Hawley raises concerns over Flock cameras, praises new Missouri safeguards

Our Take

Credit to FOX 2 St. Louis for covering this, because it's a notable moment: a sitting U.S. Senator publicly flagging the privacy dangers of license plate readers, and a governor responding with an executive order rather than the usual silence. That alone tells you how far the Flock surveillance debate has traveled — this isn't fringe stuff anymore, it's kitchen-table politics in Missouri.

But let's be clear-eyed about what an executive order actually is: a policy memo that lives and dies with the administration that wrote it. It can set guardrails on paper — retention limits, audit requirements, restrictions on data sharing — but the next governor, or this one under pressure from vendors and police lobbies, can quietly unwind it with a stroke of a pen. Flock's business model depends on these cameras becoming permanent infrastructure, and infrastructure doesn't get undone by non-binding guidance. If Missouri lawmakers are serious about protecting drivers from being tracked everywhere they go, this needs to be codified into statute, not left to executive discretion.

Hawley's concerns are worth taking seriously regardless of party, because ALPR overreach is one of the few issues where left and right genuinely converge. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and if you want to push for real statutory protections instead of revocable executive promises, our take-action page has the tools to get started.