Brendan Rose/vtdigger, the Associated Press

State lawmakers clamped down on the use of automatic cameras to track vehicles by their license plates years ago, and Vermont police have told the Legislature they no longer use such surveillance.

But behind the scenes it was a different story: They just reached across state lines to do it, according to a data analysis by VTDigger.

Vermont police departments conducted over 100 license plate searches since 2023, surveilling people under investigation when they traveled out of state, according to data VTDigger obtained through public records requests.

The surveillance takes advantage of a loophole in a state law that was adopted more than a decade ago. The law set up strict rules around the use of license plate tracking data by Vermont law enforcement. The law was silent, however, on the use of a national network of cameras — which didn’t exist at the time — to track license plates of people when they travel out of state.

At issue is the tug and pull of the sometimes competing interests of public safety and privacy. Law enforcement officials say tracking license plates through surveillance helps them catch criminals, but cities and towns have protested access to such surveillance by police. License plate tracker cameras have been accused of making mistakes in communities across the country, such as misidentifying suspects in multiple cases, including a San Diego man who was falsely arrested and jailed for a month.

Such cameras have also been found to have been used by law enforcement in Texas to track women seeking an abortion, by police to stalk romantic interests, and by authorities to track targets of immigration enforcement operations.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s advocacy director in Vermont, Falko Schilling, said the use of such data raises serious concerns.

“I don’t think we should have to expect that we are tracked in every single one of our movements along public roadways, just because you are in a public space in one way or another,“ he said.

Vermont law enforcement officials told VTDigger that their use of out-of-state license plate reader systems isn’t restricted by the law and that they use the data as an investigative tool on important criminal cases, not to track citizens going about their business.

Berlin Police Chief James Pontbriand, whose department has used data from out-of-state license plate reader systems, said the information can be “a very important tool to law enforcement … that might open up doors to us that we would never have been able to get to ourselves and help us solve … very serious incidents.”

In a statement to VTDigger, the Vermont State Police said it doesn’t use license plate tracking systems in Vermont but during investigations may receive license plate tracking information from out-of-state enforcement agencies, adding that the use “complies with Vermont’s statutes.”

Tens of thousands of ‘eyes’ on the roads

Here’s how it works: More than 80,000 small automatic license plate reader cameras, made by the Atlanta-based company Flock Safety, are mounted on roadsides and in public spaces, according to the ACLU. The cameras capture the license plate numbers of vehicles as they pass by and record the information in a database.

Vermont’s law enforcement is largely shut out of that network because their communities don’t have Flock cameras. But they have found a workaround, turning instead to a regional intelligence hub to obtain license plate tracking information on Vermont suspects when they travel out of state. The intelligence hub is a nonprofit called the New England State Police Information Network. It provides law enforcement with license plate tracking information as well as criminal histories, social media accounts and home addresses. NESPIN did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.

NESPIN’s collection of license plate data operates outside of public view and regulatory supervision, said Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on digital privacy. “They’re doing a large amount of investigative stuff, accessing all sorts of databases,” he said.

At least 16 states have put in place rules governing license plate tracking cameras or their data. Vermont’s law has gone a long way toward shutting down use of the cameras in the state’s towns and cities.

One outlier in Vermont is Manchester, which has had five Flock license plate cameras mounted in its community in recent years. Manchester installed the cameras in 2023 and has said its officers paused doing searches last summer.

VTDigger was able to get a view of how Vermont police are using license plate tracking information through a public records request of Manchester’s Flock system records. The request showed searches that Manchester conducted between 2023 and summer 2025 as well as earlier this year. It also showed searches by law enforcement agencies outside Vermont that tapped the Manchester camera data. VTDigger found that nationwide searches accessing Manchester’s cameras — including searches by the New England State Police Information Network — totaled in the millions, dating back to early 2023.

Manchester’s town manager reached out to the state transportation secretary and officials at the Department of Public Safety earlier this year for guidance on its use of Flock. Manchester was told its use complied with state law because the information wasn’t stored and the license plate recognition hardware used in Manchester was not “the use intended” for the law to address, according to an email exchange obtained by VTDigger.

Lt. James Blanchard of the Manchester Police Department said in a written statement to VTDigger that the information from the Manchester cameras was included in some national searches by outside law enforcement until March, when Manchester changed its settings to end that arrangement. Manchester police continue to have access to information from their cameras, he said.

Blanchard added that he understands concerns about privacy and collection of the data but said his department focuses on safety and strives to use the systems responsibly, with appropriate training and policies, and limited access for officers. The technology’s value lies in its ability to provide investigative leads, “not in monitoring the day-to-day activities of law-abiding members of the public,” he said.

‘Why aren’t they being forthcoming?’

Access to the national Flock network by Vermont police highlights a gray area in the bill the Legislature passed in 2013 aimed at limiting the use of license plate reader systems in the state. Lawmakers say the practice is worrisome and potentially violates the spirit of the measure.

Rep. Barbara Rachelson, D/P-Burlington, who helped write the automatic license plate reader legislation, says the law is unclear about the use of out-of-state camera systems and that she believes the law should be made more enforceable.

“This is concerning on so many fronts that I would want to see legislation to be explicit about these situations,” she said.

The legislation — which predates private companies like Flock operating a national network of cameras — was aimed at small local systems, such as state police car-mounted cameras. It also included restrictions on how the data should be shared and retained.

Rachelson was not aware of the relationship between Vermont law enforcement and NESPIN before being contacted by VTDigger. “You’d think the Department of Public Safety would come to us and say we just want clarification, we are now getting it from this and not from our own license plate reader, like, why aren’t they being forthcoming about it?” she said.

Flock declined to comment for this story. Flock Safety’s website says data collected by its devices is stored and then deleted after 30 days in most cases. The data is encrypted, according to the company’s website.

VTDigger’s analysis of the data shows a record of 5,000 searches on Flock’s network since 2023 by NESPIN, including the 100 searches on behalf of Vermont law enforcement officers. Analysts at NESPIN — who are not law enforcement employees — discuss cases and share information about people gleaned from commercial and government databases with police officers, according to email records reviewed by VTDigger. Sometimes police officers make requests to NESPIN to access state and federal databases for records from law enforcement across the country.

The data obtained by VTDigger includes log entries for each search, with the date and time of the search and the number of local networks the search accessed. ​Each search also lists a reason, and analysts at NESPIN often added identifying information to link the search to the requesting law enforcement agency.

Vermont State Police had the largest number of searches linked to a single Vermont law enforcement agency, totaling about 30 searches since 2023, the VTDigger analysis shows. Local law enforcement searches totaled 57, which breaks down to 8 for Hartford, 4 for Barre City, 15 for Berlin, 12 for Brattleboro, 10 for Colchester, 5 for Rutland and 3 for the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department, according to the analysis. A total of 16 searches were made by Vermont law enforcement without naming a specific police department.

Colchester Police Chief Peter Hull said the department did utilize resources from NESPIN but would not comment on specific investigative techniques used. Hull said their investigations were compliant with Vermont law and current best practices. Franklin County Sheriff John Grismore said his department’s membership to NESPIN had ended in 2024 but did not comment about whether the department had requested Flock searches. Brattleboro, Rutland and Barre police did not respond to requests for comment.

On the Flock ‘hot list’

Behind each log entry there are investigations into alleged crimes. VTDigger was able to link some of the NESPIN searches to specific cases, confirming that police tracked people they believed may have committed crimes in Vermont as they traveled in neighboring states with Flock coverage.

In late September 2025, Eric Clifford, a special investigator with the Hartford Police Department, was posing as a 13-year-old girl on an anonymous messaging app and allegedly began a sexually explicit conversation with a Massachusetts man named Thomas Ndissi, according to email records obtained by VTDigger. On Oct. 8, Clifford reached out to NESPIN for help identifying the man, whose full name they did not know at the time, court records show.

Within an hour, the emails show, Clifford had received the man’s photo and driver’s license and was told by the network that it had added a license plate number of a car allegedly associated with Ndissi to a networkwide “hot list” on Flock. Believing Ndissi would try to meet the fictitious 13-year-old girl in Vermont, Clifford began to leverage the Flock system to automatically track the car, with tens of thousands of cameras simultaneously monitoring the roads for a license plate, according to the emails.

Hours later, Clifford received an email from the New England intelligence hub saying the car had been photographed by a camera mounted above the intersection of Maple Street and Union Street in Springfield, Massachusetts, according to the emails. Using Flock data from that network, Clifford tracked the car for a month.

On Nov. 4, Ndissi traveled to Vermont and was arrested by Hartford Police on charges of allegedly luring a child and disseminating indecent material to a minor, according to court documents. He pleaded guilty in federal court on May 27 to a charge of traveling in interstate commerce for the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct. His sentencing is set for later this year.

The car NESPIN was tracking would be pinged one more time in Massachusetts the day after Ndissi was arrested, before it was taken off the hot list. It turned out the car belonged to a relative of Ndissi, the email records show. VTDigger is not aware of the relative ever being a target in the investigation.

Clifford emailed NESPIN after Ndissi’s arrest and said NESPIN’s support was “extremely helpful” to the investigation, calling it “crucial intel,” according to the email obtained by VTDigger. Ndissi’s attorney, Alejandro Fernandez, said he was unaware of NESPIN’s involvement in the case when reached by phone.

Clifford said the department’s searches were done with good reason. “This guy is a known sex offender who’s traveling to meet up with a 13-year-old to engage with sex with her in a hotel room,” Clifford told VTDigger in an interview, adding: “that’s our justification. We’re not doing it willy-nilly.”

Hartford Police Chief Connie Kelley also defended use of the data in an interview with VTDigger. “It’s significant crimes that we’re reaching out to them for, and you save one child, that’s enough for us,” she said. She said Flock searches are used as one small part of a broader investigation and that her department’s policies require the data to be used ethically.

The ACLU’s Schilling said using the data subjectively, for “the worst crimes,” can be a “slippery slope.”

Even small departments rely on the New England information service, including the Berlin Police Department, which serves 2,800 residents and employs nine full-time officers. It reached out for help on six individual cases, VTDigger’s analysis of the data shows. Berlin requested help with investigating a home invasion in 2023 and a missing person case in 2024, among others, the data shows.

Berlin’s Pontbriand said in an interview that the data is used to give officers a “general direction” but that his department would not use Flock data as the basis for an arrest. “Just because you see a car on camera does not mean that you solved anything,” he said.

Vermont’s automatic license plate reader laws are set to sunset next year, a deadline that the city of Burlington has lobbied to extend as it weighs whether to install automatic license plate reader cameras to enforce traffic laws, according to Rachelson. Concerns about how Burlington intends to use and share the data collected in the proposed system may push lawmakers to reevaluate the current legislation, Rachelson said.

“How do we make sure that law enforcement doesn’t have and abuse the incredible power that they have, and the fear that they can instill in others, especially people who traditionally have not found law enforcement their friend,” she said.

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This story was originally published by VTDigger and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

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