Drivers In This City Thought These Were Just Traffic Cameras. They Were Wrong

Little Rock, Arkansas, home to around 205,000 people, isn’t what anyone would call a very advanced or modern city, but don’t tell that to the police in the area. Despite its modest profile, they have 116 automatic license plate-reading traffic cameras across the municipality. In other words, if you drive in or out of the area, you’ll probably end up in a police database.

The information these cameras gather goes far beyond a plate number. And it’s available far and wide and even to those with nefarious intentions.

How Little Rock Quietly Logs Your Drive

According to records obtained through Arkansas’s Freedom of Information Act, the Little Rock Police Department currently operates 116 automated license plate readers (ALPRs) positioned throughout the metro area. While most drivers never notice them, these small, fixed traffic cameras log far more than plate numbers.

Read: A Legal Plate Sticker That Fools Police AI Cameras Could Still Send You to Jail in Florida

Each scan records the date, time, location, vehicle make, model, color, and sometimes distinguishing features like decals or body damage, creating a searchable history of where vehicles have been. That’s right. Your bumper sticker, the ding in your door, or the crack in your side window could all identify your vehicle.

Using the released records, Milo Strain of the Arkansas Times mapped every known LRPD camera location, visually confirming many placements through Google Street View. Three cameras labeled “permitting” have not yet been installed, according to police.

How Many Agencies Have Access?

LRPD says the technology helps recover stolen cars and locate suspects more efficiently. But critics argue the system amounts to mass, warrantless data collection. While Arkansas law requires government agencies to delete captured data after 150 days, manufacturers aren’t held to the same standard, and the information doesn’t necessarily stay local.

Documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation reveal LRPD shares access to its ALPR data with law enforcement agencies across the country, from Texas to Indiana. Federal agencies, including ICE and Border Patrol, may also request access through local departments.

Actual Use and Local Views

Between March 2022 and December 2025, 191 LRPD officers ran more than 66,000 database searches, often without warrants. While many searches cite specific crimes, others list vague justifications like “investigation” or “suspicious.” Websites like Deflock.me and HaveIBeenFlocked.com provide some useful insight to everyday citizens.

Locals in Little Rock have mixed reactions. Some called out the police for instituting what they see as a surveillance state. Some echoed the sentiments of Tom Dashiell on Facebook, who said, “I don’t mind them tracking me. I don’t have anything to hide.” If cameras like these were used lawfully and correctly 100 percent of the time, that attitude might be fine. The reality isn’t as cut and dry, though.

The Cold Hard Truth

No matter how tight Flock’s security might be, the reality is that there is no way to ensure that all use of the data collected is objectively lawful and with good intentions. As Strain points out, there have already been countless examples of law enforcement officers misusing the system.

Even when used lawfully, officers sometimes go after the wrong people. Those instances don’t even include the times when the software gets hacked or, in some cases, is exposed as having zero security to stop anyone from watching cameras live.

YouTuber Benn Jordan recently showed that he could access several new Flock cameras and view both live and archived video. Combining that ability with publicly available data allowed him to find out the identities of certain people in the videos, where they lived, what their debt-to-income ratio is, and more.

If he can do it, just imagine what people with nefarious intentions can do. Keep in mind that there are dozens of published security vulnerabilities with cameras such as these.

In other states, like Washington, there’s more transparency around these cameras, and as such, police can’t use them without providing all of the data, including images and video, to anyone who requests it. When a judge made that ruling in Washington, police shut down the cameras. In Arkansas, the state doesn’t provide such transparency.

Contract Extended, Questions Ignored

Despite these concerns, Little Rock’s Board of Directors voted in October 2025 to extend the city’s Flock contract for two more years at a cost of $690,000.

A proposed ordinance that would have required annual transparency reports on surveillance technology failed in December, with city leadership arguing the added oversight was unnecessary. For now, the cameras remain, quietly logging the movements of everyone on the road.