PETITION: Stop Dragnet ALPR Camera Surveillance in Lee County, North Carolina
The Issue
To: Chair Samantha Martin, Members of the Lee County Board of Commissioners, and Sheriff Brian Estes
From: Concerned Residents, Taxpayers, and Drivers of Lee County, North Carolina
Why This Matters
Every single day, thousands of law-abiding Lee County residents drive to work, haul livestock or goods, drop their children off at school, run errands, and travel across our rural and municipal roads. Under new North Carolina state rules, automated surveillance vendors and law enforcement agencies are pushing to turn our county’s public corridors—including US-1, US-421, NC-87, NC-42, and NC-24—into a continuous, 24/7 digital dragnet.
Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) do not simply photograph vehicles involved in active crimes. They log every single vehicle that passes by. These systems continuously record and store your vehicle’s license plate, make, model, color, date, time, and precise direction—building a searchable database of your private daily movements without any suspicion that you have committed a violation.
This is a direct threat to our constitutional rights. Article I, Section 20 of the North Carolina Constitution explicitly bans general warrants—the dangerous practice of gathering data on all citizens in the hope of catching someone doing wrong. Indiscriminate, automated tracking on public highways violates this fundamental North Carolina guarantee.
The state law does NOT force Lee County to install these cameras. Placing ALPR systems on state corridors requires county law enforcement agencies to actively opt in and execute placement agreements with NCDOT and the State Bureau of Investigation. Our Board of Commissioners and Sheriff have the power to say NO.
What We Are Demanding
We call on Chair Martin, the Lee County Board of Commissioners, and Sheriff Estes to protect the liberty, privacy, and constitutional rights of Lee County citizens by taking the following binding actions:
Refuse Countywide Corridor Agreements: Decline to enter into placement or maintenance agreements with NCDOT, the SBI, or third-party vendors for static ALPR placement along state rights-of-way within Lee County.
Protect Taxpayer Dollars & Rural Infrastructure:
Prohibit county funds, county-owned property, or local utility poles from being allocated to host, maintain, or facilitate continuous automated vehicle tracking networks.
Audit Vendor Contracts & Demand Transparency:
Conduct a full public accounting of any active surveillance or plate-reader technologies currently utilized by county departments, enforcing strict policies against sharing non-suspect driver location data with out-of-state databases or private corporations.
Lee County should remain a safe, free community that respects individual privacy and constitutional boundaries—not a jurisdiction where every resident is treated as a suspect the moment they drive off their property.
Sign and share this petition to tell Lee County leadership: Protect our privacy and reject automated dragnet surveillance in Lee County!
289
The Issue
To: Chair Samantha Martin, Members of the Lee County Board of Commissioners, and Sheriff Brian Estes
From: Concerned Residents, Taxpayers, and Drivers of Lee County, North Carolina
Why This Matters
Every single day, thousands of law-abiding Lee County residents drive to work, haul livestock or goods, drop their children off at school, run errands, and travel across our rural and municipal roads. Under new North Carolina state rules, automated surveillance vendors and law enforcement agencies are pushing to turn our county’s public corridors—including US-1, US-421, NC-87, NC-42, and NC-24—into a continuous, 24/7 digital dragnet.
Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) do not simply photograph vehicles involved in active crimes. They log every single vehicle that passes by. These systems continuously record and store your vehicle’s license plate, make, model, color, date, time, and precise direction—building a searchable database of your private daily movements without any suspicion that you have committed a violation.
This is a direct threat to our constitutional rights. Article I, Section 20 of the North Carolina Constitution explicitly bans general warrants—the dangerous practice of gathering data on all citizens in the hope of catching someone doing wrong. Indiscriminate, automated tracking on public highways violates this fundamental North Carolina guarantee.
The state law does NOT force Lee County to install these cameras. Placing ALPR systems on state corridors requires county law enforcement agencies to actively opt in and execute placement agreements with NCDOT and the State Bureau of Investigation. Our Board of Commissioners and Sheriff have the power to say NO.
What We Are Demanding
We call on Chair Martin, the Lee County Board of Commissioners, and Sheriff Estes to protect the liberty, privacy, and constitutional rights of Lee County citizens by taking the following binding actions:
Refuse Countywide Corridor Agreements: Decline to enter into placement or maintenance agreements with NCDOT, the SBI, or third-party vendors for static ALPR placement along state rights-of-way within Lee County.
Protect Taxpayer Dollars & Rural Infrastructure:
Prohibit county funds, county-owned property, or local utility poles from being allocated to host, maintain, or facilitate continuous automated vehicle tracking networks.
Audit Vendor Contracts & Demand Transparency:
Conduct a full public accounting of any active surveillance or plate-reader technologies currently utilized by county departments, enforcing strict policies against sharing non-suspect driver location data with out-of-state databases or private corporations.
Lee County should remain a safe, free community that respects individual privacy and constitutional boundaries—not a jurisdiction where every resident is treated as a suspect the moment they drive off their property.
Sign and share this petition to tell Lee County leadership: Protect our privacy and reject automated dragnet surveillance in Lee County!
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Petition created on August 2, 2026