Senator Josh Hawley on Flock CEO: “We’ve Never Been Hacked”

Our Take

Credit to American Hearings for putting this exchange on record. When a company that operates one of the largest privately-run surveillance networks in the country tells a sitting U.S. Senator "we've never been hacked," that's not a mic-drop — it's a claim that should invite immediate, independent verification. Flock's cameras sit on public roads in thousands of towns, feeding plate scans and location data into a system police, and sometimes federal agencies, can query. "Never been hacked" is also what every company says right up until the breach notification goes out.

The deeper issue Hawley is circling isn't just cybersecurity hygiene — it's accountability. Flock has built a business model on data most residents never agreed to have collected, and the public still has no reliable way to independently audit who's touched that data, how long it's kept, or how airtight the security actually is. A senator asking pointed questions on camera is a good start, but it's not a substitute for binding transparency requirements, audit trails, and local control over whether these cameras get installed at all.

If you want to know whether Flock is watching your own street, check our map, and if you'd rather your town not be the next data point in this experiment, our take-action page has concrete steps for pushing back at the city council level.