Across the country, cities are quietly swapping one license plate surveillance company for another and calling it reform. After facing backlash over Flock's automatic license plate readers, cities like Denver, Syracuse, and Knoxville have simply replaced Flock's cameras with nearly identical ones from Axon. The cameras still scan every car that passes, whether they're mounted to a streetlight or built into a squad car. Nothing about how the technology works, or who can access what it collects, actually changes.

That matters because these systems have already caused real harm. Investigative reporting has linked license plate camera networks to Immigration and Customs Enforcement tapping into local police data, to police officers stalking their exes using camera lookups, and to the tracking of a woman after she self-managed an abortion. None of those problems are unique to one company's cameras. They come from letting police build a searchable log of everywhere every car goes, with no warrant and often no public oversight.

Some cities say they're switching because the new vendor lacks a national search network, but police departments can still strike data-sharing deals with each other, and nothing stops a future update from changing that. A different company's logo on the camera doesn't fix the underlying problem.

Cities and states should require a warrant before police can search license plate camera data, ban sharing that data with federal immigration agents, and hold public hearings before signing any surveillance contract, no matter which company is on the other end.

Sign this petition to demand real limits on license plate surveillance, not just a change in vendors.