Missouri senator accuses Flock Safety of creating 'unprecedented' surveillance network

Our Take

When a sitting U.S. Senator starts using words like "unprecedented national surveillance network" to describe Flock Safety, it's worth pausing on how far this technology has crept while most Americans weren't looking. Credit to KVUE for putting Sen. Josh Hawley's comments in front of a wider audience — this isn't a fringe complaint anymore, it's bipartisan alarm bells going off in Washington.

What makes Flock different from your grandfather's speed camera is scale and networking. Thousands of these cameras quietly log every plate that passes, timestamp it, and feed it into a searchable database that agencies across state lines can query. No warrant, no court order, often no public vote. That's the "unprecedented" part — not that cameras exist, but that a private company has built the connective tissue for a de facto national tracking system almost entirely outside the normal channels of oversight we'd expect for something this powerful.

If a senator is calling this out, it's a good moment for local residents to check whether these cameras have already landed in their own neighborhood. Check our map to see what's nearby, and if you want to push back at a city council meeting or file a records request, our take action page has the tools to get started.