Key Takeaways

  • Cameras already outnumber humans, making hardware bans practically impossible according to Axon CEO Rick Smith.
  • Smith backs Senator Josh Hawley's bill to add criminal penalties for unauthorized personal database searches by law enforcement.
  • Axon advocates for two-party authorization, requiring a second officer to approve a query tied to an active case number before running a plate.
  • Demand for automated license plate readers is highest in high-crime, low-income neighborhoods, while privacy objections largely stem from wealthier areas.

Physical Cameras Won Out Decades Ago

Rick Smith wants founders to recognize an unchangeable reality: the physical surveillance grid is already built. Arguing about whether automated license plate readers like Flock Safety should exist in a neighborhood ignores the existing density of lenses.

“The fact is there are cameras everywhere. There's more cameras than people,” (play from 29:54) Smith said. “You know, you and I probably have four cameras just on our cell phones plus, you know, maybe a dozen in our house plus all the business cameras. So really what this comes down to is how we think about data governance.” (play from 29:58)

Trying to outlaw optical sensors in public streets is a dead end. When every doorbell, dashboard, and pocket contains high-definition glass, privacy cannot rely on an absence of recording. The battleground has moved from the capture layer to the database index.

The Two-Key Rule for Law Enforcement Databases

Public outrage over surveillance rarely targets the camera itself. The anger explodes when state power turns inward for personal surveillance.

“What people are really upset about are things like when a police officer can go in and do searches on their, you know, exgirlfriend,” (play from 30:40) Smith explained. “Or if you could track every American everywhere they go, like we don't want that.” (play from 30:51)

To neutralize this threat, Smith endorsed federal legislation drafted by Senator Josh Hawley that treats unauthorized searches as federal crimes. The technical mechanism is simple: eliminate single-user search capabilities. Smith wants mandatory multi-party authentication tied to active case numbers.

“There's two key systems where you've got to have collaboration before you're running searches,” (play from 34:53) Smith said. “So, if you're searching for your ex, you're going to have to find another officer who's willing to put their career at risk before you can do that.” (play from 34:57)

When an individual operator cannot pull a record without dragging a colleague into the audit log under an open criminal docket, casual stalking stops cold.

The Class Divide Over Street Safety

The public debate over license plate readers features an odd demographic split. Civil liberties groups and affluent suburbanites view neighborhood monitoring as an invasive drift toward an authoritarian police state. The residents living alongside violent street crime view it as basic municipal protection.

“The people who most want these sorts of technologies come from the poorest neighborhoods that have the highest crime rates,” (play from 39:57) Smith noted. “Paradoxically, those are the ones that, you know, people say, 'Well, we worry about overpolicing.' But when you actually go out, frankly a lot of the most concerns are coming from wealthy neighborhoods where this is more theoretical.” (play from 40:04)

When building products with high social friction, customer feedback changes depending on real exposure to danger. Theoretical harms dominate rooms where physical security is already guaranteed.

What to Do With This

Audit your internal production database access rules this afternoon. If any engineer can query customer records or location data without a second teammate signing off and linking a tracked support ticket, your audit log is purely decorative. Build dual-custody access into your sensitive user tables before an employee abuses it.