Chad Marlow's stance on Flock cameras at the subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism

Our Take

Credit to the Orwell Day channel for surfacing this clip, because moments like this don't get much airtime. When a Senate Judiciary subcommittee sits down to talk crime and counterterrorism, you'd expect wall-to-wall enthusiasm for more cameras, more data, more "tools." Instead, ACLU Senior Policy Counsel Chad Marlow reportedly stood apart by arguing these networks shouldn't exist at all, not just that they need a few more rules bolted on.

That distinction matters. Most of the policy conversation in Washington and in statehouses revolves around tweaking retention windows, audit logs, and access policies for ALPR networks like Flock's, treating the technology as inevitable and just in need of guardrails. A sitting witness telling a subcommittee that the honest answer is 'ban it' is a genuinely rare data point, and it's worth paying attention to who's willing to say the quiet part out loud versus who's content to manage mass surveillance rather than question its existence.

Whether or not Congress acts on it, the fact that this argument made it into an official hearing record is a small crack in the consensus. If you want to see how far this infrastructure has already spread in your own backyard, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back locally, our take-action page has next steps.