If you’ve driven around Upper Merion recently, there is a good chance you’ve passed an automated license plate reader without giving it much thought.

The cameras can be relatively easy to miss. But as vehicles pass, automated license plate reader systems — commonly known as ALPRs — can photograph license plates and associate those detections with information such as the time and location of the scan.

One of the biggest names in that business is Flock Safety.

And suddenly, Flock cameras are at the center of a rapidly growing debate in Pennsylvania and across the country over public safety, privacy and just how much information about ordinary drivers should be collected, stored and made searchable.

That debate has now reached Montgomery County.

Abington Township Police recently announced that the department is ending its contracts with Flock Safety over concerns about data security and privacy and is seeking a replacement system. Importantly, Abington is not abandoning license plate readers altogether. Police there have said the technology provides significant investigative value.

Then, on Friday, Aug. 28, Gov. Josh Shapiro said during an appearance in Upper Moreland Township that he would welcome bipartisan legislation banning Flock cameras across Pennsylvania.

Shapiro said Pennsylvania State Police do not use Flock cameras and said the technology is not something he supports, while also emphasizing that law enforcement should have appropriate tools to keep communities safe.

Two Pennsylvania senators had circulated separate proposals just one day earlier.

Sen. Dan Laughlin announced plans for legislation that would prohibit Flock Safety cameras and substantially similar networked automated license plate reader systems in Pennsylvania. His proposal had not yet been formally introduced as legislation.

Sen. Doug Mastriano announced a separate proposal aimed at prohibiting what he described as the mass, suspicionless collection and retention of vehicle-location information while preserving law enforcement’s ability to use ALPR technology in specific investigations. That proposal also had not yet been formally introduced.

All of which raises an obvious local question:

What exactly is operating here in Upper Merion?

One thing is clear from township records: automated license plate reader technology is not new to the Upper Merion Police Department.

Upper Merion Police maintains a formal policy titled Automatic License Plate Readers, identified as Policy 755.

Read Upper Merion Police Policy 755: Automatic License Plate Readers

The current policy took effect Nov. 7, 2022, replacing a previous version from 2019. It states that the department uses ALPR equipment to supplement routine monitoring of vehicle movement and assist with specific investigations.

The policy also confirms Upper Merion’s participation in the Pennsylvania License Plate Recognition Network, or PALPRN.

PALPRN is described in the policy as an initiative of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Task Force designed to support license plate recognition and data sharing throughout Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Delaware counties and Philadelphia.

The equipment described in Upper Merion’s policy is primarily mounted on police patrol vehicles.

That distinction is important.

The policy confirms that Upper Merion Police uses ALPR technology.

It does not establish that Upper Merion Township owns the fixed Flock cameras residents may see along roads around the township.

Upper Merion’s policy provides considerably more detail about how the department is supposed to use the technology.

An alert generated by the ALPR system is not, by itself, enough to establish reasonable suspicion for a traffic stop.

When an officer receives an alert, the policy requires the officer to verify that the plate displayed by the system actually matches the vehicle and then verify the plate’s status through law-enforcement databases before taking additional action.

Upper Merion officers are also restricted from placing vehicles into certain tracking lists without justification.

For a vehicle entered into the Southeast Pennsylvania Intelligence List as part of an Upper Merion investigation, the policy requires probable cause, documentation in a police incident or supplemental report and approval from a command officer or supervisor.

Those entries automatically expire after six months.

For an incident that is currently happening or recently occurred, an officer may place a plate into the Southeast Pennsylvania Regional Hotlist. Those entries automatically expire after 48 hours.

Requests from outside law-enforcement agencies asking Upper Merion to add a vehicle to either list require command or supervisory approval.

This is one of the most consequential details in the township policy.

PALPRN’s Enterprise Operations Center retains:

Data stored locally in a police vehicle’s mobile data computer is retained for 30 days.

According to the policy, reads, alarms and audit information are transmitted to PALPRN’s server whenever an active connection is available.

The PALPRN server also maintains what the policy describes as a complete audit trail of every plate searched and every function accessed within the ALPR software.

That means routine ALPR detections collected through the system described in Upper Merion’s policy can remain in the regional database for years.

Alarm-related detections can remain indefinitely.

Upper Merion’s policy establishes another safeguard that is important to understand.

An officer seeking to conduct an investigative query of the PALPRN database must first receive approval from a command officer — or a supervisor if a command officer is unavailable.

A police report must either already exist or be created, and the request must move through the department’s chain of command.

Once approved, the request is sent to PALPRN and must identify the requesting officer along with information including the officer’s name, badge number and contact information.

In other words, the policy does not describe an unrestricted system in which an Upper Merion officer can simply search the regional historical database for any vehicle without documentation or oversight.

That is an important distinction in the broader discussion over license plate surveillance.

The PALPRN system receives information from several law-enforcement and government databases.

Upper Merion’s policy lists alert categories that include stolen vehicles and plates, wanted and missing persons, Amber and Silver Alerts, protection orders, suspended or revoked registrations, Megan’s Law information, supervised-release subjects and members of violent gangs or terrorist organizations.

The policy also lists “immigration violators” among the system’s alarm categories.

The policy does not, by itself, tell us how frequently Upper Merion encounters each type of alert or what percentage ultimately results in police action.

That remains much less clear.

Third-party mapping shows numerous Flock or other ALPR cameras around Upper Merion.

One source for those locations is DeFlock, a crowdsourced project designed to identify and map automated license plate readers.

Camera-location information can also be contributed to OpenStreetMap, the collaborative mapping platform used by numerous third-party applications.

Some mapped cameras appear concentrated around the King of Prussia Mall area. The mapping data we reviewed associated different cameras with labels including Simon Property Group, Flock Safety, Home Depot and unknown operators.

But there is an important caveat:

These are crowdsourced maps.

They are useful for finding possible cameras and identifying questions to investigate. They are not authoritative records establishing who owns a camera, who paid for it, whether it is currently operating or who can access its data.

Spotlight’s review of township records so far has not identified a clear Upper Merion Township contract with Flock Safety or a series of Board of Supervisors approvals establishing a township-owned fixed Flock network.

That distinction matters.

A Flock or ALPR camera physically located in Upper Merion is not necessarily owned or controlled by Upper Merion Township.

Upper Merion’s 2022 policy gives us a fairly detailed picture of the department’s own vehicle-mounted ALPR system and its participation in PALPRN.

It tells us how PALPRN searches are approved.

It tells us how long PALPRN data is retained.

It tells us that searches are audited.

It tells us what happens when an alert is generated.

What it does not tell us is whether Upper Merion Police also has access to privately owned Flock cameras operating around the township.

That distinction could be important because privately owned Flock cameras may operate under an entirely different set of rules from Upper Merion’s PALPRN system.

Suppose a camera outside a shopping center or commercial property belongs to a private company.

Can Upper Merion Police search it directly?

Does the property owner have to approve access?

Can another police department search it?

Can agencies outside Pennsylvania access it?

Can federal agencies?

How long is that camera’s information retained?

And are searches of those privately operated systems subject to the same approval and audit requirements contained in Upper Merion’s Policy 755?

At this point, we do not know.

Supporters of automated license plate readers point to legitimate law-enforcement uses.

A vehicle associated with a stolen car, wanted person, missing child or serious criminal investigation can potentially be detected by a camera and quickly brought to an officer’s attention.

Police departments reconsidering Flock have continued to emphasize that benefit.

Abington Police, for example, has said license plate readers have helped connect crimes and make arrests even as the department moves away from Flock over concerns about the company’s network and data security.

Flock also argues that its technology helps law enforcement solve serious crimes and locate missing people and says it supports privacy, transparency and accountability safeguards rather than a blanket ban.

The privacy concern is different.

ALPR systems do not collect information only about vehicles suspected of crimes.

They record vehicles because those vehicles passed a camera.

When large numbers of those detections are retained and searchable for extended periods, critics argue that the resulting databases can potentially reveal patterns about where vehicles — and by extension the people using them — have traveled.

That concern is especially relevant when systems allow searches across multiple jurisdictions.

Abington’s decision to move away from Flock came after thousands of searches conducted through its account became publicly exposed, according to reporting by The Philadelphia Inquirer. The department has said it intends to continue using ALPR technology with another vendor.

Other Pennsylvania communities are also reconsidering Flock. Franklin County commissioners recently voted not to renew their Flock contract, citing privacy, potential abuse and liability concerns.

None of that establishes misuse in Upper Merion.

We’ve found no evidence at this point that Upper Merion officers have improperly accessed ALPR information.

What the broader debate does establish is why understanding the local system — and the rules governing it — matters.

The local ALPR landscape may involve several distinct systems.

Upper Merion Police has vehicle-mounted ALPR equipment.

The department participates in PALPRN.

Private businesses appear to operate fixed cameras around the community.

Some of those cameras may be Flock devices.

What remains unclear is how — or whether — those systems intersect.

Among the questions we plan to pursue:

Those questions extend beyond what the currently available township records establish.

The purpose of this reporting isn’t to argue that automated license plate readers are good or bad.

Upper Merion’s own policy shows why police consider the technology useful and also documents safeguards governing how the department’s system is supposed to be used.

It also reveals something residents may not have known:

Under the regional ALPR system described in Upper Merion Police policy, normal license plate reads are retained for three years, alarm reads are retained indefinitely, and the system maintains audit records of searches and access.

Meanwhile, fixed Flock and other ALPR cameras are visible around the township, but we have not yet established who owns all of them or whether Upper Merion Police can even access the information they collect.

Those are now the questions.

What cameras are operating here? Who owns them? Who can search them? How long is their information kept? And who else can see it?

We’ll keep digging.

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Thank you for reading,

Corey