A surveillance company, BusPatrol, which contracts with school districts to install cameras on school buses for safety and security purposes, has come under fire. As 404 Media reports, BusPatrol intends to make data collected by handheld license plate scanners on school buses available to law enforcement. The company’s cameras currently photograph individuals who fail to stop when the bus stop arm is extended with a stop arm camera.
According to the report, BusPatrol cameras will take a photo of every car that passes a school bus equipped with their system. This information, which would include GPS location, could be searched by location and license plate. One of the main concerns raised about the project is that such searches will not require a search warrant from law enforcement.
BusPatrol has successfully partnered with law enforcement to issue tickets for failure to properly stop school buses for years. The company records failure to stop incidents and sends them to local law enforcement for review. If local law enforcement determines that the law has been violated, a citation is mailed to the vehicle owner. As Bloomberg reports, in Montgomery County, Maryland, 11,500 tickets were issued over a decade at one particular stop. Countywide, $92 million in fines were issued for more than 375,000 traffic tickets.
Police have already abused similar surveillance
Other surveillance camera systems – public and private – like Ring (an Amazon-owned brand) and Flock have been criticized for sharing data with law enforcement. And there is evidence that law enforcement may have abused the technology. Including an investigation into the whereabouts of a woman in Texas who had an abortion and providing information to ICE. Warning signs are being raised, and it’s not yet clear whether school districts or local governments will step in, or whether BusPatrol will forgo incorporating this level of oversight. BusPatrol is heavily integrated into the American school bus system. 35,000 buses in 24 states and more than 350 school districts use Buspatrol cameras.
Similar plans were rejected by Amazon in 2026. Originally, Ring cameras were to be integrated into the Flock surveillance ecosystem. However, due to backlash, Amazon canceled a security partnership with Flock in February 2026, while insisting the feature would be useful in the event of a catastrophic event. Some began tearing down Flock cameras, demonstrating the level of frustration with such surveillance.
