Episode Details

South Carolina lawmakers have introduced House Bill H.4675, a piece of legislation aimed at establishing clear boundaries for law enforcement's use of Flock license plate reading cameras and similar surveillance technologies across the state. Under the provisions of the proposed bill, surveillance data would be subject to strict privacy controls, prohibiting storage on private corporate servers and mandating that all data remain on secure, state-controlled servers physically located within South Carolina. To protect citizens' civil liberties, the legislation restricts police from using artificial intelligence to identify vehicles based solely on their visual appearance, requiring specific license plate numbers for searches instead. Furthermore, the bill enforces a strict 21-day maximum retention period for collected data—after which it must be automatically purged unless linked to an active criminal investigation authorized by a court—and requires law enforcement officers to secure a probable-cause search warrant prior to accessing the database.