Resident urges Bellevue to pause new license‑plate reader deployments, citing privacy and cross‑agency data sharing risks

During the council’s oral‑communications period a resident raised privacy and civil‑liberties concerns about proposed citywide deployments of automatic license‑plate readers (ALPRs) and urged a temporary halt to new installations.

Jay Thaler told the council he had been told there is a plan to install about 70 ALPR cameras citywide through vendors such as Flock or Axon. He warned of reports that law enforcement officers in other states have used ALPR databases for warrantless nationwide searches and said federal immigration enforcement and other agencies have used plate data in ways that may bypass local rules.

“Police agencies in the state of Washington do have a set of guidelines defined as to how ALPRs are to be used, but they are entirely voluntary,” Thaler said. He added that Washington has no state law regulating ALPR use and that civil‑liberties groups including the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation oppose unconstrained use.

Thaler asked the council to commit to “safeguarding and prioritizing our civil rights by putting a hold on all new deployments of interconnected license‑plate readers as well as a denial [of] permits for HOAs and private entities to install them on public throughways until such time as there exists legally binding regulations” covering collection, use, sharing, retention and audits.

Discussion vs. decision: This was a public comment; council members did not take formal action at the meeting on ALPR deployment. Staff or council follow‑up (policy review or legal briefing) was not recorded during the session.