Overview
Should police be able to photograph every car that passes a camera? Do license plate cameras help catch criminals, or do they track millions of innocent drivers? John Stossel talks with Chad Marlow, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Rafael Mangual, who studies criminal justice at the Manhattan Institute, about Flock cameras, which are now in thousands of communities. Students weigh public safety against privacy and consider whether the cameras should be used at all, and if so, under what limits.

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Lesson Insights

Grade level and subjects
• Recommended for grades 6-12
• Subjects: Government, Science / Technology
• Works in Classroom, Hybrid, and Homeschool settings

What students will learn
By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:
• describe how automated license plate readers such as Flock cameras collect information about drivers;
• explain the main arguments for and against using license plate cameras to fight crime;
• analyze the risks of mass surveillance, both when the tools are misused and when they work as designed;
• evaluate a claim about crime or surveillance by tracing its source and checking the evidence behind it; and
• formulate a position on whether, and how, a free society should allow mass tracking of where people go.

Key concepts and terms covered
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Authoritarian, Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR), Chilling Effect, Civil Liberties, Deter, Fourth Amendment, Hot List, Oversight, Privacy, Surveillance, Surveillance State, and Trade-off.

Sample discussion questions
• What information do Flock cameras record about each passing car?
• If a camera helps find one kidnapped child, is that enough to justify it?
• What could someone learn about you from a record of every place you drove for a year?
• Is the bigger danger cameras being misused, or cameras working exactly as designed?
• Mangual compares banning the cameras to disarming police after a few bad shootings. Is that a fair comparison? Why or why not?

What’s in the free teacher’s guide
This printable 22-page Teacher’s Guide includes a lesson description, learning objectives, key vocabulary, a fill-in viewing guide with answer key, discussion and analysis questions, classroom activities, and the full video transcript.

Related resources
• Nothing to Hide – The Privacy Myth — Is privacy only important when you have something to hide? Naomi Brockwell challenges a common response to surveillance.
• Lessons in Lyrics: Rule of Law — What good are laws if the powerful can ignore them? A song-based lesson on holding everyone accountable, officials included.
• Life Behind the Berlin Wall — How did East Germans live under constant government surveillance?