Motorists sue Westchester County over 1.6 billion license plate scans

A coalition of civil rights groups on Tuesday asked a state judge to order one of New York’s largest suburban counties to stop its deployment of nearly 600 license plate readers, calling it a warrantless and “indiscriminate surveillance system” that violates the state constitution.

The class action lawsuit also alleged that Westchester County never got proper authorization to launch the program, which has amassed a database of 1.6 billion plate scans that has been shared with more than 50 outside law enforcement agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The complaint said the network “records the long-term travel patterns, daily habits, and intimate information of millions of law-abiding New Yorkers and other motorists who travel through Westchester.”

“In a democracy, a police department cannot unilaterally decide — without legislative authorization — to surveil the daily movements of its own citizens without any real accountability, transparency, or oversight,” said Barry Friedman, founder and faculty director of the Policing Project at NYU School of Law, which brought the suit on behalf of four motorists. “This indiscriminate data surveillance must not be allowed to continue in the dark.”

“Westchester County has not yet received or reviewed the lawsuit referenced,” a spokesperson for the county said.

The widespread use of license plate reader systems, which utilize a system of cameras to scan and record motorists’ license plate information, has generated controversy. The Associated Press in November reported that the U.S. Border Patrol was running a secretive license plate reader program that singled drivers out over their travel patterns, prompting a complaint from congressional Democrats that the program may be unlawful.

A license plate reader company, Flock Safety, said last year it was pausing work with the Department of Homeland Security after it was revealed that police departments across the country were sharing license plate reader data with immigration authorities. Other cities and states are restricting data sharing with federal authorities, reducing how long they keep license plate reader data or even canceling contracts in response to residents’ complaints.

The civil rights groups brought the case against Westchester County on behalf of four women who live in the county or in nearby jurisdictions. The suit alleged that the four motorists’ license plate data had been collectively captured thousands of times by the county’s camera network in the past few years. A vehicle belonging to one plaintiff, Lora Nelson, was captured by the county’s cameras more than 2,400 times. Another plaintiff’s vehicle was captured 1,134 times between 2023 and 2026, the suit alleged.

Westchester County, which is 430-square miles (1,114 square kilometers) and just north of New York City, is crisscrossed by major thoroughfares, including Interstate 87 and Interstate 95 and the Hutchinson River Parkway that serve daily commuter traffic into and out of New York City and longer distance travel.

The women who brought the case are represented by the Policing Project at New York University School of Law, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the law firm Freshfields.

The use of license plate readers has broadly been upheld by most courts because they document the movement of cars on public roadways. The Westchester litigation is part of a broader legal effort seeking to have courts reconsider such legal doctrines amid the proliferation of surveillance technologies, data collection and analysis.

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AP writer Garance Burke in San Francisco contributed to this report.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.