Short answer: Yes. With license plate readers, police can log your plate's time and location at
every camera it passes — and across a network, that becomes a travel record. It's not GPS, but it's
location tracking by another name.
What "tracking" actually means
Each ALPR read records plate + timestamp + location. A single read tells an officer you were somewhere. Reads from multiple cameras, joined in time, reconstruct where you traveled (Boston.com). With networks like Flock's — roughly 120,000 cameras across 49 states (GadgetReview) — the coverage is national in scale.
The limits that matter
- Retention: how long reads are kept is set by state law and local policy — days to years. See data retention.
- Access: who can query the data (including out-of-state agencies) depends on sharing agreements — a documented controversy (US News).
- Law: some states cap retention or restrict commercial use — see ALPR laws by state.
What you can do
- Find out if your city runs ALPR: generate a records request.
- Learn your state's rules: state law index.
- Ask about deletion: some agencies allow requests to remove non-investigative records.
- Track the pushback: jurisdictions ending ALPR contracts.
Bottom line: the technology can track your plate — the question is what your city and state allow.
Those answers are public records.