FBI Pulls Over Driver Over AI-Flagged Travel Patterns

Grace Knowles, a Virginia woman in her 20s, was pulled over in September 2025 after an FBI special agent told her that her license plate had been "flagged for suspicious travel patterns" over a multi-state trip. The cited roadside violation: spending "too much time driving in the left lane."

Knowles told Gizmodo what she saw in the agent's vehicle: "basically a heat map of the U.S., and I could see different circles where I'd been, and when he clicked on it, it was a photo of my license plate." The cameras feeding that map, the agent said, were "everywhere, including on top of highway signs."

The reporting ties the practice to automated license-plate reader networks from Flock Safety and Axon. WIRED earlier reported that Flock had developed an AI tool that "can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone." Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU, cautioned that for many drivers, "those encounters will be far more fraught, frightening and dangerous than what Knowles experienced."

Similar stops have surfaced elsewhere. Gizmodo describes a California grandmother questioned by U.S. Customs and Border Protection about casino visits, and a driver tracked between Wisconsin and Michigan after police described the route as "a known source State for Marijuana." In Texas, a federal jury sided with a driver who challenged what the case called an "unconstitutional traffic stop scheme" built on AI plate reads — one of several surveillance stories we have tracked over the past three months.

An August YouGov survey found 46% opposed law enforcement use of ALPR technology, with 38% in favor. The Los Angeles Police Department has suspended its Flock contract.