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If the plate is visible and clearly readable to a human but not readable by a machine has the law been violated? In my state there is no law that requires that my license plate be viewable by ALPRs so long as it's in plain view to a human observer.

The software isn't a person and so I think there's a real question as to whether or not you can even say the license plate isn't visible to it because the software doesn't have eyes it can't observe anything, that's just our way of conceptualizing what it's doing. And I don't think this is theoretical because this idea that the machine isn't a person is argued by the state for why dragnet surveillance isn't a search until a human actually goes and looks at it.

> but not readable by a machine has the law been violated

IANAL but I think that would be a violation, since it falls under the "detectability" of a "feature" being "recorded".

> A person may not apply or attach [...] onto or around [...] which interferes with the legibility, angular visibility, or detectability of any feature or detail on the license plate or interferes with the ability to record any feature or detail on the license plate. A person who knowingly violates this section commits a misdemeanor of the second degree.

https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2025/253/?Tab=BillText

Around here, folks wipe off the paint from their license plates with paint thinner. The plate still has the number, but an ALPR won’t be able to read it.

I’m told the reason is so that they don’t have to pay bridge tolls (which are quite high).

It’s illegal, but I see cars with bare-metal license plates, all the time.

(Assuming this is NY) Worth noting that NY license plates had a defect that caused the paint to delaminate [1]. I am not surprised that people intentionally do it, but this delamination used to be extremely common.

[1]: https://www.syracuse.com/news/2019/08/new-york-ends-contract...

This happened in West Virginia. But according to the newspapers, it was because the prison inmates were peeing in the license plate paint.

This was pre-public internet, so no link that I could find.

That makes sense.

I suspect it gives cover for the ones that do it on purpose.

I have seen youtube videos saying that if you put some tape over your licence plates the cameras won't read them. I think it was tape to make a skateboard grip better.

Just because you're a driver doesn't mean you get less rights. It means you implicitly consent to the laws covering driving. One such law that (thankfully) still protects drivers? No searching and seizing items from a vehicle without probable cause. You have the right to privacy in your vehicle, with this caveat: they can't search for just any reason, and they're not allowed to search random people. It has to be a specific person, with probable cause of a specific crime.

It's illegal for the cops to put a GPS tracker on your car to track your movements without a signed search warrant. But it's legal for them to place so many cameras that they can do the same thing with no warrant? Bullshit. Recording every single license plate and its movements in perpetuity constitutes a search of random people with no cause. Searching for your specific movements constitutes a search, and therefore must require probable cause or a warrant.

But the law doesn't protect us from this yet, because it's relatively new. When new technology comes out that current laws don't cover, the police abuse it. It's up to us to demand the laws be updated to protect us from this abuse.

No. The law doesn't prohibit it because it's simply automated gathering of information they could gather anyway. It becomes illegal when the police use technology to bypass barriers (for example, seeing your weed from a drone), but not when they simply use technology to automate handling with what they can see.

>they simply use technology to automate handling with what they can see

A police dept with 500 employees can't see at 10000 places at once. So, it isn't "simply to automate".

It would be like saying that rifle is just a simple automation of how one can use a hammer to drive a nail into a victim, and thus if one is allowed to own/carry a hammer and nails then the one is allowed to own/carry a rifle.

>It's illegal for the cops to put a GPS tracker on your car to track your movements without a signed search warrant. But it's legal for them to place so many cameras that they can do the same thing with no warrant? Bullshit.

It's not any "bullshit" then the fact that police don't need a warrant to follow you. It might be tempting to report with some variant of the "2nd amendment was only intended for muskets" argument, pointing out that the founding fathers never imagined a cop at every street corner, but then you have to deal with all the associated implications. For instance, does that mean first amendment protections don't extend to the internet?

> but he doesn't seem to realize that intent is a thing.

He does realize this. The problem is the police can make up intent just to mess with people. How easy is it fro the cops to say "You purposely splattered mud on you license plate" and fine you or put you in jail. Or even use it as an excuse to pull you over.

> haven't courts consistently ruled that drivers have less rights

This is not about the right to drive. This is about a database of collected data on you that can be searched by anyone. ANYONE.

>He does realize this. The problem is the police can make up intent just to mess with people. How easy is it fro the cops to say "You purposely splattered mud on you license plate" and fine you or put you in jail. Or even use it as an excuse to pull you over.

Except in this case, it'll be pretty obvious that you used a carefully crafted pattern, because it's a custom printed license plate rather the state manufactured one. Moreover, of the list of plausible excuses capricious cops can use to arrest/ticket you, this is pretty near the bottom. Something vague like "speeding" or obstructing traffic (for driving at or below the speed limit, since most people speed) already exists, for instance.

>This is not about the right to drive. This is about a database of collected data on you that can be searched by anyone. ANYONE.

My point is that the courts (and to some extent, the public) have generally accepted that you have less rights while driving, so it's going to be an uphill battle. This is in spite of the fact that I oppose ANPRs.

> The problem is the police can make up intent just to mess with people. How easy is it fro the cops to say "You purposely splattered mud on you license plate" and fine you or put you in jail. Or even use it as an excuse to pull you over.

That's not the problem. The fact that intent is considered by the law is a good thing, because it allows you to use the defence "I didn't intend for the mud to obscure the number". Without that, the cops can just say "there is mud on your license plate" and you have no recourse.

Unfortunately you are responsible for making sure your plates are clearly visible while driving. Mud doesn't easily coat your plate to the point of obscurity, you either were driving in lots of heavy mud (clean off car before going back on public roads) or haven't cleaned accumulated mud off in a while (not adhering to making sure your car is road legal).

Negligence will still get you in trouble.

Yes, but it will usually get you into less trouble than if you did it deliberately. That's why almost every jurisdiction has a distinction between murder and manslaughter (and often first and second degree murder). There isn't just a "caused someone else to die" crime and everyone that does that gets exactly the same punishment.

> This is about a database of collected data on you that can be searched by anyone. ANYONE.

Except this part isn't true?

Anyone, by that I mean anyone that matters, or a very large group of people that you should be afraid of to have this power. I mean, excuse my hyperbole, but is this not enough?

Like an ex boyfriend: https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article29105...

Or the Feds: https://centralcurrent.org/federal-immigration-agents-access...

Or a cop anywhere: https://data.aclum.org/2025/10/07/flock-gives-law-enforcemen...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/how-cops-are-using-flo...

https://atlpresscollective.com/2025/11/13/atlanta-police-flo...

Seems like you're more moving the goalposts away from your original, inaccurate, and highly sensational claim?

Maybe don't make the blatantly false claim in the first place?

I think he didn’t mean that say “everyone” but rather “anyone who is some random person working for this private company or the cops or the government or whoever they inevitably sell this data to/gets access to the data when it inevitably leaks through some random unsecured s3 bucket”

If that's not what he meant, then maybe he shouldn't have said "anyone" twice? With the caps for emphasis, even.

It was at least, because of shitty security practices.

The data is available by FOIA.

Is it? I thought only searches of the database were available that way? Like, the history of queries, not the raw data.

I don't think FOIA requests can be used to run your own searches of these databases.

Submit a FOIA for a specific area and time, and you can get all of the raw data for that, then you can do your own searches. You generally cannot submit a FOIA for all of the data.

I don't think this is true. Do you have some sources for this?

In Washington it is true: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules...

Neat, thanks for the source!

Journalists do this all the time. We used to get big 9-track reels of data where I worked.

The reason I'm skeptical of this, in this particular case, is because the data here isn't actually owned by the police/government (I think?), it's owned by Flock. A department can search the data for given attributes, but I don't think they have the whole data set to provide as a response to a FOIA request in the first place.

I don't have a source on hand but I do remember seeing a recent case on this stuff that indicated that "even if they're paying Flock to store it, it's still the government's data"

Driving is a privilege, not a right.

Same with flying they say. But how free are you if the government snaps its fingers and removes every reasonable mode of transportation unless you sacrifice your privacy? The cameras (which are 100% opt-out by the way, tell them NO) in airports are rammed down are throats as well. How am I supposed to privately move?

Congress could fix that. It could even be enshrined in the constitution. Maybe we should vote for people who would do that.

>he doesn't seem to realize intent is a thing

at 2m9s [0],

>theoretically, that type of pattern could randomly show up if you were just driving through mud. Is it the intent that makes it illegal? Is it the presence of it that makes it illegal? If you have a certain amount of mud on your license plate and that cop doesn't likeyou, could he use this law and be a dick and put you in jail the same way that he would if you were driving with an open bottle of Absolut and swerving in and out of your lane?

Not only does he acknowledge intent is a thing, I think this is more a commentary on the ambiguity of the bill, which states:

>A person may not alter the original appearance of a vehicle registration certificate, license plate, temporary license plate, mobile home sticker, or validation sticker issued for and assigned to a motor vehicle or mobile home, whether by mutilation, alteration, defacement, or change of color or in any other manner.

The lack of the word "knowingly" makes it ambiguous whether intent matters. A person who drives with a plate covered in mud, bugs, or bird shit could be theoretically be charged by this law not because of intent to obscure it, but because of the person neglected their duty to keep the plate clear of obstructions so it could be read by these LPR cameras that infringe his Fourth Amendment right.

I'm sure theres a lot of other legal context and case law but laws shouldn't be written with loopholes or ambiguity like that in the first place.

[0] https://youtu.be/qEllWdK4l_A?t=413 [1] https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2025/253/BillText/File...

> he doesn't seem to realize that intent is a thing

A bit of silver lining is that the law does require intent, which was a pleasant surprise since it reduces how easily a bad official could weaponize the law against an innocent person.

> A person who knowingly violates this section commits a misdemeanor of the second degree

[0] https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2025/253/?Tab=BillText

> A person who knowingly violates

Is there a legal specification of "knowingly" that requires intent? Or is "awareness" adequate?

E.g. If you know (or would be reasonably expected to know) that your license plate was obscured by mud from your offroading adventures, does this verbiage apply to you?

Hmmm, I suppose "intent" is ambiguous since it covers more than one of these tiers:

1. I didn't notice there was anything different.

2. I noticed, but I didn't cause it.

3. I decided to alter it for a innocent reason.

4. I decided to alter it for a guilty reason.

You probably need a Florida lawyer for a high-certainty answer, but I suspect both 3 and 4 will be a violation.

If it were only 4, then it'd be a bit too easy to evade: "Oh, gee golly officer, I didn't know, I was just following that instasnaptok trend of putting glitter on it to make it pretty. The law doesn't say I can't make it fabulous."

I think you're right about 3 and 4.

I would guess that 2 would also be adequate, and 1 would require a positive defense.

I fear that there's enough ambiguity to hang any disfavored violator, though.