Massie introducing bill that prevents federal funding for Flock cameras

Our Take

Credit to WHAS11's Isaiah Kim-Martinez for getting Congressman Thomas Massie on camera to talk about this. It's rare to see a sitting member of Congress go after the money pipeline that's quietly turned thousands of American intersections into surveillance checkpoints. Most of the fight against Flock has happened at the city council level — one town at a time, one public records request at a time. A federal funding fight is a different scale of pressure entirely.

Why does this matter? Because a lot of the ALPR expansion we've tracked wasn't paid for out of local police budgets — it rode in on federal grants, DOJ programs, and other outside funding that let departments install cameras without ever having to make the case to their own taxpayers. Pull that funding and you force an honest conversation: does this department actually want to pay full price, out of its own pocket, for a network that logs every car that passes by? That's a question a lot of city councils have never had to answer.

We'll be watching to see how far this bill actually goes and who lines up for or against it. In the meantime, check our camera map to see what's already been installed near you, and head to our take-action page if you want to push your own local officials on where the funding for their cameras is coming from.