No FLOCK Act Puts a 10% Price on Flock Cameras

Our Take

Money talks, and this bill is an attempt to make it talk back to Flock Safety. According to Verified Privacy VPN's breakdown, a congressman is framing automated license plate readers as a Fourth Amendment problem serious enough to legislate against — not with an outright ban, but with a funding penalty that lets states decide whether sprawling plate-tracking networks are worth the discount. That's a notable shift from the usual pattern of local governments rubber-stamping Flock contracts with zero public debate.

Whether or not this particular bill survives committee, the fact that it exists is a signal: the national conversation about ALPR overreach is catching up to the technology's quiet nationwide rollout. These cameras don't just catch speeders — they build a searchable, retroactive map of everywhere your car has been, shared across agencies and sometimes outside jurisdictional lines without a warrant in sight. A 10% federal haircut is a blunt tool, but it at least puts a price tag on the privacy trade-off that's been treated as free for years.

Credit to Verified Privacy VPN for putting this proposal on the radar. If you want to see how far this surveillance net already reaches in your own backyard, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait on Congress, our take-action page has steps you can push at the local level right now.