Police departments across the country are abusing automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems to spy on drivers with virtually no oversight. The EFF analyzed search logs from Flock Safety's ALPR database and found officers entering absurd justifications to access location data on 82,413 cameras—or in many cases, no real justification at all. A Goshen Police officer searched 6,474 ALPR networks and just typed "idk" in the reason field. Others logged searches as "LOL," "LMAO," "sexy," "hehe," or "blah." The Priceville Police Department alone ran 1,954 searches marked "TBD." Some officers literally mashed their keyboards, producing strings like "hjknuilh" or "gyghkkghghjkghjk." These aren't isolated incidents—the pattern spans dozens of agencies in Ohio, Texas, Indiana, California, Florida, and beyond, stretching back years. The problem runs deeper than sloppy data entry. Police pitch ALPR systems to city councils as essential crime-fighting tools for kidnapping and murder, but the actual searches reveal a different reality. Officers use them to stalk romantic partners, surveil protests, track women seeking abortions, and investigate trivial complaints like loud music or whether a kid lives in the right school zone. More than 80 agencies have used ethnic slurs like "roma" and "g*psy" to profile Romani people without mentioning any crime. Flock Safety tried to fix things by forcing officers to pick from dropdown menus of crimes, but that just disguises improper searches behind a veneer of legitimacy—the system doesn't verify that the selected reason matches what officers actually did. The core issue is structural: there's no warrant requirement, no meaningful audit process, and no judicial oversight. Officers treat ALPR databases like personal search engines to track anyone's movements whenever they feel like it. The fact that police can document their searches with "leave me alone" or "f*ck this new search engine" and face no consequences shows how broken the accountability is. These systems were sold as targeted investigative tools but function as mass surveillance networks with the guardrails stripped away.