Congressional efforts to resist law enforcement’s use of Flock cameras for tracking Americans without a warrant are intensifying. The issue centers on the technology, which critics argue enables a mass surveillance system that bypasses the Fourth Amendment.
Last week, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley wrote to Garrett Langley, chief executive officer of Flock Safety, demanding documents and information about widespread surveillance activities. Just last night, U.S. Representatives Thomas Massie (Kentucky) and Ro Khanna (California) announced legislation aimed at banning federal funding for the cameras.
Additionally, Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert warned about the loss of legal rights due to the technology. In April, she and Massie introduced a bill requiring warrants for government access to Flock camera data.
Hawley noted that Flock has built an “unprecedented national surveillance network” with 120,000 cameras and over 20 billion vehicle scans monthly. He stated that individuals captured by the system have done nothing wrong. Hawley explained: “Instead of serving discrete local investigations, as contemplated by our constitutional processes, these camera networks harness artificial intelligence to pool what they capture into a national database that customers can search.”
Hawley cited several abuses:
– St. Charles County police in Missouri terminated Flock surveillance after discovering a civilian employee conducted searches for personal reasons unrelated to law enforcement duties.
– Los Angeles County suspended the system following an investigation revealing it incorrectly flagged 161 vehicles as stolen.
– In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prosecutors alleged a police officer searched his girlfriend’s license plate 124 times and her former boyfriend’s plate 55 times—justification: “investigation.”
– In Florida, a woman was jailed for 13 days and charged with eight felonies, including three counts of vehicular homicide, following an investigation that used Flock data to identify a vehicle owner. Prosecutors later dismissed the charges after discovering an error and arresting the wrong person.
Hawley warned Langley that Congress “never authorized the network your industry has built” and demanded documents by September 8. The request included guidelines for user searches, data retention policies, and confirmed instances of misuse since January 2021.
Massie and Khanna share Hawley’s concerns. During a recent interview, they stated they would introduce legislation to stop federal funding for the surveillance devices. Massie noted that while Congress cannot ban such systems outright, it can withhold funding: “If you want to have them, you can pay for them yourselves, but don’t ask the federal government to be part of this.”
Khanna highlighted reports of women being stalked and harassed by former or current officers using Flock cameras to target exes or girlfriends. He emphasized the need for a process requiring layers of approval before police access data: “We should have a system where there’s oversight over the data. Right now, it’s just unrestricted and it’s being abused in many ways.”
The proposed legislation would block federal funding for warrantless real-time surveillance and require judicial warrants for all government-initiated searches, including facial recognition in public spaces. It would also prohibit creating persistent location databases without a court order.
Boebert described the issue as fixed license plate readers turning streets into zones of constant monitoring: “These systems continuously scan and record vehicle plates, logging time, location, and travel patterns… The result is a growing database of everyday movements compiled without consent.”
The bill would mandate warrants for government data access, limit retention periods, ban commercial sales of the information, and educate the public about risks to liberty.
“The Fourth Amendment is not a suggestion.”
