Senator to investigate controversial Flock cameras
The short version: GMA reports Sen. Hawley is pressing Flock Safety's CEO over its sprawling ALPR network — a sign bipartisan scrutiny of mass surveillance is finally catching up.
Our Take
When a national news outlet covers a sitting senator demanding answers from a surveillance vendor, that's a signal the Flock Safety story has outgrown local council meetings and privacy newsletters. Credit to Good Morning America for putting this in front of a mainstream audience. Sen. Hawley's letter — accusing the company of building what he calls an unprecedented national tracking network — echoes what local activists and civil liberties groups have been saying for years: thousands of cameras logging every passing car, shared across jurisdictions, with almost no public accounting of who gets access or why.
What makes this notable isn't that a senator is upset. It's that the criticism is landing from across the political spectrum. Flock's pitch has always been "find the stolen car, catch the fleeing suspect." But the infrastructure doesn't care about your politics — it logs everyone, indiscriminately, and that data doesn't evaporate after the case closes. Congressional attention means subpoenas, hearings, and paper trails, which is exactly the kind of oversight this industry has dodged at the local level by selling contracts quietly, one police department at a time.
If your town has these cameras and you didn't know it, that's the point — most people don't until they look. Check our camera map to see what's been documented near you, and if you want to push back locally while Washington figures out whether it will act, our take-action page has concrete steps for your next city council meeting.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Good Morning America, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.