Think of how many crimes could be solved if the police could investigate without limit. Imagine how much easier law enforcement would be if police could search anyone’s property for any reason and seize any item for any cause.

Most Americans don’t want to live in that world. They know instinctively that maximum government power to investigate isn’t worth the cost to liberty. Check out the Fourth Amendment.

That’s why law enforcement representatives who appeared before a Colorado state Senate committee last month to argue against a bill that’s meant as a guardrail against mass surveillance unwittingly made a case for the bill as they revealed their disregard for civil rights. They argued for free police access to mass surveillance data, but they demonstrated how easily freedom can be traded away.

The bill, Senate Bill 26-70, addresses growing concerns across the political spectrum about surveillance methods that are proliferating in Colorado communities, particularly automatic license plate readers, such as those produced by Flock Safety. These and other systems gather information about the everyday movements of residents, data that can be stored and searched. The systems are concerning on their face, since they invite privacy abuses. But they’re especially offensive now that we know they’re being used in the brutal federal immigration crackdown and to track pregnant women escaping abortion-ban states.

Image

Under the legislation as it’s currently written, law enforcement in Colorado would need to obtain a judicial warrant to access location information in a database after 72 hours from when it was collected, and a government agency would be prohibited from retaining that information for more than 30 days.

The police object.

Several members of law enforcement spoke in opposition to the bill during the Feb. 23 committee hearing. They told one story after another that purported to show how they wouldn’t have been able to solve a case but for mass surveillance, and they suggested that curbing their surveillance powers would betray victims and their families.

But to properly weigh their argument, try this thought experiment: What if every time you leave your home the police affix a tracking device to your car that allows them to record and store information about every trip you make to the homes of friends, the store, your house of worship, your work and everywhere else you go, as well as how long you’re there and what routes you take? This is the essence of what Flock Safety and other similar mass surveillance systems do.

Bill proponents aren’t looking to stop this practice. Rather, they simply want to enact some limits on government’s ability to search historical information collected by these systems.

The bill draws most of its support from Democrats, but a Republican, Senator Lynda Zamora Wilson of El Paso County, is a sponsor, and she offered some of the most compelling testimony in support of the legislation, which she said “safeguards our essential liberties from encroaching government surveillance.”

A key point she made during the hearing is that license plate readers are quickly proliferating across the state.

“We know that 10 to 15 years ago there were hardly any license plate readers in our streets. Now there are hundreds, if not thousands across the state, with increasing surveillance platforms on the horizon,” she said, adding that integration with emerging AI raises concern of “Colorado becoming a surveillance state, like China.”

Flock has said its cameras are present in 75 Colorado communities, including Colorado Springs, Boulder, Durango, Longmont and Castle Rock. Denver recently dropped Flock in response to overwhelming public pressure.

“This isn’t a partisan issue. Protecting the Fourth Amendment is a foundational American principle that transcends party lines,” Zamora Wilson said. “Privacy isn’t about hiding something bad. It’s about protecting something profoundly good: our liberty.”