Your Leaders Want to Give Your Location Data to Corporations. We Think They Should Try It First.

Take the AI out of NaiBOR and read what's left. 😊

Absolutely not! That would be like saying that Flock Safety's LPR data — which they provide to over 6,000 communities, share with DHS, and make accessible to ICE through fusion centers and interagency agreements — could somehow be misused. These are serious, trusted institutions operating with robust oversight. If mass collection and indefinite retention of the real-time location data of millions of uninvestigated Americans hasn't been misused yet, why would tracking a few hundred public officials be any different? 😊

Besides, as Flock Safety's own marketing materials state: their cameras simply capture "what is already exposed to public view." We agree! That's exactly what we're doing. If observing people in public is safe when you do it to everyone, it's certainly safe when you do it to the people who approved it.

Unfortunately, we do not offer an opt-out at this time.

We understand this may feel uncomfortable! But NaiBOR operates on the same legal and technical framework as the LPR systems deployed across Nashville. Those systems don't offer an opt-out either. There is no mechanism for any resident of Davidson County to request that Flock Safety cameras stop reading their plate, that their data be deleted, or that they be excluded from the system. No consent is requested. No notice is given. No opt-out exists.

We believe our champions deserve the same seamless experience they've designed for everyone else. If you'd like to advocate for an opt-out mechanism, we'd encourage you to start by proposing one for the cameras on your constituents' streets first. We'll match whatever policy you adopt. 🤝

In the meantime, your After Dark weekly digest will continue to arrive every Monday. Vehicle stationary at non-home address, 12:14 AM – 6:52 AM, 6 hours 38 minutes. We make no inferences about the nature of these visits. We just surface the data.

This is a real answer. Every capability described on this page is legal under current law. Here's why:

The Fourth Amendment only restricts government actors. Courts have consistently held that the constitutional prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures applies to the government — not to private companies or individuals. Flock Safety itself is a private company. When a private entity captures license plate data on public roads, the Fourth Amendment does not apply.

License plates are public by law. They are government-issued identifiers that state law requires you to display on your vehicle, visible to anyone. Federal and state courts — including rulings in the Ninth and Eleventh Circuits — have consistently held that reading a license plate in public view is not a "search" under the Fourth Amendment. A federal case challenging Norfolk's LPR program (filed October 2024 by the Institute for Justice) remains a test case, but no court has yet ruled that private ALPR operation is unlawful.

Tennessee's ALPR statute doesn't apply to private parties. Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-10-302 limits data retention to 90 days — but only for a "governmental entity," defined as "any lawfully established department, agency or entity of this state or of any political subdivision of this state." Private companies and individuals are not covered. There is no Tennessee statute restricting private ALPR use, data retention, or sharing.

There is no federal law regulating private ALPR use. Congress has not enacted any statute governing the private collection, retention, or dissemination of license plate data. Multiple legal analyses, including a July 2025 Congressional Research Service report, have noted this gap.

Cameras on private property may photograph public streets. This is the exact deployment model used by Flock Safety in thousands of American communities, including in Tennessee. Cameras mounted on private property — such as utility poles, businesses, and homeowner association land — capture images of vehicles traveling on public roads.

Banning private ALPRs might violate the First Amendment. Legal scholars and at least one federal court analysis have noted that because the "creation and dissemination of information are speech within the meaning of the First Amendment," an outright ban on private ALPR operation could be struck down as an infringement on commercial speech.

In short: everything NaiBOR describes is legal for the same reason that Flock Safety, Motorola/Vigilant, and every other private LPR vendor can operate without restriction. The legal framework was built to enable this. We're just pointing the cameras in a direction nobody anticipated.