Inside a bill meant to prevent abuse of Flock surveillance cameras
The short version: Face the Nation covers Sen. Josh Hawley's bill to rein in Flock ALPR abuse, proof that ALPR backlash now crosses party lines.
Our Take
When a conservative senator from Missouri starts talking guardrails on license plate readers, you know the Flock surveillance story has broken out of its activist bubble. Face the Nation's segment on Sen. Josh Hawley's bill is a good sign: this isn't just a privacy-nerd issue anymore, it's a bipartisan one. Cameras that quietly log every car that passes, feed a nationwide database, and get queried thousands of times with zero public accountability are the kind of thing that should worry people across the political spectrum.
We don't know yet how strong this bill's actual guardrails are, or whether it will survive the lobbying that Flock and its law enforcement partners will throw at it. Bills like this often get watered down between introduction and markup. But the fact that lawmakers are even forced to respond tells you the public pressure campaign against unchecked ALPR networks is working.
If you want to see how deep this infrastructure already runs in your own town, check our camera map. And if you'd rather not wait on Congress to decide how much tracking is too much, our take-action page has steps you can push for locally right now.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Face the Nation, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.