Senators unload on Flock surveillance cameras after tech CEOs skip hearing

Our Take

Credit where it's due: when a Senate hearing on mass license plate surveillance turns into a bipartisan pile-on, that's news. According to The Washington Examiner's coverage, lawmakers from both parties used Wednesday's hearing to go after AI-powered ALPR networks capable of tracking Americans' movements — and did so largely without the industry executives in the room to push back. When the companies building this infrastructure won't show up to defend it in front of Congress, that tells you something about how confident they are in their own answers.

This is exactly the kind of scrutiny we've been pushing for. Flock Safety and similar vendors have spent years quietly wiring American cities and towns into networks that log every passing car, building a searchable record of where you drive, when, and how often — all without a warrant. It took actual public pressure and viral stories about misuse to get senators from different parties to agree on something, and ALPR overreach apparently cleared that bar. That's not a partisan talking point; it's a constitutional one.

Hearings are a start, not a solution. Oversight only matters if it leads to real limits on data retention, cross-agency sharing, and warrantless access — not just strongly worded questions aimed at empty chairs. If you want to see whether these cameras have already shown up in your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back locally, our take-action page has concrete steps for getting answers from your city council before the next contract renewal quietly sails through.