The FBI wants to buy access to automated license plate readers (ALPRs) nationwide, which would likely allow the agency to track the movements of vehicles—and by extension people—across the country without a warrant, according to FBI procurement records reviewed by 404 Media.
The documents show that ALPRs continue to be a sought-after tool for law enforcement, not just for local police and individual communities, but federal agencies too. The news also comes as protests and pushback against ALPRs have spread around the country.
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“The FBI has a crucial need for accessible LPRs to provide a diverse and reliable range of collections across the United States. This data should be available across major highways and in an array of locations for maximum usefulness to law enforcement,” a statement of work, which describes what data the FBI is seeking access to, reads.
ALPR cameras generally work by constantly scanning the color, brand, model, and license plate of vehicles that drive by. This creates a timestamped record of where a particular vehicle was at a specific time that law enforcement can then query, effectively letting them see exactly where someone drove across time. The technology has existed for decades, but has become more pervasive in recent years.
The FBI says it is looking for a vendor that will let it log into a Software-as-a-Service system and then query the collected ALPR data with license plate information, a description of the vehicle, a time or date, and geolocation information.
The FBI says it is looking for ALPR coverage in the following areas: Eastern 48 (East of the Mississippi River); Western 48 (West of the Mississippi River); Hawaii; Puerto Rico; Alaska; and outlying areas such as Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or Tribal Territories. In effect, the FBI is looking for ALPR data nationwide and even beyond. An attached price template indicates the FBI is willing to pay $6 million for each of those broad areas, bringing the total to $36 million.
Images: Screenshots from the documents.
The FBI says it intends to award the contract to a single vendor, but if any such vendor is unable to fulfill all of the requirements, the agency may award the contract to up to two vendors. The contract is specifically for the FBI’s Directorate of Intelligence, which oversees the agency’s intelligence mission. The FBI is not only a law enforcement agency, but also part of the Intelligence Community.
There are a limited number of companies that might be able to provide the sort of data the FBI is seeking. One of those is Flock, whose ALPR cameras are stationed in communities all across the country. According to data 404 Media and researchers have obtained through public records requests, Flock has at least 80,000 cameras connected to its national lookup tool. At one point, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a section of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the Secret Service, and the Navy’s criminal investigation arm all had access to Flock’s nationwide network as part of a pilot program. As 404 Media revealed, local police have performed lookups in the Flock nationwide database on behalf of ICE.
The other is Motorola Solutions, which acquired Vigilant Solutions. Motorola has a massive database of ALPR information built with cameras installed in police officer’s roaming vehicles. An arm of the company that sells to private industry has essentially outsourced image collection to repo men. In 2019, I reported on that part of the business, called Digital Recognition Network (DRN), and was shown how powerful its tracking capabilities can be. 404 Media reported last year that ICE recently invited staff to demos of a Motorola app that let officers scan a license plate and add it to a database of billions of records that show where else that vehicle has been spotted.
Josh Thomas, chief communications officer at Flock, told 404 Media in an email “We’re not going to speculate on prospective deals. But it’s worth noting that we already work with several federal agencies, all of whom are subject to the same obligations, constraints, and transparency mechanisms that apply to every other Flock customer. We also rebuilt our product from the ground up, starting last year, to ensure all local customers could trust that they can use Flock in full compliance with local and state laws. A big part of that is our Audit Assistance tool.”
Neither Motorola nor the FBI responded to a request for comment.
