December 10, 2025 — The University of Iowa’s Technology Law Clinic and the ACLU of Iowa have released a report that surveyed 48 Iowa communities and their use of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), a growing form of government surveillance that is raising concerns with privacy, civil rights, and good governance advocates.

The report is a focused look at the growing use of ALPRs by selected law enforcement agencies across Iowa and demonstrates that ALPRs are a surveillance tool that poses serious risks to Iowan's privacy and civil liberties.

ALPRs are not speed cameras. They are not "red light" cameras. Instead, they are cameras used along roadways throughout Iowa that take thousands of snapshots of all the license plates of the vehicles that drive by. That information can then be fed into a network of nationally shared databases that has too few privacy protections and is subject to abuse.

Read the report.