The Bill That Hides the Evidence

One of Iowa’s proposed bills on automated license plate reader surveillance cameras (“ALPRs”), House File 2701, scooched past the committee on the judiciary with the backing of the ACLU, IJ, and AfP; the bill is modeled on Virginia’s, and would use identical mechanisms to completely prevent oversight of police use of the technology.

Don’t confuse it with the other proposed ALPR bill, House File 2161, a bill that was amended to give the insurance industry access to surveillance data.

H.F. 2701 doesn’t do that. At least not out loud. Its central accomplishment is eliminating oversight.

Virginia, but less transparent

H.F. 2701 closely tracks Virginia’s HB2724 law, which came into effect in July, 2025. Much of the language in Iowa’s bill was lifted verbatim from Virginia’s.

The Richmond Times Dispatch published an article today, titled to tell Iowans in no uncertain turns what the proposed bill really holds: “State won’t say which law enforcement agencies are breaking surveillance camera laws.”

Under the new laws, agencies can’t share their databases with other states or federal agencies. But at least nine self-reported that they were still allowing federal agencies continuous access to their databases, and another 20 were still allowing out-of-state agencies that same access, the crime commission said in it’s*[sic]* January report.

The commission won’t, however, identify which agencies are violating state law

Iowa’s proposed bill does not restrict sharing with out of state agencies, but Virginia’s outcome for finding violations is better than the one Iowa can expect; the Iowa bill is significantly worse for transparency.

Like Virginia, it would remove ALPR system audit trails, which provide information on what the system is being used for, from oversight. Virginia requires that agencies record data about when the system is being used for stops, and demographic data on who is being stopped. Iowa does not. Iowa requires annual reporting too, but only of self-reported aggregates nobody can verify.

Where some might find it shocking that Virginia’s commission won’t answer the question “who abused the system?”, Iowa took that same bill and surgically removed any possibility of that question being asked.

The only report goes to the Department of Public Safety. This is problematic, given DPS’ history of inaction on surveillance, and its readily-apparent conflict of interest when it comes to oversight of local police.

Any reports would contain aggregates of data that isn’t required to be collected according to any standard, or at all — like the number of stops. But even if the numbers were there, nobody could verify them: the underlying log files are completely inaccessible to anyone except the agency reporting, including DPS.

Make no mistake: Iowa police don’t want you to know about ALPRs. The ACLU of Iowa/University of Iowa’s report showed widespread violations of existing open records law;^[1] the Iowa Public Information Board unlawfully refused to look into non-disclosure of ALPR contracts; and the Wapello County Sheriff and Altoona Police Department adopted policies on concealing ALPR use.

This bill allows them to hide everything. And they will.

The Warrant Red Herring

The Iowa bill also does away with Virginia’s “reasonable suspicion” standard, in favor of a warrant requirement. That warrant requirement, however, is a red herring for two main reasons.

First, it only applies to data older than 24 hours. The first 24 hours are a free-for-all, requiring only self-certification (in a secret log) of a vague approved purpose. During this period, data can be accessed and copied without a warrant. If the data is copied to a location outside the ALPR system, the bill’s protections evaporate. Agencies across the country already use this mechanism to bypass existing retention requirements.

Second, the bill sets no bounds on who can issue a warrant. Any magistrate can. The magistrate does not have to be in the same county, nor does he need to have jurisdiction over the alleged offense. Magistrates appointed before 2009 are not even required to be lawyers—there’s no incentive to push back on a warrant 200 miles away when you’ve been doing the same part time job for 17+ years. The setup enables the worst kinds of forum shopping.

The electronic warrants system compounds the problem—it creates a system where search warrants are, or at least can be, handled similarly to your Amazon Shopping customer service complaints.

The judiciary’s oversight of magistrates is voluntary. That means that unless the chief judge in the county where the warrant was granted — which can differ from the county where it was requested — is actively monitoring the search warrants granted in the county there is no oversight.

Who can complain when the use of ALPR remains hidden? Who can even find warrants when it takes visiting all 99 county courthouses?^[2] And, critically, who could ever find out if the system was queried without a warrant?

Police don’t Police Police

As the outcome in more-transparent Virginia shows, these aren’t hypothetical concerns. We can’t trust police to “do the right thing” when it comes to oversight.

This bill does not aim to solve any problems, it aims to hide them. Virtually all abuses of ALPR systems that have been uncovered have been found by journalists and members of the public; immigration searches in Illinois uncovered by a community group, stalking in Joplin, MO, discovered by DeFlock Joplin, a Kansas police chief was only found to be stalking after admitting it, KCUR in Lenexa found police investigating a column author, and just two weeks ago in Milwaukee, a stalking victim found out by looking up their plate on haveibeenflocked.com.

Because nobody actively monitors how these systems are being used, these abuses are not discovered in real-time. It takes drawn-out open records processes, complex analyses, and lengthy investigations. The bill requires logs to be destroyed within two years — or sooner, at the agency’s discretion.

Of course, whether the existence of evidence in a locked filing cabinet in the basement of the police station actually matters is another question.

Iowa’s bill would sweep this type of evidence of abuse under the rug. It undermines Iowa’s public records law and tacitly blesses the current complete non-enforcement of Iowa’s existing laws on surveillance.

The ACLU/UI report revealed that over a third of Iowa agencies grant access to non-sworn support staff, like administrative staff and clerks. The bill doesn’t address this, nor does it set minimum security standards in statute — it delegates them to the same agency policies nobody audits.

The bill is silent on how Iowa enforces its restrictions on out-of-state agencies that access the data — or on what happens when out-of-state agencies don’t comply with, for example, the requirement to send annual audit reports to DPS.

If this bill passes, some will claim it as a victory. Neither the ACLU, nor the legislature, nor DPS will have any way to verify if it was.

The ACLU of Iowa, Institute for Justice, and Americans for Prosperity should withdraw their support for H.F. 2701. Virginia has proven that it places incident screens where guardrails are needed. Let’s learn from their mistake.