They Want a Camera at Every Entrance to North Carolina

The budget did what the bill was going to do

The state budget now permits NCDOT and the SBI to agree to place automated license plate readers on state-owned land. The systems must be above ground, removable, and free of combustible fuel, and must not “unreasonably interfere” with public utility facilities. Any law enforcement agency contracting to use them must report its use to the SBI, and the SBI must report annually each March to the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Justice and Public Safety — including each agency’s written policy, the number of data requests, and the number of cameras in the system.

The context, from the same reporting: the SBI has run this as a “pilot” for three years, with more than 100 cameras statewide and 32 participating agencies — Raleigh PD, the Wake County Sheriff’s Office and Charlotte-Mecklenburg among them. At least nine use Flock Safety cameras or have access to its database. And the SBI told the legislature its goal was to cover every entry point to the state. That is not our characterization. It is the agency’s own stated objective, and it is why this post is titled what it is titled.

NCDOT’s spokesman told the N&O the department is not involved in the installation or use of the readers, that it merely “has the option to inspect the cameras to ensure they are placed in approved areas within the right of way” — and that NCDOT was not part of budget deliberations for this provision. The agency whose land this is says it had no seat at the table. We have a records request pending with NCDOT on exactly this question, filed July 4.

The ACLU of North Carolina opposes the provision. Its spokesman, Zac Contreras, told the paper these systems “do not just search for suspects of crime; they also keep records on the whereabouts of everybody,” and that lawmakers “should not dismiss concerns about location tracking as hypothetical when documented cases demonstrate that such misuse is already occurring.”

One thing worth keeping. Defending the provision, Senator Britt said the technology “deals with a limited number of circumstances, including locating lost or stolen vehicles, missing persons and people with outstanding felony warrants.” He is describing § 20-183.30(5) — the statute’s closed, four-item definition of a lawful purpose. The bill’s own sponsor says the list is short. We agree, and we intend to hold every agency in this state to it.

The original June 26 alert follows, preserved for the record — including the July 8 update that was wrong.

It comes down to one bill, and the clock is short.

What House Bill 206 does

Since 2023, the SBI has run a “pilot” program putting automated license-plate readers on state-owned highways — and roughly 80% of North Carolina’s roads are state-controlled. That pilot expires July 1. House Bill 206 would make it permanent, writing a new statute (G.S. 20-183.34) that lets the Department of Transportation place SBI readers on state land and rights-of-way and lets the SBI strike data-sharing agreements with other agencies. Tellingly, this surveillance language is tucked inside an omnibus bill — “DPS/Other Changes” — alongside popular, unrelated items like Hurricane Helene relief. (WRAL; bill summary)

The real goal: every road into the state

This isn’t speculation about a slippery slope — the SBI has said it plainly. In a May 2026 report, the agency laid out its priorities: extend funding through 2028, build a statewide database, hire a program coordinator, and — its stated top priority — expand the network so readers sit on every major highway entering and leaving North Carolina. The program has already grown to 32 agencies and about 140 cameras, which have logged more than 150 million scans. Footage can be kept up to 90 days — compare that to New Hampshire’s similar program, where it’s deleted in three minutes unless tied to an active case. (CBS17; Axios Raleigh)

Put plainly: a permanent network on every state road, feeding a central database, is a real-time map of where every North Carolinian goes — built without a warrant and kept for months.

A New Hanover-area lawmaker is helping build it

This isn’t only happening in Raleigh. One of House Bill 206’s primary sponsors is Rep. Charlie Miller (R), whose House District 19 covers parts of New Hanover and Brunswick counties. A career law-enforcement officer and former Brunswick County chief deputy, Rep. Miller is among those championing permanent statewide surveillance. Our own delegation has a hand on the pen. (NCGA)

The case they make — and why it’s the wrong trade

Supporters — the SBI and law-enforcement groups — say the readers help solve crimes faster, find missing people, and recover stolen cars. Those goals are real, and we don’t doubt the program catches some wrongdoers. But that has never been the question. Almost any surveillance “helps.” The question is what we surrender to get it.

As ACLU of North Carolina attorney Liz Barber warned the Senate Judiciary Committee: “What begins as a tool to find missing persons or recover stolen vehicles can gradually expand into broader intelligence gathering, informal information sharing, political monitoring, and other uses.” (WRAL) We’ve already documented how that expansion works — data searched without a warrant, shared far beyond the agency that collected it, and misused by individuals. Make the program permanent and statewide, and you don’t get a tool. You get an infrastructure — one that outlasts every official who promised to use it responsibly.

There’s another path

North Carolina isn’t choosing between this bill and nothing. A competing measure, Senate Bill 623, would go the other direction — requiring a warrant before law enforcement uses or shares plate-reader data, and capping how long it’s stored. That’s the difference between a state that uses a tool with limits and a state that builds a permanent tracking grid. Lawmakers are choosing the direction right now.

A free state does not put every driver under permanent watch to catch the few. That has never been the test.

What you can do now

• Watch for its return. The plate-reader language was removed from HB 206, but the SBI’s stated goal — readers on every road into the state — hasn’t changed. Ask your legislators to reject any statewide, warrantless plate-reader expansion in future bills. Find them at ncleg.gov/FindYourLegislators.
• Push for real safeguards. Support a warrant requirement and short retention for plate-reader data (the direction of Senate Bill 623), so the pilot can’t simply be made permanent without limits.
• Sign the petition and share this with everyone you know who drives in North Carolina. This was never just a Wilmington issue.

The men who passed it made our argument for us

When WRAL asked how the budget squares with drivers’ privacy, the two most powerful Republicans in the legislature gave the same answer — the public-road argument, verbatim.

House Speaker Destin Hall: “If you’re driving down a public highway, you’re out in the public anyway, so you don’t really have much expectation of not being seen out there.” Senate leader Phil Berger: “People are driving their vehicles in public. Anybody who is there is there to see it.”

That is exactly the argument we take apart on the public-road page. Being seen by a person is not the same as being recorded, timestamped, and searchable forever by every agency in the state. The Supreme Court said as much in Carpenter, and again three weeks ago in Chatrie.

The scale is not hypothetical. In the SBI’s own report, Raleigh’s three state-road cameras recorded 14.8 million drivers and returned 956 “hits” — the report does not say how many led to an arrest, a rescue, or anything at all. Four more agencies (the Harnett, Franklin, and Person sheriffs and Henderson police) logged another 23.3 million drivers on 40 cameras by March. The SBI’s stated goal, in writing, is “covering all entrances and exits to North Carolina.” (WRAL, July 17, 2026)

Thirty of thirty-two agencies had no rule about watching a protest

Here is the part of WRAL’s reporting that deserves more attention than it got. WRAL obtained the internal ALPR policies of all 32 agencies in the SBI pilot and read them. Only two — Asheville Police and Raleigh Police — contain any language restricting the use of plate readers to surveil political rallies, religious gatherings, or protests. The other thirty have none.

Not a violation. Not a loophole. Simply no rule, in thirty of thirty-two written policies, against pointing this system at a church parking lot or a demonstration. And the statute’s only penalty for misuse is a Class 1 misdemeanor, with no mandated audit procedure to surface it in the first place.

The budget provision that just became law does not limit the program to those 32 agencies. It opens the SBI network to any law enforcement agency in North Carolina — which means the thirty-of-thirty-two figure is a floor, measured on the smallest version of this program that will ever exist. Every agency that joins from here brings whatever policy it has, or hasn’t, written.

The ACLU of North Carolina has shifted accordingly. Having dropped its opposition once the plate-reader language came out of HB 206, spokesman Zac Contreras told WRAL the group has “moved on to pushing for reforms” — and named a specific one worth borrowing for any local ask: making the officer who runs each search identifiable. That is precisely the field New Hanover County redacted across 2,980,082 searches.

Sources

• WRAL — “NC moves to lock in highway license plate reader program permanently” (Jun 3, 2026)
• CBS17 — SBI push to increase license plate readers
• Axios Raleigh — SBI wants to expand the pilot (May 20, 2026)
• Legislative Reporting Service — H206 bill summary · NCGA bill page

Legislation moves fast. House Bill 206’s status and text can change — check ncleg.gov/BillLookUp/2025/H206 for the latest before acting.