every passing license plate, log times and locations, and feed data into searchable databases shared across agencies and jurisdictions.
ALPR 摄像头安装在电线杆、立交桥、交通信号灯和警车上，拍摄每一辆经过车辆的车牌，记录时间和地点，并将数据输入到各机构和司法管辖区共享的可搜索数据库中。
In Illinois, where García’s district sits, Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias announced last August that an audit by his office had found Flock Group—the Atlanta-based company that operates the country’s largest ALPR network—in violation of state law for giving US Customs and Border Protection access to Illinois ALPR data. Giannoulias ordered the company to cut off federal access.
在加西亚所在的伊利诺伊州，州务卿亚历克西·吉安努利亚斯（Alexi Giannoulias）去年 8 月宣布，其办公室的一项审计发现，运营全美最大 ALPR 网络的亚特兰大公司 Flock Group 违反了州法律，向美国海关和边境保护局提供了伊利诺伊州的 ALPR 数据。吉安努利亚斯下令该公司切断联邦机构的访问权限。
Flock said at the time that it would pause federal pilots nationwide, arrangements the company had previously denied existed in what Flock CEO and founder Garrett Langley said were public statements that “inadvertently provided inaccurate information.”
Flock 当时表示将暂停在全国范围内的联邦试点项目。该公司此前曾否认存在此类安排，Flock 首席执行官兼创始人加勒特·兰利（Garrett Langley）称，之前的公开声明“无意中提供了不准确的信息”。
Flock did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
Flock 未立即回应《连线》杂志的置评请求。
Privacy advocates have long warned that the aggregation of license plate data amounts to a de facto warrantless tracking system. New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice has documented the integration of ALPR feeds into police data-fusion systems that combine plate data with surveillance and social media monitoring. And the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, has documented a range of police misuse, including the past targeting of mosques and the disproportionate deployment of the technology in low-income neighborhoods.
隐私倡导者长期以来一直警告称，车牌数据的聚合实际上构成了一种无需搜查令的追踪系统。纽约大学法学院布伦南司法中心记录了 ALPR 数据流被整合进警方数据融合系统的情况，该系统将车牌数据与监控及社交媒体监测相结合。数字权利非营利组织电子前沿基金会（EFF）也记录了一系列警方滥用行为，包括过去针对清真寺的监控，以及在低收入社区过度部署该技术。
Court records obtained by the EFF and reported by 404 Media last year revealed that a Texas sheriff’s deputy has queried Flock’s nationwide network—roughly 88,000 cameras at the time—to track a woman because, he wrote, she “had an abortion.”
EFF 获得并由 404 Media 去年报道的法庭记录显示，一名德克萨斯州的警长副手曾查询 Flock 的全国网络（当时约有 88,000 个摄像头）以追踪一名女性，原因是他写道，该女性“堕过胎”。
“Flock cameras are easily abused and have already been banned in many municipalities across the nation for their failure to keep our data safe,” says Hajar Hammado, senior policy adviser at Demand Progress, who believes the Perry-García amendment is “commonsense” and says that the country has become a “mass surveillance dystopia.”
“Flock 摄像头很容易被滥用，并且由于无法保护我们的数据安全，已经在全国许多城市被禁用，”Demand Progress 的高级政策顾问哈贾尔·哈马多（Hajar Hammado）表示。她认为佩里-加西亚修正案是“常识性”的，并称美国已经变成了一个“大规模监控的反乌托邦”。
In April, the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, filed a class action lawsuit against the city of San Jose, California, and its police department, alleging the city’s 474-camera network violates the Fourth Amendment rights of its residents. The database, which captured more than 360 million photographs in 2024, was searched roughly 15,000 times a day by police across California in the second half of 2025, the complaint says. The city has appeared in the case through the San Jose City Attorney’s Office but has yet to file a substantive response.
今年 4 月，公益律师事务所“司法研究所”（Institute for Justice）对加利福尼亚州圣何塞市及其警察局提起集体诉讼，指控该市拥有 474 个摄像头的网络侵犯了居民的第四修正案权利。诉状称，该数据库在 2024 年拍摄了超过 3.6 亿张照片，在 2025 年下半年，加州各地的警察每天对其搜索约 1.5 万次。圣何塞市检察官办公室已出庭应诉，但尚未提交实质性答复。
San Jose mayor Matt Mahan, who is named as a defendant in a separate state-court ALPR challenge filed in November by the EFF and American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, has been a vocal proponent of the city’s camera network.
圣何塞市长马特·马汉（Matt Mahan）是 EFF 和北加州美国公民自由联盟（ACLU）于 11 月在州法院提起的另一项 ALPR 挑战中的被告，他一直是该市摄像头网络的大力支持者。
Federal courts have been hesitant so far to rule that ALPR queries categorically constitute a Fourth Amendment search, with some ruling that people have no reasonable expectation of privacy on the road. A Congressional Research Service brief earlier this year noted, however, that “state and federal courts have cautioned that the technology could run afoul of the Fourth Amendment moving forward,” with one court even suggesting that, due to rapid advancements in the technology, “that day might well be on the horizon.”
到目前为止，联邦法院对于 ALPR 查询是否绝对构成第四修正案意义上的“搜查”持谨慎态度，一些法院裁定人们在道路上没有合理的隐私预期。然而，国会研究服务处今年早些时候的一份简报指出，“州和联邦法院已警告称，该技术未来可能会触犯第四修正案”，甚至有法院暗示，由于技术的飞速进步，“那一天可能很快就会到来”。
The Perry-García amendment would effectively side-step the constitutional issue altogether by creating a spending-power restriction—as Congress has done in the past with the drinking age and DUI standards.
佩里-加西亚修正案将通过设立支出权力限制，有效地完全绕过宪法问题——正如国会过去在法定饮酒年龄和酒驾标准问题上所做的那样。
States reserve the right to simply decline the money. Historically, almost none ever do.
各州保留拒绝接受这笔资金的权利。但从历史上看，几乎没有州会这样做。