Shapiro Wants to Ban the Cameras Reading Your License Plate

Gov. Josh Shapiro said Friday, Aug. 29, he'd welcome bipartisan legislation to ban Flock Safety's license-plate-reading cameras statewide, noting Pennsylvania State Police itself doesn't use them and citing the privacy risk of a technology that's already logging millions of Pennsylvania drivers' movements. His Republican rival for governor, Treasurer Stacy Garrity, backs the same ban, calling the cameras an “intrusive invasion of privacy,” after telling a radio host she hadn't actually heard of Flock cameras before being asked about them. Bipartisan agreement is rare enough in Harrisburg that it's worth noting when it happens. We checked whether any Monroe County department runs Flock cameras and didn't turn one up.

One more note for context: when Stroudsburg's “MAFIA” Corvette fled the scene of the Main Street takeover, there wasn't a license plate camera anywhere in the chain that caught it. SARPD's leads came from 911 calls and a public request for tips and video, not camera footage; New Jersey State Police only found the car after a pursuit it escaped, and the driver has never been identified. It's a real, local example of the tradeoff behind Shapiro's push: the same camera network drawing privacy pushback statewide is also the kind of tool that might have flagged that plate before the driver got away.