In a state Capitol often threaded with thorny partisan debate and sharp ideological branches, Colorado lawmakers and advocacy groups from opposite ends of the political spectrum have found a clearing of common ground.
A suspicion of Big Data.
In the House, one of the Capitol’s most progressive members, Rep. Jennifer Bacon, is partnering with one of the building’s most conservative voices, Rep. Ken DeGraaf, on a bill that would block law enforcement from buying Coloradans’ private data.
In the Senate, a Democratic criminal justice reformer, Sen. Judy Amabile, and a Republican newcomer, Sen. Lynda Zamora Wilson, are joining to back legislation that would limit law enforcement’s access to databases of information fed by license plate-reading cameras.
The fundamental tension between security and privacy that has animated American policymakers since the country’s founding is ratcheting up this year, as mass data collection and surveillance technology become ubiquitous.
Zamora Wilson began a committee hearing last week by quoting Benjamin Franklin’s line about how giving up essential liberty for temporary safety makes one deserving of neither. Centuries later, lawmakers say they’re responding to the same sense of unease that’s spread from Super Bowl commercials and the activities of local technology giants. In Colorado, legislators have already moved to limit access to biometric data, and other bills this year deal with data for tenants, homeowners, social media users and immigrants.
Colorado is not alone. Montana passed its own law last year limiting law enforcement’s access to private data purchasing. Other states have increasingly weighed how to shield their residents from the consequences of invisible but ever-growing mountains of information amassed by smartphone apps, traffic cameras and nosy household appliances.
In Denver, Mayor Mike Johnston last week announced an imminent end to the city’s controversial relationship with Flock Safety, which has run its license plate cameras.
“Right now, law enforcement has body cameras, cameras on their cars, pole cameras, speeding cameras, red light, license-plate readers, facial recognition, drones — and then we have (artificial intelligence) coming on board, which is a big unknown,” said Zamora Wilson, who lives at the Air Force Academy. “And a lot of my constituents are concerned that their privacy is being invaded, and we’re becoming a surveillance state, like China.”
Or, as Bacon quipped during a committee hearing Wednesday for her bill with DeGraaf: “When this crazy liberal from Denver and this libertarian from El Paso County sit in front of you, that means there is a legitimate community concern.”
Besides the license plate cameras, Zamora Wilson is sponsoring bills that would regulate traffic cameras, facial recognition software and drones.
Not all of the privacy-centered bills are focused on law enforcement, and not all are bipartisan. Democrats are also running legislation aimed at preventing companies from using mass data collection to customize prices for online shoppers and individualize wages for gig workers like Uber drivers. (Though that bill may have some crossover appeal, too: DeGraaf said he was “concerned” about the practice.)
But even bipartisan agreement does not necessarily translate to clear paths through the legislature.
Law enforcement is flatly opposed to the bills that would limit agencies’ access to data. During committee testimony last week, in between panelists who warned about mass data collection, police chiefs and detectives described the shootings, murders and assaults they’d solved with license plate readers and location data.
Requiring them to obtain warrants before they could access that data, they warned, would hinder their ability to solve those crimes in the future.
“The legislation, I think, is trying to be responsive to what (lawmakers are) hearing from some people,” said Todd Reeves, a deputy police chief speaking on behalf of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police. “Unfortunately, I don’t think they know exactly how we use this data and how we use this information and how cases are put together.”
Law enforcement opposition can be a serious hurdle in the Capitol. Uniforms filling committee rooms and legislative lobbies — and officers describing violent crimes and the technology needed to solve them — can override higher-level discussions about the implications of that technology.
Only one of the three measures up for an initial vote last week cleared its first hurdle. Lawmakers delayed votes on the other two so that they could work to shore up support and assuage concerns from police and prosecutors.
A Flock Safety license plate recognition camera is seen on a street light post on Ken Pratt Boulevard near the intersection with U.S. 287 in Longmont on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (Matthew Jonas/Daily Camera)Police surveillance: ‘People are concerned’
A week ago, Chrisanna Elser described to lawmakers the “dystopian task” of proving her innocence against license plate readers.
The technology had captured her truck in an area where a package had been reported stolen, and a Columbine Valley Police officer told her: “You can’t get a breath of fresh air in our valley or town without us knowing.”
Elser eventually gathered her own evidence to prove she wasn’t the package thief, according to 9News, which previously covered the incident.
“I am here to testify that this technology is being sold as a shield to protect communities,” Elser told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 23, as they debated Zamora Wilson and Amabile’s bill. “But in practice, it is a digital dragnet that turns our constitutional rights upside down.”
Senate Bill 70 would generally prohibit law enforcement or government agencies from accessing databases gathered by license plate readers without a warrant. It would waive the requirement in certain situations, such as emergencies or within a short time window after specific data was gathered. The bill would also limit how long that data could be stored, though Zamora Wilson and Amabile eased that provision last week.
Two days later, Bacon and DeGraaf settled in for the first committee hearing on House Bill 1037. Their bill would generally prevent local law enforcement from buying Coloradans’ personal data from private companies — such as location information that can be accurate to within a few inches, said Sebastian Zimmeck, a computer science professor at Wesleyan University who researches data privacy.
Bacon, DeGraaf and their supporters argue their proposal is in keeping with the Fourth Amendment, which generally requires law enforcement get a warrant before obtaining a person’s private information. Montana passed a similar law last year.
While law enforcement officials argued that the bills would hamper their ability to do their jobs, supporters of the proposals said that was the point: ensuring there are checks on the government’s access to Coloradans’ information.
The nation’s founders wrote that citizens had a right to be secure in their papers. DeGraaf said the modern equivalent was security in data. Like Zamora Wilson, he said the specter of China’s omnipresent surveillance state loomed large.
“What this bill is about is, what are the expectations that we have — as people, as neighbors, as constituents — about what we do and do not want people to have access to,” Bacon said. “And in this case, just for this bill, how can that information be used against me in a court of law? Or rather, if we wanted the government to know it, shouldn’t we have given it to them?”
Each of the bills received hours of seesawing testimony from police and civil liberties groups, district attorneys and libertarians.
Unique coalitions formed: One panel of supporters for HB-1037 included a prominent gun-rights group, a leading immigration advocacy organization, a religious alliance and a Boulder resident who regularly testifies against Democratic proposals.
All shared similar concerns about the government buying their information.
Zamora Wilson was adamant about her support for law enforcement. She called state efforts to regulate the usage of data a “delicate dance” of protecting privacy and civil liberties, while giving law enforcement the tools to solve crimes quickly and efficiently.
“It’s here. It’s not just coming down the pipe — it’s here,” Zamora Wilson said. “And people are concerned. And so we need to have the discussion. What does this look like? What do the guardrails look like? Where’s the give and take?”
Republican Rep. Ken DeGraaf speaks during a bill debate at the Colorado State Capitol on March 9, 2023, in Denver. He is partnering with a Democrat this year on bill that would block law enforcement from buying Coloradans’ private data. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)‘Not about bypassing warrants,’ sergeant says
Prosecutors and police officials argued that the give-and-take would mean compromising their ability to quickly respond to and solve crimes.
License plate readers, location data — that information, they say, helps police turn fragments of information into search warrants.
“This is not about bypassing warrants. It’s about preserving the investigative path that allows us to identify suspects before seeking judicial authorization,” Sgt. Dominic Marziano of the Aurora Police Department told lawmakers during the debate over Bacon and DeGraaf’s bill. “Privacy and technology should advance together, but we must avoid recreating barriers that past tragedies taught us to remove.”
For every American Civil Liberties Union official arguing that obtaining private information about Americans shouldn’t be quick or easy, an officer detailed a shooting solved by quick access to location data.
Elser, who fought the package theft accusation, was caught in an impersonal — and inaccurate — technology dragnet. Shortly after she described it, Aurora resident Ramon Farfan told lawmakers that his brother’s murder was solved with the help of license plate reader technology.
Prosecutors debated lawmakers on the limits of the Fourth Amendment. While advocates and lawmakers point to the rapidly changing and expanding technology as a reason to act now, Reeves, from the police chiefs association, said the concept wasn’t new.
Automated license plate readers, for example, have been in use for more than 20 years in Colorado, he said in an interview. Body-worn cameras used by police officers often capture people’s most intimate and vulnerable moments, including on private property.
And other more invasive technologies, like infrared cameras, have been discarded voluntarily by chiefs concerned about the invasion of privacy, he said — proof that law enforcement already weighs community wants and expectations.
Advocates are pushing a “false narrative of state surveillance,” Reeves said. The technology being targeted by Colorado lawmakers focuses on public areas not covered by the Fourth Amendment. Plus, he said, the system’s actual footprint is too scant to constitute mass surveillance, he said.
These systems aren’t used for general surveillance and couldn’t be, Reeves said. Instead, they are entry points for deeper investigations, including how law enforcement can target warrants.
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Instead, Reeves said he’d like the conversation to focus on internal policies used by law enforcement agencies and how to strike the balance between public safety and privacy that way, versus passing rigid legislation.
“The concepts are flawed from the beginning,” Reeves said. “Do I think we could work together and come up with palatable, acceptable legislation that’s not so restrictive and doesn’t overprovide protections of the Fourth Amendment that are clearly established? Yes. But I think that’s going to take an incredible amount of dialogue and an incredible amount of patience, because we both need to understand each others’ responsibilities.”
If the bills build upon decades of debates over privacy and security, their hearings last week showed how unsettled that balance remains.
Only SB-70, the license plate reader bill, passed its committee vote. After hours of testimony, Bacon and DeGraaf delayed HB-1037’s first vote amid skepticism over the data-purchasing bill from some Democrats and the House Judiciary Committee’s four Republicans (one of whom was a late substitute).
Zamora Wilson similarly paused the vote on her broader bill that’s aimed at facial recognition and traffic cameras, as she sought to shore up support.
“I think there’s this view that we are somehow trying to harm law enforcement and restrict their ability to do their jobs and protect people,” Anaya Robinson of the ACLU of Colorado said in an interview. “In reality, none of the bills are about that. The bills are about protecting people and protecting privacy, which we should all hold very dear.”
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