Georgia saw the license plate reader problem coming

There is an old saying that locks are meant to keep honest people honest. Apparently, the Georgia General Assembly had the same idea about cops and license plate readers.

Long before Flock Safety cameras began popping up along Georgia roads like kudzu with a Wi-Fi connection, lawmakers wrestled with a basic question: What happens when police gain access to a database that can tell them where a vehicle has been?

More importantly, what happens when someone with a badge uses that information for something other than police work? Georgia lawmakers anticipated that problem. And in 2018, they made it a crime.

That history has become more relevant as Georgia law enforcement officers have faced criminal investigations and charges involving alleged misuse of automated license plate reader, or ALPR, systems.

So, for today’s Street Smart, we’re going back under the Gold Dome to see how Georgia built the rules governing this technology — and how a proposal to keep plate information for about a month ended with the government being allowed to keep it for two and a half years.

Because nothing says “legislative compromise” quite like multiplying something by 30.

Before Flock was everywhere

Georgia’s ALPR law wasn’t written specifically for Flock Safety.

Automated license plate readers existed well before Flock became a dominant player. Police used cameras that photographed passing plates, converted the numbers into searchable data, and associated those observations with a time and location. The benefits were obvious. Officers could receive alerts for stolen vehicles, and investigators could search for vehicles associated with crimes.

But the same technology that could tell police where a suspect’s vehicle had been could also tell an officer where his ex-wife, girlfriend, or neighbor had been. Technology doesn’t know the difference. The person sitting at the keyboard does.

Enter State Representative John Pezold

The principal architect of what became Georgia’s ALPR law was then-state Rep. John Pezold. Pezold recently told the Cobb County Courier that his interest began after talking with a law enforcement officer about cameras mounted on police vehicles. He recalled thinking it was a “great tool for law enforcement” while recognizing the potential for abuse.

That’s important today. Misuse wasn’t an unforeseen consequence discovered years later after Flock networks became enormous. It was among the concerns legislators considered when writing the law.

Pezold first tried to regulate the technology in 2016. He returned with House Bill 79 during the 2017-2018 legislative session. Its stated purposes included providing “criminal penalties for misuse of captured license plate data.” Not an internal reprimand. Not a strongly worded memo. A crime.

Thirty days becomes 30 months

One of the most revealing debates involved how long government could keep information showing where a license plate was at a particular time.

Pezold says his original concept called for purging data after roughly 30 days. The Georgia Sheriffs’ Association objected. According to Pezold’s 2026 recollection, the association wanted agencies to retain it for 30 months. Pezold still considers that excessive but said he accepted the compromise rather than lose the broader legislation.

Thirty days. Thirty months. For anyone keeping score at home, those aren’t particularly close. Law enforcement wanted historical information available for investigations. Privacy concerns pointed the other way: Every additional day created a larger database showing where ordinary people — including those suspected of nothing — had traveled.

The final law sided substantially with law enforcement on retention but restricted access. And that’s where today’s Flock cases get interesting.

Georgia draws a line

HB 79 became law in 2018 and created O.C.G.A. § 35-1-22. Captured plate data can include GPS coordinates, dates, times, photographs, and plate numbers. A reader doesn’t merely produce ABC1234. It can produce: ABC1234 was here, at this time, on this date. Repeat that across enough cameras and days, and individual observations can reveal movement patterns.

Georgia allowed law enforcement to collect and share that information. The critical restriction was purpose. Under O.C.G.A. § 35-1-22, someone who knowingly requests, uses, obtains, or attempts to obtain captured plate data under false pretenses or for something other than a legitimate law enforcement purpose can commit a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature. The statute applies to each offense.

Access isn’t permission

That’s probably the law’s most important lesson. It doesn’t merely concern hackers breaking into police computers. It addresses misuse by people who legitimately have access. An officer may have valid credentials, training, and a department-issued computer. He or she may have legitimate reasons to search plate information 99 times. Search number 100 can still be a problem if the purpose isn’t law enforcement.

The key opens the evidence room. That doesn’t mean you get to take the television home.

Lawmakers also required agencies using ALPR technology to establish policies governing its use and shielded captured plate information from ordinary public disclosure. That creates another issue. If citizens and journalists can’t inspect the database, meaningful oversight depends heavily on agency supervision, audits, system logs, and criminal investigations when misuse is suspected.

The watchdog guarding the database becomes awfully important when the public isn’t allowed inside the fence.

The irony of 2026

Georgia lawmakers weren’t clairvoyant in 2018. They couldn’t know how large ALPR networks would become or how systems such as Flock would connect cameras and agencies across jurisdictional boundaries. But they understood the fundamental danger: A powerful law enforcement database can become a powerful personal surveillance tool when an authorized user decides the rules don’t apply to them.

Eight years later, it’s fair to ask whether those guardrails remain adequate. Thirty months of retention meant one thing when ALPR systems were relatively limited. A massive, interconnected network is something else. Technology has an annoying habit of advancing considerably faster than the Georgia Code.

Whatever you think about license plate readers — invaluable police tool, creeping surveillance network, or some combination of the two — lawmakers got one thing right. The biggest vulnerability in a sophisticated computer system isn’t always the computer. Sometimes it’s the person with the password.

Georgia essentially said: Use it to police the public. Don’t use it to spy on the public for yourself.

Eight years later, Georgia is finding out what happens when someone allegedly ignores the second sentence. And somewhere, buried beneath all the technology, databases, cameras, search logs, and legislative language, lies a remarkably old-fashioned concept: A badge gives you authority; it doesn’t give you permission to do whatever you want with it.

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Now Georgia Crime Reporter Kevin Angell is a career law enforcement professional who has served agencies in Florida and Georgia. A U.S. Coast Guard veteran of Operation Enduring Iraqi Freedom, he holds a doctorate in criminal justice from Liberty University. His weekly column, Street Smart, publishes Wednesdays on NowGeorgia.com.