Flock, competing surveillance companies’ CEOs absent from Senate hearing on camera misuse

Our Take

Credit to Atlanta News First for flagging what's really the headline here: when lawmakers finally called a hearing on ALPR misuse and audit transparency, the CEOs behind these sprawling camera networks didn't bother to show up. That absence tells you everything about how this industry views oversight — as optional, something to dodge rather than engage with. Flock and its competitors have spent years selling police departments and HOAs on the promise of "public safety," but when it's time to answer for how that data gets used, shared, or abused, the executives suddenly have scheduling conflicts.

This matters because these companies have built surveillance infrastructure that now blankets huge swaths of the country, often with zero public vote and minimal transparency about who can access the data or for how long. A Senate subcommittee asking basic questions about federal guardrails is the bare minimum of scrutiny — and still the people actually running these systems couldn't find time to sit in a chair and answer for them. That's not an oversight, it's a strategy: let the hearing happen without you, let the news cycle move on, and keep the cameras running uninterrupted.

If you want to see how close this surveillance is to your own front door, check our camera map to find ALPR locations near you, and if you're ready to push back locally, our take-action page has tools for making noise where it actually counts — city council meetings, not Senate subcommittees these companies can simply skip.