How & why

What is this?

Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) photograph every passing car and log where it was. A few states have passed laws about where these cameras may be placed - near schools or places of worship, for example. This map takes crowdsourced camera locations and checks them against those placement laws, so you can see which cameras deserve a closer look.

Why does it exist?

Placement laws only matter if someone checks. Agencies rarely audit their own cameras against siting statutes, and doing it by hand means reading statutes and measuring distances one camera at a time. This tool does the tedious part, leaving the part that actually matters to you: verification and follow-up.

How do I use it?

1. Purple states have a placement (siting) law. Zoom into one.
2. Red dots are cameras flagged as close to a protected place; blue dots were checked and nothing was found. Orange icons are the protected places themselves (schools, worship, healthcare, courts, food banks).
3. Click a red dot to see the distance, the statute, and what the law actually says.
4. If it still looks off after you verify the facts yourself, use "Draft a report" to generate a starting-point inquiry letter to the relevant agency.

What do the radius sliders do?

Some statutes say things like "immediately surrounding" without giving a number. Rather than pretend we know what a court would say, the map uses an adjustable "close by" radius (default 100 m) and labels every result that relies on it. Where a statute uses on-property language instead (like Virginia's "on or within the boundaries of"), a tighter "on premises" radius applies (default 50 m). Both live in the legend. Neither is a legal threshold. Statutes that state an actual number ignore the sliders entirely.

Is this legal advice?

No. Camera positions and place categories are crowdsourced and can be wrong, stale, or mis-tagged; statutes change; and whether a specific placement violates a specific law is a question for a lawyer, not a map. Verify everything yourself - the camera, the place, and the current statute text - before contacting anyone.

Where does the data come from?

Camera locations come from OpenStreetMap using the DeFlock tagging convention (surveillance:type=ALPR). Protected places and state boundaries come from Overture Maps. The law table is hand-curated with citations and source links on every rule.

A camera or place is wrong. How do I fix it?

Cameras: every camera's detail panel links to its OpenStreetMap node; correct the tags there and the next data build picks it up. Places come from Overture Maps, which blends several sources, so a wrong place is best reported as an issue on GitHub. If a law is wrong or missing, open an issue too, with a link to the statute.

Why isn't my state highlighted?

Purple states have a siting law. Gray states were reviewed and have no siting-specific ALPR law (many regulate only data retention or use). Hover over any state to see when it was last checked. A state with no shading at all has not been reviewed.