Colorado’s Privacy Law Is One of the Strongest in the Country. Here’s How to Use It.

Colorado was the third state in the country to pass a comprehensive consumer privacy law, after California and Virginia. The Colorado Privacy Act (CPA) went into effect on July 1, 2023, and has been strengthened through subsequent amendments.

But what makes Colorado’s privacy landscape unique isn’t just the law. It’s the combination of strong legal protections, an active privacy advocacy community, and one of the most organized anti-surveillance movements in the country.

What the CPA Gives You

The Colorado Privacy Act applies to companies that conduct business in Colorado or target Colorado residents and that process the data of at least 100,000 consumers per year, or 25,000 consumers if they derive revenue from data sales.

Your rights: access, correction, deletion, data portability, and the right to opt out of targeted advertising, data sales, and profiling. The Colorado Attorney General and district attorneys enforce the law.

Colorado also requires companies to recognize universal opt-out mechanisms — browser-based signals like the Global Privacy Control that automatically communicate your opt-out preferences to every website you visit. This is a significant advantage over states where you have to submit individual opt-out requests to each company.

Clearview AI Opt-Out

Colorado is one of only six states where residents are eligible to opt out of Clearview AI’s facial recognition database. Clearview scraped billions of photos from the internet to build a facial recognition system used by law enforcement agencies across the country.

If you’re a Colorado resident, you can submit a formal request to have your faceprint removed from Clearview’s database. This is a right that residents of most states don’t have.

The DeFlock Connection

DeFlock.me — the crowdsourced project that has mapped over 76,000 license plate readers across the country — was created by a Colorado-based privacy advocate. The project has become the primary resource for anyone trying to understand the scope of automated license plate reader surveillance in their community.

Colorado’s privacy community has been at the forefront of the national pushback against Flock Safety and similar ALPR companies. The DeFlock project has been cited in news reporting, city council debates, and policy discussions in communities across the country that have subsequently canceled their Flock contracts.

The Surveillance Landscape

License plate readers. Colorado has extensive ALPR deployments, particularly along the Front Range corridor (Fort Collins, Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo). Flock Safety has contracts with multiple Colorado communities and HOAs.

Facial recognition. Denver PD has used facial recognition technology. There are no statewide restrictions on government use of facial recognition, though Denver has explored potential regulations.

Federal presence. Colorado is home to multiple military installations (Peterson Space Force Base, Schriever Space Force Base, Fort Carson, Buckley Space Force Base, NORAD/Cheyenne Mountain) and federal agencies. This creates a significant population of security clearance holders with heightened privacy needs.

What Colorado Residents Should Do

Step 1: Enable Global Privacy Control. Install the Global Privacy Control browser extension or use a browser that supports it natively (Brave, Firefox with extensions). Colorado law requires companies to honor this signal. This is the single most efficient privacy action you can take — it automatically opts you out of data sales on every website you visit.

Step 2: Submit data broker deletion requests. Cite the Colorado Privacy Act by name. Start with Spokeo, BeenVerified, WhitePages, Radaris, TruePeopleSearch, FastPeopleSearch.

Step 3: Opt out of Clearview AI. You’re one of six states with this right. Submit a formal opt-out request through Clearview’s process. This removes your faceprint from a database used by over 3,000 law enforcement agencies.

Step 4: Run a full facial recognition audit. Clearview isn’t the only database. Search yourself on PimEyes, FaceCheck.ID, Google Lens, Yandex, and TinEye. Submit opt-outs for each.

Step 5: Map your ALPR exposure. Use DeFlock.me — built right here in Colorado — to see every license plate reader in your area. Check plate lookup sites and opt out. Review connected car data sharing.

Step 6: Disable ad tracking. On iPhone: Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking > toggle off. On Android: Settings > Privacy > Ads > Delete advertising ID.

Step 7: Harden everything else. Private social media. Disable face tagging. Strip photo metadata. Encrypted messaging. Disconnect linked accounts. Monitor for re-listing quarterly.

The Bottom Line

Colorado residents have some of the strongest privacy tools in the country: a comprehensive state law, universal opt-out mechanism support, Clearview AI opt-out eligibility, and a local privacy advocacy community that literally built the tool the rest of the country uses to track surveillance cameras.

Use all of it.