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SB 6002 / HB 2332 (Driver Privacy Act, regulating Flock and other ALPRs) testimony

I got shut out of speaking at either hearings, bummer. I live-skeeted both from the @wa-privacy.net Bluesky account; here's the single-page summary. I submitted basically the same written testimony to both hearings. Here's the version I submitted for SB 6002.

Chair Dhingra, Ranking Member Holy, and members of the committee,

I'm Jon Pincus of Bellevue, and I run the Nexus of Privacy Newsletter. My position on SB 6002 is PRO. I had signed up to testify remotely, but unfortunately the hearing ended before I had the opportunity. Here's my written testimony instead. I have also attached feedback that I, along with several other individuals, sent to Senator Trudeau on an earlier draft of the legislation.

As the Ranking Member said in his remarks introducing the bill, Flock and other ALPRs are mass surveillance systems. There are major ongoing abuses. Indeed, as Senator Ron Wyden has said, "Abuse of Flock cameras is inevitable, and Flock has made it clear it takes no responsibility to prevent or detect that."

So strong regulation is urgent. As you have heard, though, the bill as written needs significant improvements.

The findings talk about the need to balance public safety and privacy. But surveillance isn't safety – and most of the authorized uses in the bill have nothing to do with public safety. Not only that, the public safety aspects themselves are complex. ALPRs may help solve some crimes. But when the data is abused, as it so often is, ALPRs also compromise the safety of many people, especially those who are most vulnerable.

One vital area to fix in the bill is preventing vendor access and other methods of out-of-state data transfer. Once data leaves the state, protections of Keep Washington Working and the Shield Law no longer apply ... you might as well just hand it directly to law enforcement in hostile states, bounty hunters, and ICE/CBP.

Other important changes include.

  • Require a felony warrant for law-enforcement access to third-party ALPR data.
  • Reduce retention to three minutes for all uses. Police solved crimes before ALPRs, they will find a way to adapt.
  • Further limit uses that aren't for public safety.
  • Clarify that the data is owned by the city, county, or state – not by the vendor.
  • Ensure that there is enough public records access for organizations like UW Human Rights Center — whose report is what galvanized widespread opposition — to continue to do oversight.

That would be a huge step forward — for ALPR regulation, and in the bipartisan fight against mass surveillance in general. Washington really has a chance to lead the way here.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide my feedback on this bill. I look forward to seeing the amended version.

Feedback on draft version

In December 2025, Senator Trudeau circulated a draft version for feedback. Several other people and I worked together on a response. I've redacted their names here (as I did in the PDF that I submitted as part of my written testimony).

December 17, 2025

Subject: Feedback from Washington Privacy Organizers on S-3423.3 (Concerning driver privacy protections)

Senator Trudeau,

Thank you for focusing on the critical and timely issue of the threats to public safety posed by automated license plate readers (ALPRs).  As members of the Washington Privacy Organizers mailing list, we are writing to you with feedback on the current draft of proposed legislation (S-3423.3).

As Senator Ron Wyden has said,* 

“Abuse of Flock cameras is inevitable, and Flock has made it clear it takes no responsibility to prevent or detect that.“

And while Flock has received the most publicity, all ALPR vendors are equally vulnerable to abuse. Moreover, even when the system is not being abused, the retention of ALPR data of people not involved in any crime is dragnet mass surveillance. So it’s not surprising that people in Mountlake Terrace, Olympia, Stanwood, Lynnwood,Gig Harbor, and Redmond and other communities across the state – and across the country – are working together to protect their residents by pausing the use of ALPR systems.  

Now, the legislature has a great opportunity to build on this momentum and the earlier groundbreaking work embodied in the Keep Washington Working Act, Shield Law, and My Health My Data. Those previous bills were driven by the need to protect all Washingtonians, including those most at risk – including immigrants, people seeking abortions and other reproductive health care, trans people and others seeking gender-affirming health care.  

Similarly we ask you to prioritize those perspectives when considering this new legislation.  For example, we greatly appreciate the prohibitions in the current draft on agencies using ALPRs for immigration investigation and/or enforcement and on collecting ALPR data on the premises or immediate surroundings of facilities that provide protected health care.  

However, other aspects of the current draft do not fully reflect this perspective. Our concern starts in the framing of the INTENT section as a “balance” between public safety needs and the privacy rights of Washingtonians. Both of these are certainly important considerations, but there’s no need to put them in tension. Surveillance isn’t safety.  When ICE uses information from license plate readers to kidnap Washington residents off the streets**, or when a sheriff in Texas or other searches ALPR data to identify abortion seekers***, this harms public safety just as much as it harms privacy rights.

One approach to strengthening the bill’s protections is to extend the list of PROHIBITED PRACTICES and completely ban agency usage of ALPRs.  Short of that, some specific areas where changes to the current draft that could improve both safety and privacy:

  • The longer the data is retained, the greater the opportunity for it to be accessed by ICE, CBP, or some other bad actor.  Reducing the retention time to 3 minutes, as in New Hampshire’s legislation, would improve both privacy and public safety.  
  • The exceptions for non-public-safety uses in the RETENTION section similarly increase the risks from bad actors, while weakening privacy.  A straightforward fix here would be to remove those exceptions, ensuring that their retention times are no longer than that required for public safety uses.
  • Since ALPR vendors are typically headquartered in other states, and may well store the data outside of Washington, the current language appears to undercut the protections of Keep Washington Working and the Shield law by allowing fishing expeditions or more targeted access to this data by law enforcement agencies in other states – they can simply go to the vendor. Adding restrictions on out-of-state transfer of license plate data is an important complement to reducing the retention time.  
  • Strengthening the PROHIBITED PRACTICES section to require a felony warrant for access to ALPR data, both in (4) and as part of a judicial proceeding (in (1)(a))

There are also likely to be other opportunities to strengthen, clarify, and improve the bill as it moves forward in the process. For example, while we applaud the current draft's stance that audit trail data is subject to disclosure under the public records, we are still trying to understand the tradeoffs related to exempting the raw ALPR data (PROHIBITED USES (5)).  Some of our concerns here:

  • As the people who are paying for this mass surveillance system with our tax dollars, it doesn't seem right to change the law so that oversight bodies and human rights organizations don't have access to the data. At the same time, though, broad public release of this mass surveillance data has significant privacy and safety implications.  
  • While we as taxpayers certainly understand the concern that cities and counties have about the potential cost of servicing these public records, we don't have any patience with the argument that "it's too expensive to allow oversight". Could shortening the retention time to 3 minutes make the costs more manageable? If the costs are too excessive even then, isn't that an argument for reducing – or eliminating – agency usage of ALPRs?

Thank you once again for the work you’re doing on this issue.  We look forward to continuing to engage with you over the course of the legislative session. If you haven’t already, we strongly encourage you to reach out to the local coalitions that are working to pause and ban ALPRs, to ensure that statewide legislation doesn’t unintentionally undercut their efforts, but instead reinforces and complements their work.

Signed,

Jon Pincus, Bellevue

(and several others whose names I’m redacting when filing this as testimony)



* Wyden Slams Surveillance Tech Company for Ineffective Protections for Oregonians Against Abuses by Federal Agencies and Out-of-State Law Enforcement, October 16, https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-slams-surveillance-tech-company-for-ineffective_protections-for-oregonians-against-abuses-by-federal-agencies-and-out-of-state-law-enforcement 

**  Redmond turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests, November 10,  https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/redmond-turns-off-flock-safety-cameras-after-ice-arrests/ 

*** Flock Safety and Texas Sheriff Claimed License Plate Search Was for a Missing Person. It Was an Abortion Investigation, October &, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flock-safety-and-texas-sheriff-claimed-license-plate-search-was-missing-person-it