Pennsylvania's House of Representatives voted 190-13 on Monday to pass a bill that would sharply limit how police and other government agencies can use automatic license plate readers, sometimes known as Flock cameras, across the state. The measure, House Bill 2771, now moves to the state Senate, where it must pass before the legislative session ends on November 30 to become law.
What the Bill Would Actually Do
According to CBS News Philadelphia, the bill limits the use of automatic license plate readers, the cameras that scan passing vehicles and are widely associated with the brand name Flock. House Bill 2771, titled Regulating Automated License Plate Readers, would amend Title 75 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, according to official legislative records. The bill's text spells out that state, county and local law enforcement agencies could only use the systems for legitimate law-enforcement purposes, criminal investigations, or enforcing federal, state and local laws, with additional allowances for parking enforcement and controlling access to secured areas. Outside those specific uses, the bill states plainly that use of an automated license plate reader system is prohibited.
The legislation would also require the Pennsylvania State Police to determine how captured data is stored in a secure data-hosting environment under its control, and it would generally bar agencies and government entities from selling, trading, disseminating or exchanging that data, per the bill text. On how long unrelated data could be kept, accounts diverge: the official bill language says captured data unrelated to a violation or an active or ongoing criminal investigation would be destroyed after one year, while WGAL reported the bill would require deleting such data within 72 hours. The discrepancy between those two accounts has not been resolved.
A Sponsor's Balancing Act
The bill was sponsored by Rep. Jen O'Mara, a Delaware County Democrat, who framed it as striking a balance between privacy and crime-solving, according to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star in its coverage of the House's broader push on tech oversight. That framing echoes testimony lawmakers heard during earlier hearings, where speakers credited the cameras with helping police locate stolen vehicles and wanted people, and with allowing the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to eliminate toll booths, the outlet reported. At the same hearings, lawmakers also heard concerns about privacy, data retention, unauthorized access, data sharing and potential misuse of the technology.
Automatic license plate readers work by collecting images of passing vehicles and recording the location, time, license plate number and, in some cases, identifying features, the Capital-Star noted in its reporting on camera testimony. In Philadelphia specifically, police have said the department does not use Flock cameras but confirmed it operates 137 license plate readers across the city, according to CBS News Philadelphia. Flock Safety itself says more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies and 6,000 communities nationwide use its automated license plate readers, according to City & State Pennsylvania.
Momentum Built Through the Summer
HB 2771 did not emerge in isolation. By early September, lawmakers from both major parties had introduced at least nine bills aimed at restricting or banning automated license plate readers, according to Spotlight PA. Gov. Josh Shapiro weighed in late in the summer, saying Flock cameras are not a tool that I support and describing the technology as not being in the public interest, Spotlight PA reported. Nationally, an NBC News review found that police departments and other officials regularly purchased Flock surveillance technology through deals that avoided competitive bidding or fell just below spending thresholds requiring approval by elected representatives, underscoring the oversight gap that bills like HB 2771 are meant to address.
Sixteen states already have policies on the books restricting license plate readers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures as cited by Spotlight PA. Those approaches vary widely. Rhode Island's proposed statewide standards are voluntary, applying only to agencies that choose to sign on, and would require deleting plate data within 30 days unless it is flagged for an ongoing investigation, according to Vermont Public. Connecticut's law, which took effect October 1, sets its retention limit at 21 days, while an ACLU policy associate quoted in the same report said New Hampshire keeps the data for just three minutes.
Local pushback has also surfaced beyond Pennsylvania. In Florida, St. Johns County commissioners voted 3-2 on Tuesday to revoke permits for all Flock Safety license plate reader cameras on county roads, a decision that requires removal of 89 readers from county rights-of-way, according to News4JAX, though no disabling date had been determined as of that vote.
For now, Pennsylvania's bill sits with the state Senate, which has roughly six weeks left in the current session to act before the measure would need to be reintroduced. Whether senators will take it up, amend it or let it stall remains an open question, and HB 2771's fate will determine whether Pennsylvania joins the growing list of states tightening the rules around a technology that has spread into thousands of communities in under a decade.
