Texas Is Turning Against Flock Cameras. The Surveillance May Not Stop

Our Take

Credit to Anthony Holm on Politics with the Big Dogs for cutting through the celebration here. Yes, Texas Republicans and local officials souring on Flock Safety is a real and welcome shift — it means the political cost of running an unaccountable license-plate dragnet is finally rising. But Holm's core point is the one we keep making: killing a contract with one vendor doesn't kill the surveillance infrastructure. If a city drops Flock and quietly signs with Motorola, Rekor, or a homegrown system with the same warrantless data-sharing habits, nothing has actually changed for the driver whose movements are still being logged, stored, and potentially shared across state lines.

That's the trap. Vendor churn feels like accountability, but the real fight is over policy — retention limits, who gets access to the data, whether out-of-state or federal agencies can query a local network, and whether any of this requires a warrant in the first place. A county that swaps brands without locking down those rules has changed the logo on the surveillance, not the surveillance itself. Texans pushing back should demand the policy, not just the vendor's head.

If you want to see how far this network already reaches near you, check our camera map, and if your city or county is having the 'should we keep Flock' conversation, push them toward real limits, not a replacement contract, at take action.